So called “Cyber Week” is here and it’s expected to set records in profit for companies like Amazon, eBay, and many popular online marketplaces. Here is a list of the best websites to find the best deals during this internet shopping week:

1. Amazon- The biggest online store on the internet, it has everything and it’s always cheaper than real stores. Another plus is that you don’t pay tax on the items you buy.
2. Dealhack- Not a store, but a blog of deals. Updated frequently Dealhack finds the best deals from all of the popular websites around the internet. I saved $150 on a monitor when I used Dealhack.
3. Buy.com- Think of it as the “Electronics” section of Amazon. They have daily deals that even beat Amazon’s pricing. And their shipping is fast and cheap, perfect for the cheapskate like myself.
4. eBay- I never considered eBay as a place to buy new items, but there are vendors selling items throughout the site. I was comparing prices on RAM and if I were to buy it on eBay I would save $25 bucks. Nice.
5. Dell.com- Who knew a crappy PC company had such great deals. Xbox 360 accessories X% off, mp3 players for cheap, and shipping isn’t to bad either.
6. PayPal- Using PayPal on certain websites could get you 20% cash back on your purchase. Amazon’s not on the list, but Overstock is. *Looks like the deal is ending soon, many stores have already been taken off the list.*
7. Retailmenot.com- Every site offers a “Coupon” code or “Promotion” code box during checkout, but do you ever have a code? With Retailmenot, you can search for codes for all of the popular stores. I used a code on Finishline.com and saved $25 bucks on $110 Nike Shox, not bad.
8. Woot!- No selection, limited stock, but you might find the occasional deal. Be careful though, not everything is new, some items are refurbished.
9. Geeks.com- Great deals all year for the geek in your family. Items don’t always come in their boxes and manuals are sometimes missing, but that’s why it’s for the geek in your family.
10. Overstock.com- The Kmart of online stores. There is a lot of crap you’ll need to dig through to get to the good stuff. Strangely, Mothers seem to love this site the most. Overstock is offering 20% cash back when you pay with your PayPal account.

Every year Macs are becoming more popular. Windows users are flocking switching to Macs rather that attempting to try and update to Microsoft’s interesting operating system known as Vista. But if there is one reason not to switch to the Mac, I have it.

On a Windows computer, I have found it to be the perfect place for getting work done including school papers, blog posts, and even just checking/writing my email. With a Windows computer you’ll start something and usually finish it in a respectable amount of time. I would like to say I could do the same on the Mac, but I can’t. Writing an English thesis paper on my Macbook will look promising at first, but then I’ll find myself navigating through the iTunes Store or reorganizing the files in my documents folder. No, I don’t have an attention disorder, but maybe I’ve psychologically made my Mac a computer for “fun stuff” and my Windows computer for “work stuff.” Is it because I grew up on a PC during most of my childhood education? I thought it to be true until I noticed that I wasn’t the only one with this problem.

Searching through the pages of (the now hacked) MacApper, I found dozens of “Getting Things Done” or GTD applications specifically to end my problem. The only problem with these GTD applications is that they take more time away from your work, especially when trying to set them up. I’ve spent a couple hours on a GTD app only to delete it the next day.

I then (now wasting time) tried to give this condition a name. Mac Attention Deficit Disorder, MADD, is already been taken. Any ideas?

Back on topic, if you’re going to get a Mac you need to know that you won’t get as much work as you once did on your Windows machine. Why? Mac OS is too pretty, has animated everything, and it could even be a psychological thing. They say creative people use Macs, possibly because the Mac can be the doodle on the side of your page or writing on your hand.

Writing this post I have replied to five Pownce messages, downloaded a new song on iTunes, attacked a zombie (and lost) on Facebook, and emailed an old classmate. 

The Apple and Photog blog known as Glennwolsey.com has recently been taken down by internet douchebag, “Malcor.” The site now displays:

Notice

This website has been flagged for excessive Apple fanboism, and has been taken down for 24 hours.

This is a message to the rest of the Mac community, so listen up. Ever heard of hubris?
Tone it down, and you will not be attacked. Everyone else is open game.

~ malcor

Hey Malcor, it’s called freedom of speech and you don’t have to read it. The hubris hacker’s blog is here.

Most people have never heard of a Chumby, and usually think it’s something to do with (the old children’s TV show) Gumby or might even think it’s a type of dinosaur, but it’s none of the above. The Chumby is a mixture of an alarm clock and, for better words, a widget player, all enclosed in a “cute” leather pillow. At first glance the Chumby looks like a children’s toy, and it could as well be, but it has quite a bit of power for its small size.

Setting the device up easy. Turn on the Chumby, follow the on-screen steps, connect to the Internet, match the code on the Chumby website with your Chumby and then you’re ready to add widgets. To own a Chumby, you HAVE to have an Internet connection to use any of Chumby’s online widget features. Putting widgets on the Chumby requires no syncing with a computer, it’s done all through the website. When you find a widget you like (on the Chumby site) you simply add it to one of the “channels” you’ve made. In about a minute, the widget you added to the channel appears on you Chumby.

Currently, the widget selection is small, but the product isn’t on sale to the public and when it is, I expect it to grow. On my Chumby, I’m running the Chuck Norris fact widget, the PandaCam, TechCrunch feed, Google News feed, Rotten Tomatoes movie ratings, Pendulum, and Facebook. The Facebook widget, which is my favorite, simply shows status updates, pokes, notes, and friends. The Chumby also runs flash and will play online videos from sites like YouTube. I referred to the Chumby as a widget “player” because that’s what it is. I’ve yet to see a widget with the ability to input information. Want to see what my Chumby’s playing? There’s an embeddable widget for your MySpace or blog, here’s mine:

The Chumby isn’t all about the widgets, it also includes two usb ports, speakers, and even an accelerometer. The usb ports and speakers are for syncing and playing your iPod. The speakers are pretty low quality and depending on the size of your music library, it could take a while for the Chumby to recognize your iPod. The accelerometer was unknown to me until I added the Pendulum widget, which takes advantage of the hidden feature.

The Chumby team is constantly updating the gadget’s operating system with bug fixes, optimizations, and new features. A quote from the Chumblog:

“Remember, the chumby’s open for further improvement and we’ll be pushing significant new functionality to everyone’s chumby over-the-air as we go — so let us know what you want chumby to do and that will help us make it even better for you over time.”

With the hope of future updates and features, I want to see a sleep timer, easier navigation when playing music through, and the ability to input information into widgets (Pownce updates?).

The Chumby is a innovative product. The only thing that will bring it down is that it’s unheard of by most. My family and friends had never heard of Chumby and although most thought it was cool, they didn’t really understand exactly what the gadget was. The Chumby will be on sale to everyone late this year or early next year for $180.

What do you think of the Chumby? Do you want one? Leave a comment.

Want to see more pictures? Check out the unbox.

Procrastination and a looming cold have delayed this review. Sorry.

Revision3, the popular Internet TV channel created by Kevin Rose (and friends), has started to include Google adsense on their site. The recent introduction of these ads is obviously to make money, but the ads sometimes seem odd and almost disruptive to the site.

A great example:

Google adsense is great for making money, but it can easily ruin the look and general theme of a site, much like Revision3. I wasn’t sure what Enbrel was, but after doing some research I learned that it’s medication for Psoriasis (and from my understanding a a pretty good one, too).

It might just be me, but when I see GIANT irrelevant advertising, I tend to look down on the site. I have however noticed that Revision3 is slowly getting more relevent advertising (Netflix, original shows). Or is Enbrel popular among the Internet crowd?

*I’m a hypocrite, on occasion, you’ll see a couple of (extremely) irrelevant ads. Women’s perfume anyone?

Finding a rating widget on a wordpress blog is really easy, but finding a good widget is a little bit harder. After I posted that I was looking for a rating widget, I got tons of email from different websites telling me about their service. The first widget I looked at was promising, except it was in Greek and an ad link was at the bottom of every widget. Fortunately, the next one was from Outbrain, the widget I finally chose to use. I know I’m making a big deal over a simple rating widget, but I’ve had problems in the past with poor load times and formatting errors. The Outbrain rating widget extinguishes these previous issues.

My absolute favorite part of the widget is that it’s just for rating. No ajaxy effects, advertisements, logos, and there isn’t a social networked tacked onto it. You don’t even have to register to get it. Many Web company’s make the mistake of trying to do everything, when they should focus on one thing and do it well. Outbrain, which is still pretty new, has done a pretty good job thus far on the widget. If you want to rate something, choose how many stars it’s worth and your done, it’s that easy (that just sounded like an infomercial, ugh).

The widget works on most popular blogging service (Typepad, Blogger, WordPress) and also works on traditional websites with the javascript version. On my blog, I am using the WordPress plugin and at first I encountered a formatting problem, but support fixed it for me, but I’ll get to that later. Recently, I added the iwphone plugin and I was skeptical that the widget would work, but it works perfectly on mobile Safari.

A newer feature was just (in the past couple of months) introduced to me. It’s called “Blogger Report” and it shows you how your posts were rated and the process they were rated (using the widget or Firefox plugin). It needs some work, but the report makes it much easier to see statistics of each post. If they would include some visual statistics like a graph and clean up the interface, I’ll be satisfied.

The main reason why I decided to use Outbrain was because of the support I had gotten. John LoGioco, the VP of Business Development, was extremely kind in helping me with any problem I had, no matter how simple or stupid it was. I would literally email him in the morning with a problem and he (and the rest of Outbrain crew) would have a fix for me later that day. It’s hard to find that kind of help with other companies.

I want Outbrain to keep the widget simple, but I do want to see some more functionality/features. Here is what I want to see:

• the ability to change the look of the widget, colors and shapes
• ratings are the same as the permalink’s ratings
• ratings are saved and kept saved

The Outbrain rating widget is dead simple and does it’s job well. New functionality is always being added and support is just an email away. Give the Outbrain widget a try by clicking on the stars below.

It’s been less than a week since I ordered the Chumby and when I saw that it was being sent from Hong Kong, I expected it wouldn’t be delivered for a couple weeks. Fortunately, it was expedited and I have it in my hands right now. I wasn’t planning on doing an unbox, but I’ve been emailed and Pownced by many asking me to do one.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

I will have a full review of the Chumby very soon!