The guys over at Dealnews have published a rather nonsensical list that will probably help you discern what exactly is a good buy and what’s not on Black Friday.

1. Know the Price History for the Item
2. Consider Other Colors
3. Compare to Prices on Similar Items
4. Consider Bundle Offers
5. Look for Coupons That Apply to Your Selection
6. Look for a Coupon for Competing Stores
7. Does Shipping Kill the Deal?
8. Don’t Forget Sales Tax

Sounds like common sense, sounds like something we all should already know, but let’s be honest. If you have 16 screaming, kung-fu grip mommies around you grabbing everything around you and you get caught up in the fever of purchasing a $79 dollar point-and-click camera made by a name brand that’s only sold in certain stores and perhaps isn’t the best name brand out there I’m not talking from experience… I’m really not… damn cheap friggin’ camera…

So yes. Head over to Dealnews.com and read the whole article. Who knows, you might be able to save some money on some rather useless camera gadget and buy more bang for the buck.

[ Links: Dealnews - 8 Tips to Get the Best Deals on Black Friday ]

Skono, a Norwegian fashion brand (www.skonokorea.com), launched at the end of October, fashion item “Revolution Indi Lace” to lead the trend this winter.

The “Indi Lace” for both men and women is made of suede to keep warm in the winter with weaving of a peasant feel. It provides shoelaces of two colors for different looks.

It comes in five colors of yellow brown, dark brown, khaki, navy and purple, and it is sold in Skono shops and shopping malls (www.skonokorea.com) nationwide. It costs KRW 99,000, or about $90 USD.

Skono, which was born in 2003 in Norway, is a practical and modern looking fashion brand with chick points for the lifestyle of the new generation particular to Northern Europe.

It is both casual, career wear, and sporty wear with various styles. Its modern and classic design is distinctive and it has about 400 stores in Korea.

< !!hdimgs!!>< !!hdimge!!>

Link to the original article…

Intel as expected officially confirmed the information that three of its CPUs: Pentium G622, Core i3-2102 and Core i3-2312M – may be “improved” while in use by customers. All that it takes is to purchase an advance card and enter the code printed on it into a special “unlock application”. All three processors are built on Intel’s Sandy Bridge architecture.

Link to the original article…

Not normally a fan of putting stickers on computers, but if you have a computer that looks like what everyone else is carrying around then distinguishing yours from the others is a sensible idea… These War Machine decals will help you do that – and make the back of your laptop look a little bit more awesome at the same time.

These stylish stickers are sized to fit the 13-inch MacBook and 13, 15 and 17-inch MacBook Pros.

Price: $15 [ Tech Chee ]

Link to the original article…

Acer has introduced a Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU based, Android 2.1 OS loaded smartphone named Stream at IFA 2010 held in Berlin, Germany from September 3 to 8.

‘Stream’ is loaded with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 1GHz processor and 3.7 inch AMOLED display. It also supports Acer UI 4.0, 512MB ram, Wi-Fi, GPS and micro HDMI.

Link to the original article…

Verizon’s “exclusive” agreement with Skype has created a Skype client that has a number of quirky restrictions including the fact that it eats your wireless minutes in some instances (conveniently keeping voice minutes relevant in the age of smartphone mobile VoIP).

But Skype’s specialized Verizon application also had a fairly nasty bug: Android users who used the Skype app over 3G couldn’t turn on Wi-Fi at all.

In other words, they couldn’t use Skype on 3G and browse the Internet via Wi-Fi. At the time, Verizon gave a roundabout explanation, admitting there was a bug, but also insisting that CALEA wiretap restrictions were partially to blame for the problem, as the Verizon-specific app runs over Verizon’s traditional voice network. Whatever the cause, Verizon and Skype have apparently figured it out, and Skype for Verizon smartphones now works with Wi-Fi turned on.

Link to the original article…

Google Earth just keeps on getting better and better. The latest improvement comes in the form of the “clouds layer”, which displays what is happening with the weather in real time (in a few supported locations). Once the layer is activated, you can watch it rain or snow in real time.

For now it is limited to parts of North America and Western Europe, but knowing Google it won’t take long for other locations to start appearing.

Link to the original article…

According to a new study from the Yankee Group, 73% of Apple iPhone users are very satisfied with AT&T’s service, a number well above the industry average satisfaction score (69) and AT&T’s score for all phones (68). So what explains this satisfaction given two years of complaints and AT&T’s customer satisfaction scores traditionally falling at the tail end of the spectrum? Researchers guess that users are so in love with the phone as an all-purpose device, they transfer some of this adoration over to AT&T via a “halo effect”:

“Consumers transfer the high gloss of their Apple iPhone experience to AT&T,” says Carl Howe, Yankee Group analyst and author of the study. “The iPhone creates a halo effect that rubs off.” In other words, iPhone customers’ praise for their network may be a result of the famous “reality distortion field” that surrounds Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) CEO Steve Jobs and his company’s products. But AT&T says its network really isn’t as bad as many people think. It’s a perception problem, not a service problem, in the company’s eyes.

Instead of acknowledging the problem and explaining again how they’re working on shortcomings (which they certainly are), AT&T has to insult peoples’ intelligence by suggesting the problems have been hallucinatory in nature. Being unprepared for wireless traffic surges AT&T consistently sees coming isn’t a “perception” problem, and it can’t be fixed by more PR.

One thing that’s also happening in terms of AT&T’s satisfaction rates in the Yankee study is the firm didn’t bother to study users by region. Many of the angry AT&T iPhone users tend to be in San Francisco and New York, where congestion wreaks havoc on AT&T’s network. Unlike say in Cleveland, where users have a completely different experience on the AT&T network (like the ability to make phone calls on major highways).

Link to the original article…

An insider recently told Engadget that the company would be ditching unlimited wireless data pricing to shift to a billing model more like AT&T’s as soon as next week. While that wouldn’t be surprising given Verizon’s repeated hints at their interest in such a model, Verizon has also repeatedly said such a change would likely come with the launch of LTE service.

To hear Verizon CFO John Killian tell it, Verizon’s not making any data plan price changes anytime soon. Said Killian on Verizon’s recent conference call:

Our business is continuing to perform extremely well. You have not seen us rush out to make any kind of a change. We will continue to monitor the situation, of course, and look at opportunities that will say what is the best equation for us to drive long-term shareholder value, and we will be very focused on that. I cannot say enough, though, about the opportunity we see ahead given where we are today with smart phone penetration.

Killian then goes on to talk about 4G and note that tiered pricing will, as they’ve consistently said, likely arrive with LTE:

We have indicated in the past, as we move to an LTE world and LTE pricing, we will probably look very hard at tiered pricing, and that continues to be our thinking right now. So more to come on that. By the way, I should say that all of our efforts, all of our plans on getting LTE launched in the fourth quarter are on schedule.

The original Engadget rumor pegged July 29 as the date for the change, so we don’t have long to wait. Verizon LTE isn’t expected to launch anywhere until November 15.

Link to the original article…

Earlier this month, AT&T users in many markets suddenly found themselves with crippled upstream speeds with some users unable to even exceed 50 kbps. AT&T quickly responded to the complaints, noting that they’d found a software defect in Alcatel-Lucent equipment (which isn’t in all markets). While an AT&T statement at the time claimed AT&T was “providing normal 3G uplink speeds and consistent performance,” that wasn’t really the case; users spent most of this month dealing with these crippled speeds.

But based on a tests this morning in the NY/NJ area, it looks like AT&T’s finally deploying a software patch. No comment yet from AT&T if they have a timeline for all impacted markets.

Link to the original article…

AT&T’s second quarter earnings are out, and despite “Antennagate” and network coverage criticism, the company still managed to activate a whopping 3.2 million Apple iPhones during the quarter. Overall, the company added 1.6 million wireless subscribers (896,000 of those were not phones but embedded devices like e-Readers) for the quarter, to reach 90.1 million total wireless connections. AT&T saw a 27.2 percent growth in wireless data revenues, up $936 million from last year and their new data pricing only really just kicked in.

AT&T added a net 209,000 U-verse TV subscribers for the quarter, totaling 2.5 million. That said, AT&T overall lost about 92,000 total broadband customers, given they lost 347,000 traditional DSL customers, some to U-Verse upgrades, some to competitors. AT&T’s broadband quarter wasn’t a particularly great one, something AT&T attributes to “seasonal” slowdown, but also because competitors in non U-Verse markets are becoming “more aggressive with promotions.”

In other words, users tired of slow and expensive DSL service are upgrading to cable. AT&T hopes to counter this with bonded VDSL, which will extend U-Verse’s reach to 30 million potential users. But the fact that cable is kicking AT&T around in legacy DSL markets is kind of amusing given all the investor pressure on AT&T to skimp on network upgrades. By lamenting telco network upgrades (be they FTTH or FTTN), Wall Street stock jocks like Craig Moffett wind up helping cable companies.

On their earnings conference call, AT&T dribbled out a few interesting tidbits including the fact that their LTE trials will be starting in just a few months, with the service made available to AT&T customers sometime in 2011. The company also noted that they’ve been working hard to improve network performance in their trouble markets like New York City, where they claim dropped calls are down 23% in Manhattan while 3G speeds are up 31% the last six months. San Francisco upgrades are about 90 days behind NYC upgrades, says AT&T.

As for AT&T’s decision to impose low 200 MB and 2 GB caps on wireless smartphone users during the quarter, AT&T’s CFO Rick Lindner called the results “pretty encouraging.” Interestingly, AT&T says fewer people than they expected downgraded from unlimited to 200MB and 2GB capped plans. “To be honest we had expected virtually all of those customers to migrate down to a lower price point.” Perhaps because low caps and high overages (plus fees) isn’t really a lower price point?

Regardless, AT&T acknowledged their new tiered pricing (which Verizon is expected to mimic later this month) “may reduce the growth rate in the next year.” T-Mobile, Clearwire and Sprint certainly hope so.

Of course rumbling beneath all of this talk about wireless is AT&T’s continued loss of traditional landline voice customers and associated revenues, which AT&T happily insists saw their “smallest year-over-year decline in five quarters.” AT&T saw their wireline voice total (and they include U-Verse Voice in that total) drop to 44.3 million from 46.3 million on the quarter. Those continued losses mean continued layoffs at the company this year.

Link to the original article…

On the heels of announcing that faster (10 Mbps+) HSPA+ wireless service is now available in 50 markets, T-Mobile this week tweeted that the company would be launching its first HSPA+ phone later this summer. The company may also be getting the Apple iPhone this fall, according to the Cult of Mac.

An anonymous source tells the website that it’s “80% likely” that the phone could arrive on T-Mobile during Q3 (well ahead of a rumored Verizon January 2011 launch), and talks between Apple and T-Mobile are “at an advanced stage.” Of course post-AT&T exclusive iPhone rumors veered beyond ridiculous long ago, so take this with a grain of salt. Or seventy grains of salt.

Link to the original article…