Amazon is unloading Activision’s new-ish DJ Hero package for $85 across all current-generation systems – that’s down from $100+ elsewhere.

The bundle is also available on PlayStation 2, although it’s priced at $98.99. That’s “whack” as most popular DJ’s might say. That’s a thing, right? Whack? The standard bundle includes the DJ Hero game with over 100 songs and the turntable controller.

DJ Hero Bundle with Turntable [Amazon via dealnews]

Today is Cyber Monday. It’s like Black Friday but with more indoorsiness. And while Black Friday is more of a brick-and-mortar, you’re-there-in-person type of thing, Cyber Monday is all online and there are far too many stores and deals to completely cover. Here’s a head start on some of the better deals from the bigger sites, though.

You’ll find pretty good deals at Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, and Dell. Newegg, Office Depot, Office Max, and Staples have a few gems as well. Apple’s got a few discounts but only on accessories. Buy.com’s list is pitiful, as is Radio Shack’s. Target’s not offering a whole lot of electronics deals for some reason but there’s some decent pricing on other stuff.

Amazon.com

• 8GB iPod touch for $158 (link)
• Creative Vado HD camcorder for $89.99 (link)
• Garmin nuvi 260w GPS for $114.99 (link)
• Nintendo Wii plus $20 Amazon.com Gift Card for $199.99 (link)
• Full list of deals here…

BestBuy.com

• 19-inch 720p LCD TV for $159.99 (link)
• Garmin nuvi 205w GPS for $104.99 (link)
• 15.6-inch Acer Aspire Laptop with 4GB of RAM for $399.99 (link)
• EA Wii games for $20 off (link)
• Full list of deals here…

Walmart.com

• Nintendo Wii Bundle (system, extra controllers, game, accessory) for $249 (link)
• eMachines 15.6-inch Windows 7 laptop + extras for $368 (link)
• Sony Bravia 32-inch HDTV for $398 (link)
• 8GB iPod nano + accessory kit for $145 (link)
• Full list of deals here…

Dell.com

• ST2410 Full HD 24-inch LCD monitor for $184 (link)
• 1.5TB Western Digital 3.5-inch hard drive for $99.99 (link)
• Inspiron Zino HD desktop starting at $299 (link)
• TomTom One 130 GPS for $79.99 (link)
• Full list of deals here…

Newegg.com

• Intel Core i5 desktop with 4GB of RAM for $649.99 (link)
• ASUS 18.5-inch LCD monitor for $79.99 (link)
• Garmin nuvi 205 GPS for $89.99 (link)
• Full list of deals here…

OfficeMax.com

• eMachines 18.5-inch LCD monitor for $69.99 (link)
• Buy one, get one free on all ink and toner (link)
• Samsung 23-inch TV/Monitor for $249.99 (link)
• Full list of deals here…

OfficeDepot.com

• Toshiba T135-S1310 13.3-inch ULV notebook with 9-hour battery for $599.99 (link)
• Ativa 21.5-inch LCD monitor for $139.99 (link)
• Full list of deals here…

Staples.com

• Microsoft Wireless Laser Desktop 6000 for $29.99 (link)
• Acer 21.5-inch LCD monitor for $109.99 (link)
• Full list of deals here…

Apple.com

• Monster Beats headphones for $269.95 (link)
• MoGo Talk for iPhone for $116.95 (link)
• Eye-Fi 2GB Geo SD Card for $53.95 (link)
• Full list of deals here…

Buy.com

• TomTom One 130 GPS for $82.49 (link)
• Full list of deals here…

RadioShack.com

• TomTom XL 330-S GPS for $99.99 (link)
• Full list of deals here…

Target.com

• Full list of deals here…

Amazon is mighty proud of its Kindle. So much so that the retailer outed a press release proclaiming that the Kindle is the best selling device on Amazon.com and even pre-Cyber Monday, November was its best selling month so far. Nook what?

It’s too bad that we have to take Amazon’s word though. The company still hasn’t released any hard sales numbers for the device and probably won’t anytime soon. But if this press release is true, and there really isn’t any reason to doubt it, the Kindle outsold the iPod touch, Sarah Palin and Dan Brown’s books, and everything else. That’s impressive.

Kindle Breaks Record for Sales in a Single Month During November

Kindle is the Hottest Gift This Holiday Season Across All Amazon Product Categories–Not Just Electronics SEATTLE, Nov 30, 2009 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN 133.00, +1.26, +0.96%) today announced that November is already the best sales month ever for Kindle, even before Cyber Monday. Kindle continues to be the most wished for, the most gifted, and the #1 bestselling product across all product categories on Amazon. The latest generation Kindle — just released in October — is $259 and available for immediate shipment today at www.amazon.com/kindle.

“Kindle is a great gift for anyone who loves to read and it’s flying off the shelves faster than any other product Amazon sells,” said Ian Freed, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. “We’re seeing lots of people buying from one to a handful of Kindles as gifts for friends or family, as well as many businesses and other organizations buying Kindles in large quantities for their employees or customers.”

Kindle is the revolutionary portable reader that wirelessly downloads books, magazines, newspapers and personal documents to a crisp, high-resolution 6-inch electronic ink display that looks and reads like real paper. Kindle utilizes the same 3G wireless technology as advanced cell phones, so users never need to hunt for a Wi-Fi hotspot. The latest generation Kindle with Global Wireless enables readers to wirelessly download content in over 100 countries and territories.

We reviewed this kit a few months ago and were impressed. It’s completely wireless and the cameras are battery powered.

The kit is worth $299 and it can be yours for the price of a comment below. We’ll pick a winner on Tuesday.

Yoichi Wada is the president and CEO of Square Enix. Square Enix is a very big video game developer and publisher, responsible for games like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and Kingdom Hearts. Hence, his words mean an awful lot. His latest words: console gaming, as we know it today, has only a few years left in it. The future? It’s all about the network, baby!~

The background: Yoichi Wada gave an interview to MCV, a British publication. Good on him. It’s not exactly a wide-ranging interview, instead strictly focusing on the future of video games. Considering his job title, you’d have to assume he knows what he’s talking about.

The big points: physical media (DVD-based games and the like) has no future, so you’d better be cool with things like Xbox Live, PSN, or Steam; 2005 will be seen as the year that everything changed, when console manufacturers changed their mentality from being primarily hardware/console-based to network-based (Xbox Live and eventually~! PSN); Final Fantasy XIV, which is an MMO, may well be more important for Square Enix than Final Fantasy XIII since it’s part of the “new wave” of online, social games.

OK!

Now that that’s out of that way, well, yeah, Wada is 100 percent correct. Console gaming, as we know it, or even used to know it, will die either with this generation or the next. Think of your Xbox 360 and PS3: they’re basically low-end PCs, especially in the 360’s case. (Though I think it’s safe to say that the PS3 has some life left in it, it’s just going to take someone with a lot of money to actually develop a game from the ground up for the system. I’m thinking God of War III will be that game.) Microsoft is most up-front about this: play with Twitter or Facebook! Watch Zune movies! Have a party with your friends! Oh, also, it can play video games, too!

The Xbox 360 came out four years ago. If it weren’t for Xbox Live, or the constant updates the system has seen via software updates (the NXE, Netflix streaming, Twitter/Facebook, etc.), we’d be clamoring for info about the next Xbox already. When was the last time you read so much as a thinly sourced rumor about the next Xbox?

In other words, we’re going to be with the current generation of consoles for a little while, which speaks to Wadas’ point: from 2005, the network matters just as much, if not more so, than the consoles themselves.

(Incidentally, I’m currently in the process of building a gaming/new main PC to replace a 3-year-old iMac for this very reason: why should I play Team Fortress 2 with, what, 15 other people on Xbox Live (versus the several thousand on the PC version), or play Fallout 3 with no access to mods?. I just bought this monitor, and will be adding components as the weeks go by. Any tips (GPUs, CPUs, motherboards, etc) would be greatly appreciated.)

And then there’s casual games! Not everyone has the time required to play “hardcore” games like Fallout 3 or Dragon Quest, so why not fire up a round of Wii Sports, kill off some steam, then go about your business? Needless to say, game publishers make a nice chunk of change on these “simple” games, being that they cost so little to develop, making them fairly important for the bottom line.

If you want to get crazy, then you can think of things like the OTOY and OnLive and Spawn Labs, which promise, to varying degrees, HD-level games over a broadband connection. How well that actually turns out in the real world, who knows, but you can be guys like Wada are paying attention.

I don’t know, this is all over the place. The gist of it is this: we need to recognize that game consoles are little more than dumbed down, low spec PCs. That’s not an insult, of course, just a statement on their underlying technology. Soon, if not already, it’s going to be less about the number of gigaflops the system can process than wether or not you can play Fun Simulator 2 with 87 of your Twitter friends.

You know what I mean, right? I don’t know, too much apple pie yesterday~!

Flickr

The Roku is one of my favorite living room devices and it just got better. Now it’s $64.99 plus shipping and lets you watch Netflix, Amazon, and MLB content along with Facebook and Blip.tv videos. Good, good stuff.

Click through to figure out how to get the deal.

The Roku HD-XR Player retails for $129.99, but will be available for just $64.99 (plus FREE SHIPPING) on our Black Friday website when it opens on Friday morning. Details on how the offer will work are below:

1. Go to http://blackfriday.roku.com starting at 11:00AM Eastern Standard Time (8:00AM Pacific Standard Time) Friday morning.
2. Follow the instructions and enter the code “hdxrsteal” at checkout. The code can be applied to one Roku HD-XR Player.

EA Sports Madden 95/NHL 95 Plug and Play TV Game: $16 (Amazon.com)

I take this thing with me whenever I travel. It contains two of the greatest old-school Sega Genesis games of all time: Madden 95 and NHL 95. It plugs into any standard TV via white and yellow AV cables and this two-player version here is perfect for reliving the glory days of mid- to late-adolescence with an old buddy. For best results, have Pearl Jam’s “Ten” album playing in the background and sit on a beanbag if there’s one available.

Product Page

ExciteBike: World Rally: $10 (Nintendo Wii/WiiWare)

Oh man, I downloaded this the other day and played it for about six hours straight. It’s ExciteBike, through and through, with the added bonus of online multiplayer and all new graphics. The game itself is still as simple-yet-addicting as ever, you can still build your own tracks, and the $10 price tag isn’t too bad considering the multiplayer feature augments the otherwise short single player mode with nearly infinite replay value.

Product Page

Portable Handheld Emulator: Starting at around $30

Nothing gets a nostalgic gamer excited like the idea of taking old school games everywhere and, thankfully, there are plenty of portable emulation machines on the market. From the very-reasonable NES emulator reviewed here, to the slightly-more-expensive Genesis emulator reviewed here, you should be able to find an emulator for most older systems for under $50.

The ultimate portable, perhaps, would be the GP2X Wiz, a $180 handheld that runs just about every available retro system available and is backed by a vibrant community of users. Nobody beats the Wiz.

Retro Duo Twin Video Game System: $43.99 (Amazon.com)

If your favorite gamer hasn’t had the heart to sell, donate, or toss a single NES or SNES game cartridge despite numerous advancements in the magical field of PC-based emulation, then this Retro Duo console is a no-brainer. It’s cheap, too!

Less than $50 for a console that plays NES and SNES games and includes two controllers? There’s not much to consider there – it’s pretty much an impulse buy.

Product Page

USB NES Controller: $29.99 (ThinkGeek.com)

Playing old emulated NES games using anything other than an original controller just feels so… wrong. But if you don’t have the tinkering prowess to convert an original NES game pad into a USB version that can be used with your computer, you still have options. The $30 RetroLink USB gamepad takes care of the dirty work for you, allowing you to play those old NES games the way the gaming gods intended.

Product Page

I’ve never hidden my disdain for Metacritic (and GameRankings, but mostly Metacritic), the Web site that aggregates review scores for video games (and movies and so forth). It’s an insane concept: let’s round up all of these ostensibly separate opinions, throw ‘em in a blender, and come up with a single, solitary number that conveys a game’s entire worth. Balderdash, I say. Review scores aren’t a standardized measurement—a 9.2 over at IGN doesn’t mean a 9.2 at Edge, or an A over at 1UP.

This latest news pleases me. The Cowen Group (one of those fancy research companies whose analysts are always quoted in news stories) has released the details of a study that shows, plainly, that a game’s review score is the least important barometer that people pay attention to when shopping for games. That is to say, whether a game gets an 8 or higher (or lower!) matters very, very little to a person when they’re at Wal-Mart or Best Buy, or cruising the latest releases on Amazon or Steam.

The study found that people pay attention to the following items, in order of most important to least important, when shopping for video games: genre; whether or not it’s a familiar game series; price; word-of-mouth; advertising; publisher reputation; and, lastly, Metacritic score.

Let’s look at this.

• Genre Obviously. If you don’t like FPSs, odds are you’re not going to like Modern Warfare 2 or BioShock or Left 4 Dead 2. If you are a fan of the genre, then it’s pretty much guaranteed that you’ll derive some entertainment out of said games.

• Familiarity This helps explain why all the big games for the past few years have all been sequels. If you liked Left 4 Dead 1, you can pretty safely assume you’ll enjoy Left 4 Dead 2. Well, unless you’re one of the boycotters. It’s merely more of the same. New Zelda? Sign me up. Final Fantasy XXXIV? I loved the other thirty-three!

• Price Well, yeah. How many people enjoyed all those Guitar Hero games, but then bailed out when it became a yearly $150+ affair? (Not that you have to re-buy the instruments every year, no, but you play one of these games and you’ve played them all.) Remember when PlayStation games were $40?

• Word-of-mouth You’re at the store with your friends, “Oh, don’t buy that, I heard it sucks.” Or, “Dude, did you buy Game yet? The multi-player is wicked awesome.”

• Advertising I readily admit to being susceptible to advertising. I had zero interest in buying Assassin’s Creed II until I saw that slick Justice trailer on TV. A few days later, and I’m jumping around the rooftops of Renaissance Italy.

• Publisher reputation Remember a few years ago when everyone hated EA? You know, ea_spouse and all that. (By the way, what publisher do we all hate now? My guess is Activision.) I’m going to assume that only the “hardcore” gamers give a turkey what company publishes (or develops) a video game. Why haven’t I bought Call of Duty: World at War? Because it was developed by “the other guys,” Treyarch, and not good ol’ Infinity Ward.

• Score Who honestly walks through a Best Buy and says, “You know, I was going to buy Game 2: The Sequel, but IGN (or whomever) only gave it a 7.3”? The number itself is meaningless, and if you’re even remotely interested in a game you’d do well read every single review you can stomach. And by read the review I really do mean sit there and absorb what the writer is trying to convey; don’t just skim it and say, “eh, looks neat.”

In conclusion, review scores are dumb; aggregating review scores is monumentally dumb.

Don’t get me wrong, $99 for a name-brand Blu-ray player sounds great, except it’s missing several key features. The player doesn’t have an Ethernet connection and so it’s only a Profile 1.1 player and cannot display any of the BD-Live content on newer titles. The player also doesn’t have compenent, optical or 7.1 analog audio outputs so your A/V receiver must be able to decode the digital audio from the HDMI stream or from digital coax.

But if you don’t care about any of that and are just planning on running an HDMI cable from the player to the HDTV, this unit seems just fine. Plus, it’s only $99 today.

I remember when Android was the cool hip new thing. Well, it still is, but the Behold II marks the end of when Android phones are unique. Every feature on this phone has already been done the same or better by someone else.

Let’s start with the body. The phone is a bit heavier than my HTC Hero, but for some reason it feels cheaper. It’s just a hair taller and about the same width and thickness. You have 6 dedicated function buttons on the front, along with a 8-way directional selector. The left side has a volume rocker, and the right holds two buttons. One for the camera and one attached to the screen lock. The top holds the microUSB port and headphone jack. An expandable microSD slot is behind the battery door, and there is no physical keyboard.

The interface was nothing to get excited about. You get three customizable home screens and a Google search bar. But the tab to access your apps is that arrow on the left side of the screen. It takes some deft maneuvering not the hit that when you’re trying to go the left screen. Perhaps the most unique feature on this device is the Cube. I’ll just let that sink in for a moment. The Cube is, as you might have guessed, a cube with a different multimedia function on each face. With a flick of a finger you can spin the cube and select the function you wish to activate. You can’t customize it however, so you’re stuck with YouTube, the Amazon MP3 store, Facebook, your photo folder,  your audio player, and the video player. About the funnest thing you can do is swing the phone, and since the Cube is tied to the accelerometer, it’ll spin. Good for maybe two minutes of chuckles.

So at the end of it all, its just another Android phone under T-mobile’s belt. It hit stores last week if you want to go grab one, but why when you can get the Droid for cheaper? The Behold II is $229.99 with a two-year contract.

You’ll find that opinions vary with respect to Tekken 6’s netcode. I didn’t run into too many problems, but others certainly have. What are you going to do, right? Come November 26, you can, I don’t know, apply the update that will hopefully clear up some of those glitches. So that’s what you can do.

Namco (I’m not typing Namco Bandai more than once) will push the update in two days, and it will do a number of things to help alleviate any online issues you run into. For one, the game will better optimize your opponents based on location, ping, etc. to hopefully find a better match. The strength signal bars have been tweaked, making them a little more accurate. Oh, and “The fight data will be optimized in order to reduce the bandwidth load on the host’s console.”

So it sounds like it may help y’all.

You know what may also help, fellow Xbox 360 players? Smashing the controller against the wall, then buying either one of those MadCatz controllers or a full-on arcade stick. The standard Xbox 360 controller is rubbish at the game.

In other Tekken 6 news, the PSP version of the game is out today. I know nothing about it, but I can’t imagine the PSP being too wieldy when playing a fast paced fighting game.

In addition to the PDF functionality and improved battery life; the firmware update also adds the ability to manually control your screen rotation and makes it possible to convert your PDF files to the Kindle format. To read more about this update or to download it manually go here.

[via ZDNet]

For the Information Junkie: WikiReader ($99)

The WikiReader is a handheld device loaded up with every Wikipedia article available. It uses two AAA batteries, requires no data connection whatsoever, and features a power-sipping monochrome screen that works in direct sunlight. It’s the perfect gift for your yarn-spinning know-it-all grandpa, except now he’ll actually get his facts straight.

When it’s time to update the WikiReader to the latest articles, Gramps can have a new microSD card sent to him twice a year for $29 (just pop it in behind the batteries) or you can download the update yourself for free and load it up for him.

Product Page | CrunchGear Hands-on

For the First-Time Computer User: Litl Webbook ($699)

As the resident computer expert in your family, to hear that someone who’s never used a computer before wants to “see what all the fuss is about” and wonders if you can teach them how to use it should send chills up and down your spine (and up and down again).

The new Litl Webbook removes an entire layer of the traditional operating system, providing direct access to music, movies, photos, the internet and more. Everything is kept “in the cloud” and all system updates are pushed to the device automatically. Think of it as a smartbook.

There’s a two-year return period, a 12.1-inch LCD with a 178-degree viewing angle, and the device flips over into “easel mode” to double as a digital photo frame.

Product Page | CrunchGear Hands-on

For the Music Lover: SanDisk slotRadio ($79.99)

Take the portability of an MP3 player, strip out the hassle of loading music onto it, and you’ve got SanDisk’s slotRadio player. Once you’ve grown tired of the 1,000 popular songs included with the player, pick up another card preloaded with 1,000 additional songs for between $30 and $40 apiece and spread across genres such as Classical, Rock, Oldies, Country, and more.

Pop out the old card, pop in the new card. Boom. Simple like tapes and CDs, newfangled like an MP3 player.

Product Page | CrunchGear Review

For the Bookworm: Amazon Kindle ($259)

You’ll probably want to drop some hints before you gift an e-book reader to someone, just to get an idea about whether or not they’d actually use an electronic gizmo for reading. Our own Devin Coldewey is in his late twenties and he won’t touch an e-book reader with a ten foot pole, opting instead to throw on a cardigan, light up an academic-looking pipe, and read a book the old fashioned way. He likes the smell of paper or something weird like that.

If you’re able to plant the e-book seed successfully, though, the Kindle should be easy enough to use for just about anyone. And it doesn’t require a computer, so there’s that. You could go with one of the other wireless e-book readers, but the Barnes & Noble “nook” is sold out and there’s loose talk that Sony’s Reader Daily Edition might be waylaid until after the holidays.

Product Page

For the Neatnik: iRobot Roomba (starting at $129.99)

It’s a strange world when a robot is a vacuum and the entire combination is as simple to operate as hitting a single button. That’s Roomba for you, though. Perfect for the compulsive cleaner in your life, the Roomba series gets into corners and around furniture, finds its way back to its charging base, and makes the mundane chore of vacuuming a thing of the past. Truly anal neatniks may complain that Roomba misses a spot here and there but, hey, that just gives them something to clean by hand – and that’s the gift that keeps on giving.

Product Page

World of Warcraft turns 5-years-old today. Back on November 23, 2004, a year before the current generation of video game systems even began (with the launch of the Xbox 360), Blizzard released the massively multi-player online game at a time when massively multi-player online games were still largely the haunt of hardcore gamers, people with fast Internet connections who were willing to pay $15 per month for access to a game that they already bought. Who can forget the message board threads: Why do I have to pay for a game that I already paid for at the store? How do you beat the game? What happens if and when I stop playing?

You won’t stop playing. Five years in, Blizzard has 11.5 million (as of December, 2008) subscribers all over the world. (Note: Not every region of the world has a pay-per-month regime. You pay by the hour in China, for example.) In these five years, the game has gone from plucky upstart, going up against other, well-established MMOGs, to the undisputed number one such game. Now, that may not necessarily be a good thing, but it’s hard to see someone knocking World of Warcraft off its perch. Well, someone other than World of Warcraft II.

I’m a veteran of vanilla WoW, but only just. I bought the game in September, 2006; The Burning Crusade came out a few months later. I bought the game because I was roped into some consulting session for a rather big company. “Hey, you’re young. Play WoW and Second Life and tell us how we can better reach young people through them.”

I don’t know if the company got what it wanted (surely it didn’t!), but it certainly set me on my current path of, oh, you know, playing the game for at least three to four hours per night on most nights of the week.

It’s pretty funny. When the game launched in 2004, I was a freshman in college, and one of my two roommates was all about the game. We’re talking stay-up-until-4am-every-night-of-the-week-to-play-it. I had no idea what the game was about, but I distinctly remember the day he walked into the dorm room with a box from Amazon: “Gentlemen, it’s here.” (Actually, knowing the kid, it was probably more along the lines of, “Yes, it’s here! Fucking A~!” Memory fades, I’m afraid.) I’m like, so what? Can’t you see we’re playing Halo 2? (Halo 2 was very big that year. I was a good sniper. It was the last time I played a multi-player game with any conviction.) I’d say we teased my roommate about his “addiction,” but I had no idea what the game was about. I had never played any of the other Warcraft games, nor Diablo. Again, I was not, and still am not, a PC gamer, so the entire Blizzard catalogue played no role in my life.

The point is, the game’s launch came and went, but my only experience with it was waking up at 3:00AM because my roommate yelled, “Yes! I can buy a mount now!”

Then September of 2006 rolls around, and I’m forced to buy the game for that aforementioned consulting session. I still had no interest in the game, and was only creating an account as part of my job. (Well, “job” only in the loosest sense of the word, getting paid to try to help a huge company better tap into the “young people” market.) So walk back to my room from the local Best Buy (I wasn’t boycotting it back then. You can listen to my ordeal as told on the podcast here.), and install it on my iMac. I create an account, and create my first character. It was an Undead Warrior named Rocktober—Undead because I thought they looked (and still look) the best, and Warrior because, well, Warrior is the noob class, right? “Warrior? I bet you get a sword and stuff. Count me in.”

I still have that character to this day.

I then set aside Rocktober, and created a Night Elf Warrior on a different server so I could play with a friend of mine. (I had casually mentioned that I was playing WoW now, and he flipped out. “Oh, dude, join my server and I’ll hook you up.”) I named the Nelf Warrior Zardoz, in honor of that godawful Sean Connery moviethat I had just seen in a movie class I was forced to take. (We all needed an “art” class, so to speak, and watching and critiquing movies was considered “art.” Fair enough.) I was able to get Zardoz all the way up to level 58—it was harder to level in those days—before growing bored of the game. The Burning Crusade was installed somewhere around this time.

A year went by without me really playing the game. Note that I was still paying for the game, just not playing it. I don’t know, I guess I never bothered to cancel my subscription. Maybe it was too much of a hassle, or maybe I didn’t notice such a small amount of money leaving my bank account every month. The point is, I’ve been paying my $15 per month non-stop since September, 2006.

I’m probably never going to stop paying, either.

So here’s to another five years (well, three years in my case) of unpredictable PUGs, guilds joined but not really participated in, Auctioneer-assisted money-making, and lost sleep. So much lost sleep.

Although there are far too many items to list in a single post, here’s a look at what’s in store. Check Amazon’s Black Friday page each day for the full list of deals too.

Monday:

• Samsung LN52B530 52-Inch 1080p LCD HDTV for $1299.99
• Polk Surroundbar 360 for $399.99
• LG 37LH55 37-Inch 1080p 240Hz LCD HDTV for $649.99
• HP Mini 10.1-Inch White Netbook (Windows 7 Starter) for $378.99

Full list of electronics deals here…

Tuesday (pricing not revealed yet):

• Magellan Maestro GPS
• Plantronics Voyager PRO Bluetooth Headset
• La Crosse Technology Digital Thermometer
• DJ Hero Bundle with Turntable (Xbox)

Wednesday (pricing not revealed yet):

• LG Blu-ray Player
• Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Xbox)
• Guitar Hero Smash Hits (PS3)
• Rapala: We Fish with Rod Bundle (Wii)

Thursday (pricing not revealed yet):

• We Ski and Snowboard (Wii)
• Tekken 6 (PS3)
• Sharp 32" LCD HDTV

Friday (pricing not revealed yet):

• Altec Lansing Computer Speakers with Powered Subwoofer
• Polk Bookshelf Speakers
• MartinLogan In-Ceiling Speakers

• Panasonic 46" 1080p Plasma HDTV
• HP 15.6-Inch Laptop
• Canon PowerShot 12.1 MP Digital Camera
• Panasonic 42" 1080p Plasma HDTV
• Dell Inspiron Mini Netbook with Integrated TV Tuner

• Nintendo DSi Bundle with 5 Pre-installed Titles
• Xbox 360 Bundle with 2 Games
• Xbox 360 Limited-Edition Console
• PlayStation 120 GB Bundle with 2 Games

There will apparently be sales on Saturday and Sunday, too.

Black Friday Calendar [Amazon]

Black Friday Deals Page [Amazon]

More Black Friday deals…

The current channels will include: blip.tv, Facebook Photos, Flickr, FrameChannel, Mediafly, MobileTribe, Motionbox, Pandora, Revision3 and TWiT. More channels will be available here shortly.


The channels require you to authenticate with the service provider – you don’t enter any passwords on the Roku box, at least in most cases – and will eventually allow protected and pay-per-view access to channel providers. Roku spokesperson, Brian Jaquet, also mentioned at some providers could protect their content behind a hidden pay wall, like Netflix, and offer delightful content like distance learning and pornography. While both of those are self explanatory, it behooves us to note both modes of content are the interface between or among two or more individuals centered on a shared goal.

He said:

While the Roku Channel Store won’t distribute porn publicly, there are some hidden channel features whereby partners can make a channel available using a code. This could be used for things like distribution to vertical markets like education and training videos that can be pushed to private groups for viewing on the TV on demand instead of having to set up a satellite feed or send DVDs.

The upgrade will hit in the next two weeks and will work on all Roku boxes including the SD, HD, and HD-XR.

How does it work? I tried the Facebook was request a token from Facebook for login. You then typed the token into the Roku box and all of your photo albums appeared on the browser, available for playback in whatever resolution you uploaded.

Roku Creates Open Platform for Delivery of Content to the TV; Announces 10 New Content Channels

Blip.tv, Facebook Photos, Flickr, FrameChannel, Mediafly, MobileTribe, Motionbox, Pandora, Revision3 and TWiT all now available on the Roku player

Saratoga, Calif. – November 23, 2009 – Roku, Inc., maker of the popular and award-winning family of Roku players, announced today the Roku Channel Store and the addition of 10 new FREE channels for Roku customers to enjoy on their TVs. From internet audio to video podcasts; professional web content to photo sharing; personal video content to children’s entertainment, the Roku Channel Store provides an open platform for delivering quality content to the TV. The new channels now available for customers to add to their Roku experience via the Roku Channel Store include: blip.tv, Facebook Photos, Flickr, FrameChannel, Mediafly, MobileTribe, Motionbox, Pandora, Revision3 and TWiT. For a complete list of channels and specific channel descriptions and features, please go to www.roku.com/channelstore.

“Our customers now have more choice in content and even greater control over their Roku player experience with the introduction of the Roku Channel Store and our 10 new content partners,” said Anthony Wood, founder and CEO of Roku, Inc. “The Roku Channel Store already includes a robust offering of content that will appeal to a wide variety of customer tastes, which in turn will open new customer acquisition avenues for Roku. Because we have created an open platform for development, customers can expect even more new content channels in the near future making the Roku player an even more valuable component of a customers’ home entertainment system.”

To access the Roku Channel Store and subsequently add or remove channels from the home screen, customers will need to create a Roku account. With a Roku account, customers now also have the ability to manage their channels and personalize their entertainment options in a way that has not been possible before. Roku customers can add as many channels as they want. Conversely they can also remove all channels that do not interest them, leaving only the channel or channels they access on a regular basis. And because it is a channel store, new channels will arrive all the time for customers to consider.

All Roku players, including the Roku SD, Roku HD and Roku HD-XR, are compatible with the Roku Channel Store. Our flagship content partners, Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX), Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) Video On Demand and MLB.TV, will continue to be available to existing customers regardless of whether or not they set up a Roku account. However, in order to browse the Roku Channel Store and add and remove channels from the Roku player, customers first must create a Roku account.

Pricing and availability
The Roku Channel Store will be delivered as an automatic and free upgrade to all existing Roku customers over the course of the next two weeks. New customers will automatically be upgraded when they first install their Roku player. To browse and use the Roku Channel Store, existing customers will be prompted to create a Roku account. Existing customers who do not want to wait for their Roku player to update automatically can manually update their Roku player immediately. Detailed instructions can be found in the Help section of Roku’s website under the Roku Channel Store tab at http://www.roku.com/support/faqs.

You may recall that back in early September, we brought you news of this steering wheel table. Well, the customer reviews on Amazon’s product page are pouring in and it looks like this may be the sleeper hit of the season!

Just take a look at what legions of fans are saying about the Laptop Steering Wheel Desk:

“Wow is this thing great! I use it as a “mini-bar” when the friends and I go out to the bars. I can quickly fix multiple shots of tequila for myself and the friends as we drive from one bar to the next. We also discovered that if you place a pillow on top of it and turn on the cruise control you can catch quick naps on the interstate.”

“This has been a total lifesaver. It allows me to prop my sheet music against the wheel, allowing me to play the guitar with both hands while driving.”

“My copilot and I both used these during our “daily grind” transcontinental flights from San Diego to Minneapolis. We had to modify them a bit to fit snug against the instrument panels (when we bought them we didn’t realize the planes we fly don’t have steering wheels!), but in the end it did the job. With our laptops firmly in place we were able to focus our attention on what really mattered, participating in raids with our WoW clan. During our last flight we were so immersed in trying to take down Eranikus that we overshot Minneapolis by a full hour and a half before some annoying flight attendant interrupted us, babbling something about ‘FAA and F16 fighters.’”

“The best usage of this product is that i’m allowed to make perfectly symmetrical lines of cocaine while driving. product.of.the.century”

“I collect bobble-heads, got ‘em all over my dashboard and behind the back seat — but I had run out of space to add my latest bobble-head additions to my amazingly decorated car! Where could I put my “Barack O-Bobble”? How would I display my “Jonas Bobbles”? Well, thanks to the Laptop Steering Wheel Desk, my collection can keep on growing!”

“Finally!! I don’t know if anyone else has small children that they drive with, but this has been a lifesaver for me. I get so tired of pulling over whenever my infant son soils his diaper. Now, whenever I smell that familiar stench, I just turn around, unbuckle him from his car seat and change him right on this desk. It is the perfect size for a newborn!”

“I am an OB-GYN and this has helped me take my practice mobile. It’s the perfect height for my patients to sit on so I can examine them while I drive. I highly recommend!!!!”

“I just picked uuyp my laptop hoder from the post offfice and I’m ddriving home now. It’s OK Iguess, but the bumpy road majkes it hard to type. And theree’s a lot of pedeestrians and traffi c that keep distracti9ng me fromm my computer.”

“Do you have any idea how hard it is to read Braille books while driving? Every time I’d hit something my book would slide off my lap onto the floor and I’d lose my place. Problem solved…Thanks Laptop Steering Wheel Desk.”

Needless to say, the item is in short supply. Hopefully Amazon will get more in stock soon.

Laptop Steering Wheel Desk [Amazon.com via The Register]

Figures. Just yesterday we write about all the different e-books you can get your hands on this holiday shopping season, and then we get a bombshell:Barnes & Noble is 100 percent sold out of nook . The company says that it has exhausted its current supply, and will only have enough nooks to fulfill current pre-orders. In other words, if you were thinking about getting a nook for Christmas (or whatever holiday you celebrate) but didn’t pre-order one yet, well, too late now.

To throw some cold water on this volcanic story, Barnes & Noble says people won’t have to wait too long to get their nook if they order now. The expected ship date here on out is January 4, 2010, only a few days after Christmas day. So while the nook won’t be sitting under your tree, it’s not like you’ll have to wait months and months to get yours.

The big winner in all of this, of course, is Amazon, whose Kindle 2 is widely available. Considering there’s really not too much of a difference between the two readers, I think it’s safe to say that a few people who were prepared to buy a nook may now spring for the Kindle.

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