The holidays are drawing closer and so are the big holiday sales. Black Friday comes the day after Thanksgiving and it is the day retailers offer big deals to try and lure shoppers into their stores. Retailers are hoping the holiday shopping gets off to a get start but many have concerns because of the serious financial crisis. Tech blogs and product blogs cover the holiday in earnest releasing shopping tips and sharing the best deals. Here's a look at some of the Black Friday activity.

Wal-Mart didn't want some of its Black Friday ad circulars leaked so it issued takedown notices.

The Is it Black Friday Yet? website answers an obvious question and also provides a handy Black Friday Ads Chart showing which websites have posted the Black Friday ads for the big retailers.

The Inquistr has a post offering ten ways to find those Black Friday deals.

Mashable also has a post that lists ten sources for Black Friday ads.

ReadWriteWeb has compiled 25 resources to get you ready for Black Friday.

Rumors about what Black Friday deals Apple is planning have been discussed on many of the Apple blogs including Wired, Macrumors.com, Tom's Guide, Mac Daily News, Gizmodo, I4U, Gizmodo, Yahoo Tech, TUAW, Infinite Loop, Techmeme and MacBlogz.

Here are some quick links to the Black Friday sections from some of the major gadget and shopping blogs: ShoppingBlog.com, CrunchGear, Engadget, Gizmodo, Joystiq, I4U, Kotaku, WalletPop, Consumerist and The Cheapskate.

Some Twitters have been set up to cover Black Friday including @BlackFriday, @BFads, @BlackFriday_fm, @FW_BlackFriday and @DealTaker and ConsumInterests. You can also search Twitter for "Black Friday" and read all the latest tweets. Some Twitter users are also using hashtags and marking their tweets with #black or @blackfriday

Some of the major retailers are Twittering as well. Here are links to some retailer twitter accounts: Toysrus, The Home Depot, Whole Foods, ThinkGeek, Build-a-Bear, Zappos, Starbucks, PacSun and NewEggMall. Note: The Social Brand Index lists more twittering retailers here.

The most heavily discussed Black Friday deal so far is the Wal-Mart's Black Friday Magnavox blu-ray deal, which is the Magnavox MB500MG9 for $128 - down from $198. It's probably the most discussed deal aside from the rumors about Apple's Black Friday ads.

What will be discussed after Black Friday in detail and what will impact the stock market is whether these Black Friday sales actually help to get consumers buying again or whether the sales will dissapointing.

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Boing Boing has launched a new gaming blog called Offworld. Brandon Boyer makes the introduction in this post.

As Offworld lifts off over the coming weeks and months, I'll be bringing to it a focus on the overlooked, the underappreciated, the rise of the independents and, in general, the games that are bringing genuine excitement and innovation (in both gameplay and design) to the industry.

Offworld will also be home to a number of guest appearances by and regular features from people outside the games industry proper and those that have had only marginal influence but deserve more, because it's when those influences come in that the results have been some of the most magical and memorable, from illustrator Rodney Alan Greenblat and Masaya Matsuura's unforgettable Parappa the Rapper (the face that would launch the rhythm gaming genre proving so profitable today), to studio artist Toshio Iwai's musical Electroplankton, to Keita Takahashi's Katamari Damacy.

That's not to say that Offworld won't also be exploring and featuring gaming's blockbusters, powerhouses and the history of its respected decades-old institutions, but in general we hope to chase away a lot of the industry's cynicism and myopia that's set in and bring the joy of discovery and a fresh breath of playfulness and wonder back, because we're all in this to have fun, aren't we?

The blog is part of the growing Boing Boing blog network which includes Boing Boing, Boing Boing Gadgets and Boing Boing TV. There's also an explanation of Offworld here from BB TV. If you enjoy computer and video games you should add Offworld's feed to your news reader as Boing Boing always offers up some unique and interesting content.

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Former Vice President Al Gore recently made the move to join Twitter. You can see his Twitter here. Al Gore has amassed nearly 19,000 followers since his first tweet eleven days ago on November 6th, 2008. It's probably the fastest growing Twitter in history although there is no way to verify that. There are sites that list the top Twitter users like Twitterholic and Twitter Counter but none that list Twitter growth records. What's the fastest Twitter to get to 20,000 followers? That's probably going to be Al Gore who looks like he will get there in about twelve days.

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Fashionista reports that fashion designer and icon Diane von Furstenberg will blogging on her DVF.com website on a new blog called Inside DVF.

Now? DVF.com is launching a blog tomorrow, called Inside DVF, to be part of DVF.com.

The blog will be updated daily and will include news, shots of new items, horoscopes, cultural advice, and personal photos and posts by the Diane herself so you can die of envy over her travels and day-to-day life.

It's makes sense for fashion designers to blog - it should help them get more attention focused on their collections. Any fashion designer blog will obviously need lots of photographs. (via The New York Observer)

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Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher became known as Joe the Plumber during the 2008 election. John McCain mentioned him during one of the debates after a conversation between Joe and Barack Obama raised the issue of whether Obama's tax policies would be harmful to small business.

Some are curious as to what Joe Wurzelbacher will due with his newly acquired fame. There is a movement to get Joe the Plumber to run for Congress. He may also decide to become "Joe the Blogger" as you can see here (via The Daily Dish) on the secureourdream.com website that belongs to Wurzelbacher. The website also says that "Another benefit to registered members with be a monthly subscription to Joe's blog, where he can share the latest on the fight for preserving Americas freedoms." You might want to rethink that subscription fee Joe - most blogs are free.

There's also a Joe the Plumber here who has received a lot of traffic out of the whole Joe the Plumber meme that developed late in the 2008 election.

Photo by ronnie44052

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The tweet counter from popacular.com has passed the one billion mark. That's a lot of tweets in a relatively short amount of time.



As a comparison Mashable notes that Facebook recently said they now host over 10 billion photos which is over three times more than Flickr's recent 3 billionth photo claim. Photos are not the same as tweets but it does show that Facebook is huge. Now that Facebook has had status updates for a while it will be interesting to see which one gets bigger.

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There is some truth to this humerous fake news report from the Onion that says YouTube is running a contest for a "good" video. They say that "YouTube is offering a cash prize to the first user to upload a video with a shred of originality or artistic merit."



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Pingdom analyzed the Top 100 blogs on Technorati and found that many of them have large-sized front pages primarily because of the use of a lot of large photos.

• The average total size of the front page was 934 KB.
• 35% had a front page larger than 1 MB.
• 26% had a front page smaller than 500 KB.
• 39% (the largest segment) had a front page between 500 KB and 1 MB.

Pingdom says scripts from widgets and third-party analytics tools are also slowing down the load time of blog homepages. Pingdom notes that blog readers without broadband are really going to suffer as they try to load these large page sizes. They also say blogs may be doing themselves a disservice if they continue to get bigger and bigger.

Since many blogs try to attract a large number of readers, they may be doing themselves a disservice if they let their blog size get too big, which will result in a slow-loading blog. Browser-side caching will help things a bit for frequent readers, but any new or casual visitor will have to load the page in its entirety and some may give up before it is finished or at least get frustrated. (And no one wants frustrated readers.)

On the other hand the blogs with a large number of photographs may be benefitting from having all these images because they bring back readers. Some of the top blogs often have large photographs followed by a paragraph or two of text. A gossip blog may have large photographs of the latest celebrity hijinks and a gadget blog may have a large photograph of the latest Apple product. If the images are what is making the blog more popular then taking them away or shrinking them could actually reduce traffic. (via The Register)

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Wonkette's funny headline that "Barack Obama Saves Print Newspapers For Entire Day" has some truth behind it. Think Progess reports several print editions of major newspaper being sold out.

Even though it printed 30 percent more copies today, the Washington Post announced that they "sold out within hours" today as DC residents rushed to pick up a copy celebrating Obama's historic victory. People were disappointed when Post circulation officials "closed the office doors and posted a sign saying 'SOLD OUT.'" Similar stories were reported in Dayton, OH; Chicago; Miami; New York City; Atlanta; and Burbank, CA.

Maybe some people are printing out their favorite blog posts of the day but it isn't likely that printing historical posts is anywhere near as popular as buying a historic print newspaper edition of Barack Obama's historic victory. However, one day does not make a trend and newspapers are going to continue the transition to where they are eventually all printed digitally.

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Over three billion photos have now been posted to the Flickr photo sharing website. Yahoo bought Flickr and its parent company Ludicorp in March, 2005. Here's the three billionth photo that was posted to Flickr. It's a door. Mashable reports that Flickr hit the two billion photo mark almost exactly a year ago so they have added one billion photos in a single year. (via Flickr)



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Here's another roundup of Halloween creeps and treats from the blogosphere. Part 1 is here and entries from past Halloweens can be found here.

This Dark Knight pumpkin is cool and scary. Another scary pumpkin is the Stock ticker pumpkin which looks more like it could be a bomb. Kotaku has a collection of gaming pumpkins that are not scary.

ShoppingBlog.com has a summary of this Halloween's themes and trends.

Play an online game called Cat Bowling.

Fairytale pumpkins are a popular pumpkin variety this year. They have a a cinderella shape and a buckskin color.

Eight Halloween costumes that will scare environmentalists.

Four last-minute printable Halloween candidate masks can be found here (via DesignFloat.com). Forbes.com has masks of some celebrity and media people.

Facebook prepares for people to deliver truckloads of Halloween photos over the intertubes.

Some online and digital Halloween treats can be found on Yahoo Tech Adviser and on Mashable.

Halloween is the fastest growing greeting card-sending occasion.

Today's Google doodle was designed by Wes Craven. Wes Craven has been busy on YouTube as well.

Adorable photos of animals with pumpkins. (via Slashfood)

It's already scary out there for investors - these four economic demons from Fool.com won't help.

JibJab has some Halloween sendables here - just upload your face.

Zombie Babes terrorized the streets of New York.

Ecorazzi has a list of vegan-approved candy.

It's probably too late this year but next year you could scare people by turning a room into a vortex tunnel.

How to look like like Patrick Bateman in American Psycho.

Nom Nom: Mummy cupcakes, Crawly Cakes, Spiderweb cookies, Fried Spiders, Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cupcakes, Pumpkin Tortilla Soup and Popcorn Brain Balls. There is also collections of Halloween cupcakes here and here.

Disney is growing Mickey-shaped pumpkins.

Safety tips for trick-or-treating from the Candy Dish Blog.

Gothamist found a heavily decorated haunted house.

A rant against the grotesque and unwanted Halloween hanging trend.

In London's Regent Park some kitchen utensils and cookware were used to make a creepy looking skull.

A brief history of Halloween from Greeting Card blog. National Geographic explains the origins of Halloween treats.

Deadly Macintosh virus caught on film.

Buzzfeed has a list of Internet meme costumes including Helmet Cat.

You can see a couple crafty ideas from Cookie magazine in this video.

A pretty amazing mech costume.

Cockeyed.com has a list of some Halloween candy codes that can be left in chalk in front of the houses.

Bruce Springsteen posted a Halloween song on his website called "A Night With The Jersey Devil".

Tor.com has an article by a writer who hates horror.

The Southwest Airlines CEO croudsourced the idea for his costume - see his blog entry here.

Learn how to make fake blood.

Music: 10 Hip-hop songs for Halloween and 15 mood songs for Halloween.

Celebrity Costumes:

• Gwen Stefani is an egg
• Dita Von Teese as a normal girl
• Mariah Carey as a cookie and a firefighter
• Kim Kardashian as Wonder Woman
• The Today Show cast as characters from fairy tales
• Randy Jackson says he must go as a fruit or a vegetable.

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Media columnist Phil Rosenthal has a new blog on chicagotribune.com called Tower Ticker. Rosenthal's post describing the new blog can be found here.

It's called "Tower Ticker," which from December 1948 to October 1981 was the name of the Chicago Tribune's popular people column. This isn't that. It's more an expansion of the Tribune column I have been writing for the last 3½ years (and, in some ways, the Chicago Sun-Times and Los Angeles Daily News columns I wrote for two decades before that). But I liked the name, the handle was available and worth dusting off for a revival.

He also linked to a Monkees video on YouTube in the post but then apologized for doing it.

Rosenthal's blog has an interesting entry titled "A paper without paper is still a paper." The post is about the Christian Science Monitor's recent decision to scale back on print from daily to weekly and to focus more on the website. A lot of journalists like Rosenthal now have blogs and a lot of newspapers are folding or curtailing print editions to focus on the web. It's still the same news and opinion but the format and technology is changing. What's happening is basically what was being predicted a couple years ago.

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This Halloween is more interesting because of the Presidential Elections that takes place just a few days after everyone recovers from their Halloween hangovers. It is also scarier this year because of reality. The stock market and the economy have been more frightening than any Halloween costume, decoration or horror movie. Here's a look at some of the trends and Halloween happenings online and in the blogosphere this year.

• This year's most popular costumes for Adults, Kids and Pets.
• Martha Stewart creeped out everyone with her odd baby costumes that made babies look like food - see here, here and here. Parent Dish has some cuter non-food baby costumes here.
• The stock market is terrifying this Halloween and so are the higher prices for costumes and candy.
• Sweet Candy Corn is a blog that's all about candy corn! (via Neatorama)
• Some people are going as jellyfish - maybe going as a jellyfish will be the most popular costume next year (unlikely).
• Spirit Halloween's mask sales have predicted the past three elections. Obama is selling more masks than McCain this year.
• Sony Ericsson has a confusing viral video Halloween contest thing for Facebook.
• Fights, Flights and Tights 3. is a contest for costumes of the crime-fighting variety. (via Newsarama)
• FearNet's 66.6 Second Film Festival has compressed a bunch of horror movies into 66.6 second videos.
• Flaming Pumpkins of Death - people send pumpkins on fire hurling through the air.
• Green Halloween. Treehugger and Green Options share some green Halloween ideas. Slate investigates how green Halloween is or could be.
• New Scientists shares a gallery of spooky space images.
• Eyeball Caprese: The healthy gourmet salad is turned into an evil Halloween dish. (via Shopping Blog)
• Gizmodo has a post about how to build a 3D Lego Pumpkin.
• The Black Widow looks like a delicious, creepy cocktail. A longer list of Halloween drinks is available here at Drink of the Week. (hat tip Buzzfeed)
• These scare bears are creepy in an evil clown kind of way. (via Urlesque). J-Walk blog links to yet more creepy dolls.
• Wired wants your geekiest Halloween costume.
• Yahoo Tech has a roundup of creepy and cool gadgets.
• Geeks you can transform your Macs into Mac O' Lanterns (via Popgadget)
• AOL plans to delete some of its users content on Halloween.
• Endless Simmer has posted some food costumes that are cute and weird. (via Neatorama)
• Spooky storage - store your files in flash Skull USB drives.
• Hot for Words explains in a video how Halloween got its name.
• Think Geek also has some creepy zombie dolls.
• Political Pumpkins: Obama pumpkins at Yes We Carve, Zombie pumpkin patterns and political pumpkins on Flickr. More links here at Buzzfeed.
• Gawker has a post about Sarah Palin costumes.
• Hungry for some Awful Edible Roasted Fleshworms? Mental Floss has a roundup of Gruesome Halloween Party Food.
• Some celebrities will likely experience Halloween Fail this year but last year's FAIL by Heidi and Spencer will be hard to top.
• A list of eight Halloween picture books.
• At least we know Halloween won't fail despite the scary economy.
• The parade scene from Ferris Bueller's Day Off is being recreated at the Village Halloween Parade.
• Gizmodo blogs about an interesting DIY haunted Ouija board project.
• At one point it looked like sex offenders in Maryland would have to post signs that say "No Candy at This Residence." It now appears that the law was blocked.
• How to make a breakaway tombstone for your home movies or your yard.
• How to make a Marshmallow Peeps Graveyard Cake.
• These night vision goggles could come in handy on Halloween night.
• Artist Daniel McDonald does the Monster Mash.
• Make a pumpkin with light-sensing LED eyes (via Dvice).
• Make has instructions for making a creepy Mechamo Crab.
• A man's 450-lb pumpkin was stolen.
• An entry on Boing Boing explains how to make a brain out of a watermelon. The photo looks creepy enough but will it look too watermelon-like in person?
• This is a video of a very creepy Halloween window animation that someone put up last Halloween. (via Neatorama)
• Double Viking has pictures from a Zombie pin-up calendar.
• There's a Blog in my Soup explains the connection between pumpkin carving and successful blogging.
• Instead of regular cupcakes you can make some pumpkin-shaped cupcakes.
• Coed Magazine has a collection of sexy costume-less costumes that were painted on. There's some painted-on costumes here as well.
• Some of the Halloween Special Effect lenses are very cool. Note: The American Optometric Association (AOA) is warning consumers about the risks of wearing decorative contact lenses without a prescription from an eye doctor. They could damage your eyes.
• Make your own monster with the San Antonio Express-News' Monster Maker. (via Pop Candy)
• Miss Cellania has a collection of Dracula and Frankenstein links.
• Mr. Bones Pumpkin Patch is drawing in all the celebrities again this year including Britney Spears,Tori Spelling, Gwen Stefani, Heidi Klum,Courtney Cox, Gavin Rossdale and Tobey Maquire.

You can see the previous Blogging Halloween entries from 2005, 2006 and 2007 here.

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