Less then fourteen days are left for Black Friday 2007 and if you are like me you would like to know what deals are offered (to make your shopping list). Blackfriday.info has posted ads from Circuit City and Best Buy two off my favorite stores for Black Friday shopping. The website also has ads from  Kmart, JC Penney, Costco, Walmart and many other stores. Bfads.net has also posted Black Friday ads with pics from many store.

Apple has released the firmware update for iPhone and iPod Touch, the firmware is yet not available through iTunes but you can download it from Apples website. In iPhone firmware Apple has added Modem firmware v4.2.13_G, TIFF Exploit patch, battery statue icon in iTunes, International Keyboard and custom ringtones section. There is no indication that Apple has added the voice note feature to the iPhone. In iPod Touch Apple added the Add Event functionality to its calendar application. You can download the updates from Apples website [Via Macrumors.com]
iPhone
iPod Touch

Despite a modest increase in clock speed, the new Macbooks showed performance increase of 10% to 25% in tests conducted by Primate Labs. The memory performance test showed an increase of about 15% and the overall system performance was up by 10%. Since the increase in clock speed of the processor is very little, this increase in performance can be a result of the 800MHz system bus that is used in the Santa Rosa platform. The new Macbook also uses the faster GMA X3100 integrated graphics, which should improve the 3D acceleration compared to the old Macbook that came with GMA 950 graphics.

Nokia and several other cellular electronics firms announced today that the first tests for Long Term Evolution (LTE) service has met its peak speeds both for connections fixed in place and mobile users such as those traveling by car. The 4G cellular service will provide as much as 100 megabits in download and 50 megabits in uploads that is more then 10 times the speed offered by present 3G wireless technology. Commercial LTE services should start appearing by 2010. The two major benefits of LTE are low latency and increased bandwidth, which would help in improving the video and gaming services to mobile handsets.

Samsung today announced the availability of SyncMaster 245T, a 24” computer LCD. The LCD is designed for consumers looking for accurate color reproduction, as the panel can reproduce 97% of the NTSC color gamut. The dynamic contrast ratio of 1500:1 helps in producing deeper black levels. To eliminate ghosting artifacts Samsung uses active motion compensation and 6ms average pixel response times. The LCD comes with component inputs, HDMI, DVI and four USB ports and it will cost you $800.

Google along with T-mobile, HTC, Qualcomm, Motorola and twenty-nine others companies have joined hand to form Open Handset Alliance. The alliance has jointly developed Android, a complete set of software for mobile devices: an operating system, middleware and key mobile applications. Android Software Development Kit (SDK) will be released on November 12th. Android is built on Linux Kernel and like Linux it will also be an open source platform for mobile application development. Very little information is available about the user interface and other technical details but Google’s CEO said that a 200MHz ARM9 processor will be the minimum requirement to run the software. You can get more information about the alliance and Android on Open Handset Alliance website.

LG today announced the availability of KS20, a touchscreen smartphone based on Windows Mobile 6 Pro. The phone features HSDPA (3G), GSM (900/1800/1900MHz), WiFi, Bluetooth, microSD card slot and 128MB internal memory. The 2.8” touchscreen (240X320) can be operated by fingertip or stylus and the phone also has handwriting recognition. On the software side the phone comes with Google Maps, Myspace, Ebay and the usual applications bundled with windows mobile pro. The phone has 2 cameras, the VGA camera in front is for video calls and the 2-megapixel autofocus camera in the back is for video recoding and photos.