Black Friday 2010
Netbooks aren't for video games or watching movies or data processing or reviewing pictures from your camera. A third of the people that buy netbooks are dissatisfied by their performance because they don't know what they are buying. Netbooks are ideal for e-mail, chatting, and blogging. They are good for text, not high-end videos. Maybe they should be called Textbooks.

Agbogbloshie, Ghana and Guiyu, China and Bangalore, India are some of the world's largest dumping grounds for technology.  Here in the United States, we don't see the problem of yesterday's technology being shipped and dumped to pollute some other part of the world, while consumers scramble for the latest greatest gadget. Frontline has a documentary on the Digital Dumping Ground.



2010 Black Friday Shopping  (see ads for details, db=doorbuster, eb=early bird, gb=gigabyte, tb=terabyte)

Electronics Comparisons	Target	Best Buy	Walmart	Sears	Kmart
8gb USB flash drive	$14.99	$14.99	$14
blue-ray disk player	$99	$59.99	$69 eb $94	$99.99	$99.99
DVDs - movies	$13 - Toy Story 3		$9
DVDs - TV shows (entire seasons)	$9.99 Friends 1-10 Sex & the City 1-6 Simpsons 1-5 Weeds 1-5	$9.99 Smallville	$12
external harddrive	$69  1tb or 2tb	$89.99 1tb	$70 1.5tb
HDTV	$298 40" $327.99 32" $449 46"	$499.99 46" $699.99 50" db	$98  19" eb $198 32" eb $398 42" eb $498 50" eb $998 52"	$229.99 24" $549.99 40" $799.99 50"	$239.99 22" $299.99 32" $399.99 42" eb $549.99 40"
portable DVD player	$49 eb		$49	$49.99 db	$79.99

The Twin Cities Mall Hours

Eden Prairie Center 11/26 hours - 5am-9pm Mall of America  11/26 hours 6am-10pm Maplewood Mall 11/26 hours - 5am-10pm

Ridgedale 11/26 hours - 6am-9pm Rosedale 11/26 hours - 5am-9pm (8:30am - 250 gift bags) Southdale 11/26 hours - 5am-10pm

Black Friday (Nov. 26th) is the national shopping day that follows Thanksgiving. A recent Accenture poll shows 5% fewer people will buy on Black Friday, and 5% more will buy on-line. (It's probably the same 5%). People are also planning to spend the same or less than in 2009. A SymphonyIRI survey has shoppers promising that this year they:

Despite the Accenture and SymphonyIRI polls, the National Retail Federation expects a 2.3% holiday sales increase, which is about the same as the 2.2% increase they expected in 2008, which instead resulted in a 2.8% decline.

Some shoppers might be looking for the Amazon Kindle in color. An article in the journal Applied Physics Letters, titled High reflectivity electrofluidic pixels with zero-power grayscale operation explains that a color Kindle may be available in three years.

An over-supply of LCD TV panels is expected to drive the price of flat screen TVs down by 5% in time for the holidays.

Shoppers looking for a self-driving car should read the novel, Hopes and Dreams: Stuck on AutoDrive. Google has reported that they have self-driving cars being tested in California. The cars will not be available anytime soon. It's just self-promotion.

Google has identified top product searches:

For people with over-flowing wallets, the Neiman-Marcus Christmas Book is now available. The $250,000 houseboat on page 40 may not overflow in calm water, and the $15,000 Edible Gingerbread Playhouse on page 47 may provide a safe refuge onboard the houseboat. Or $150,000 will get you a Batmobile.

GottaDeal has some best Black Friday practices for retailers.

Twin Cities Calendar 2010  -    November  |  December