Gearfuse

Best Buy’s Black Friday ad has leaked, which means it’s time to do some serious itinerary planning for the big day. See, I like me and my fiancee set up a full contingency plan based on what we want the most for us, then comes gifts for others. Come on, we need to set priorities people! Strategy is the name of the game on Black Friday.

So Best Buy has some moderately cool deals, especially in the video game department, but nothing mind-blowing. Though what might be notable is that Best Buy is not going to allow for anyone to get hurt this year because of their doorbuster deals. Apparently they don’t take “death by stampede” lightly. All doorbuster sales will be handled via tickets, which will be passed out up to two hours before the 5 am door openings. Hit the jump for a full-list of Black Friday Best Buy deals. Doorbusters are followed by an asterisk.

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Measuring only three millimeters in diameter, detectable by mobile phone cameras as far as 12 feet away and capable of holding hundreds of times the information of traditional barcodes, the new MIT-developed bokode system could revolutionize the way we shop.

As an example, imagine standing in front of a bookshelf holding thousands of books. The bokode system would allow users to immediately find the book they were looking for, just by snapping a photo of the bookshelf with their mobile phone. At $5 a piece to produce, the bokode system is still too pricey to be practical, but this seems like the future to me.

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Look, I’m not going to lecture you about what you should be eating or drinking. I don’t know how your lifestyle works. But I can tell you this: Vitamin Water won’t make you thin but if you are big on the soda and junk food, it’s a good way to start weening yourself off that crap. Those of you in NYC will no longer need to hit up the local bodega for a bottle of the good stuff. Coca-Cola, the parent company, is opening up a “pop up” Vitamin Water store in the old Helio store on Broadway in SoHo. It opens tomorrow but the question is: What will go on in there? Are they just going to sell Vitamin Water? Coke products? Apparel?

We need answers! I think I’ll investigate tomorrow afternoon and will report back this weekend.

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Oh quit crying, you two. You have enough money to wipe your asses with $100 bills for the rest of your natural born life. In a recent interview with Vogue, Melinda Gates stated that she keeps iPhones and iPods out of the hands of her children. The direct quote sez:

“…there are very few things that are on the banned list in our household. but ipods and iphones are two things we don’t get for our kids.”

So is this a veiled attempt at keeping Apple products out of the house or just the way the Gates family approaches parenting? I’m going to say it’s a little bit of column A, a little of column B. I’m sure the Bill has an iMac lying around his insanely large house somewhere. No iPhone, though? Someone call child services.

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Everyone likes giveaways, unless of course that giveaway has to be won by submitting a picture of you posing as Alfred E. Neuman. The Bluetooth Special Interest Group is announcing the 12 hottest Bluetooth enabled products for the 2008 holiday season by launching a giveaway event on Bluetooth.com. These products were hand selected to highlight fun, gift worthy Bluetooth enabled devices that are available today. Hit the jump for the details and learn how Gearfuse readers can get an extra edge:

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Ars Technica has gotten a hold of an internal e-mail sent out to Apple employees yesterday. It’s from Steve Jobs and guess what? He’s not very happy about MobileMe. Not at all. In fact, Jobs thinks that MobileMe should have been rolled out piece-by-piece or delayed somewhat. He says the launch was “not up to Apple’s standards.”

“It was a mistake to launch MobileMe at the same time as iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store,” he says. “We all had more than enough to do, and MobileMe could have been delayed without consequence.”

He then goes on to give MobileMe an oral handjob and says it’s going to rock in the future. It most likely will, but this is one of the few times Apple let its guard down and got beat. Better watch out, Jobs.

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China’s “black market” is notorious for their awful rip-offs of other products. Amoni Exchange anyone? Pinches Chinos is a website which is focused on cataloging every piece of China knock-offs they can get their hands on.

From the stylish to the obscure, the results are hilarious. Whether they be specific attempts at ripping off another brand (such as the iFan or the Vii), or simply being lost in translation (such as our unleashing of the Sony scandal.) — Andrew Dobrow

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