Black Friday, Without the Black Friday Part

I hate Black Friday, and I don’t even understand what Cyber Monday is supposed to be. So I waited until both were over to write a Technologizer column for TIME.com on how to get great deals on tech products this holiday season.

Plantronics Headsets: Small and Subtle or Big and Bold?

Last Gadget Standing Nominees: Plantronics Savor M1100 and Voyager Pro+ headsets

Price: $99.99 each

If you’ve got a hundred bucks to spend on a Bluetooth headset, Plantronics offers two possibilities–with lots of differences and some features in common. The Savor (on the left above) is small, inconspicuous, and straightforward (and way less flashy than its Jawbone competitors–Plantronics representatives have told me they think people like headsets that match the aesthetic of their phones). It aims to improve sound quality by packing three microphones, and can be worn without an earloop (it comes with one, but it’s optional).

On the other hand, the Voyager Pro+–an update to an earlier model the Voyager Pro–is unapologetically big and obvious. (It may pack modern technology, but it looks like a spiritual descendant of the earpieces that mobile-phone users wore when headsets first got popular.) It uses two microphones rather than three, but you can adjust the long boom so it’s in close proximity to your mouth.

Both models offer AD2P, which lets phones route music, GPS instructions, and other audio to them as well as phone calls. They work with Plantronics’ Vocalyst text-to-speech service, which can read texts and e-mails; they speak information such as the battery’s status into your ear; and support multipoint technology that lets them work with two phones.

The Savor M1100 and Voyager Pro+ are available now.

A World Divided…By Symbian

While much ado has been made about Android’s rise to prominence, there still remains a large hill for the operating system to climb when it comes to overall usage. When all is said and done, worldwide there are two dominant smartphone operating systems: iOS and Symbian.

Uptime monitoring service Pingdom has put together market share statistics based on Web usage it compiled from  analytics firm StatCounter. What it shows is a world divided–with Symbian nearly surrounded by iOS to the west and east.

Symbian’s biggest market is the African continent, where it holds about 75 percent shre. It is also iOS’ weakest: about 2 percent of Web traffic comes from iPhones. Symbian also holds commanding market share in Asia and South America, with just over 50 percent  share in both cases.

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The Return of the Sears Catalog–Thanks to Ancestry.com

If you want to know what American life was like during the 20th century, there are two essential resources: LIFE magazine and the Sears Roebuck catalog. Google Books put the entire run of LIFE on the Web last year. And now genealogical megasite Ancestry.com has digitized more than 250,000 pages of Sears catalogs, from 1896 through the sad demise of the once-mighty American institution in 1993.

The catalogs are at www.ancestry.com/sears and can be browsed and searched, but unlike Google’s LIFE archive, they’re not yours to explore for free: The contents are available to Ancestry subscribers, who pay from $19.95 a month for “US Deluxe Membership” to $299.40 a year for “World Deluxe Membership.” If you’re into genealogical research, your subscription gets you vast amounts of important data: government records of all sorts, yearbooks, historic newspapers, and more. I don’t begrudge Ancestry the fee it charges for its useful services, but I’m sorry that this fascinating material isn’t as readily available as the LIFEs. (Maybe the company should introduce a day-pass option.)

Of course, If you’re as interested in this kind of stuff as I am, you can sign up for a two-week free trial membership, then gorge on the Sears material. Which is what I did, and what I plan to do.

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Windows Phone 7: Happy New Year?

One of the biggest questions about Windows Phone 7 is basically this: “Now that Microsoft has a decent start at a modern mobile operating system, how quickly will it add enough features to get it into the same general ballpark as Apple’s iOS and Google Android?” If rumors at WPCentral are to be believed, much of the answer might come in January.

Remember WinAmp? Now It’s An Android App, Too

There’s no question that iTunes dealt some heavy blows to WinAmp over the years. But with a new Android app that aims to manage music between the smartphone and a computer, perhaps it’s time for WinAmp to make a comeback.

WinAmp for Android is out of beta, TechCrunch reports. In addition to music playback and download management, the MP3 player now supports wireless syncing to the desktop and Shoutcast radio stations.

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Yep, Kinect is the New Wii, Pitfalls and All

If there was any doubt that Kinect is a smash-hit, Microsoft erased it with official sales figures: In 25 days, the company sold 2.5 million units. As ReadWriteWeb notes, Kinect is being adopted faster than the iPad.

In essence, Kinect has become the new Wii, the hot gaming toy on top of many holiday wishlists. If Microsoft can keep it up, Kinect could keep the Xbox 360 alive for at least another couple of years.

But following the arc of the Wii is as dangerous as it is lucrative. Indeed, the news of Kinect’s soaring sales pairs nicely with Ben Fritz’s look at the declining Wii in the Los Angeles Times. He notes that stereotypical non-gamers — the same folks Microsoft is targeting — eventually lost interest in the Wii and didn’t buy enough software, and now monthly hardware sales are behind the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. Major publishers eventually soured on the console as well. Now that Microsoft has proven that people want Kinect, its challenge is to keep those customers around.

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My Whereabouts This Afternoon

Quick note: I’ll be guesting with Tom Merritt on Tech News Today (the daily news show from the TWiT folks) this afternoon at 2:30pm PT. What are we going to discuss? I’m not sure, but there’s no lack of stuff!

If you’re in the mood to watch us live, visit live.twit.tv at 2:30; it’ll also be available for later playback and download.

More Spaces/WordPress Numbers

A couple of months ago, Microsoft and WordPress parent Automattic announced a deal to migrate users of Microsoft’s Spaces blogging service onto WordPress. At the time, there was a fair amount of confusion about how many Spaces users there were, and how many were likely to make the move. Now Microsoft is reporting that a half-million former Spaces blogs are now WordPress blogs, and another half-million Windows Live customers have created new WordPress blogs. That still leaves millions of Spaces blogs unaccounted for, but Spaces users have until March to figure out an exit strategy, so they may just be taking their own sweet time.

Wait, Wait! I Want to Be the Last Gadget Standing!

Attention, hardware makers! We’ve extended the deadline to nominate products for Last Gadget Standing, our yearly competition to find the single coolest gizmo on display at the Consumer Electronics Show. Maybe it’s the tryptophan; maybe we’re feeling your holiday pressure. Either way, we’ve decided to give you a few more days to get your gadgets in ship shape and show the crowds your stuff.

On January 8th, at our Last Gadget Standing event at CES, we’ll have a surprise host who’s going to have you splitting your sides with laughter (and he doesn’t even need an app for that).

So if you’ve been sitting on the fence, this would be the chance to write a few words about your product and why it deserves to be Last Gadget Standing. It’s sort of our very own Black Friday! Register by December 7th (the Day of Infamy by the way). May the best gadget win.

To apply, go here.

New Google Earth: Better Street View and More

Google is announcing version 6 of Google Earth, its geographical-exploration software for Windows, OS X, and Linux today. The update follows version 5.2, which was released last June, and while the revisions aren’t enormous, they look neat. (The company gave me a sneak peek last week.)

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Your Next Pay TV Provider: Microsoft?

Reuters reports a rumor that Microsoft wants to offer a subscription television service, and has at least talked to media companies about the possibility.

Microsoft would act as a “virtual cable operator” and deliver content over the Xbox 360 or other devices for a monthly fee. But right now, it’s all early-stage scuttlebutt, as the service isn’t likely to arrive for 12 months, if at all, and no specific media companies are mentioned.

Microsoft already dabbles in Web TV on the Xbox 360, and is locked in battle with Sony to create the best array of options. The console has Netflix, ESPN3 and on demand video, and Hulu Plus is coming next year.

This sounds like something different. It seems like Microsoft wants to line up a lot of content providers to offer a bundled service similar to cable, but over its own set-top box via the Internet.

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The Greatest Computer Books of All Time

Writing about music, a famous, impossible-to-properly-attribute saying goes, is like dancing about architecture. In 2010, anyone who dares write a book about computers runs the risk of facing a variant of this conundrum. The Web is so good at conveying information about technology that it’s hard to recall an age when the default medium for any discussion of computers more ambitious than a magazine article was a static, difficult-to-update, not-necessarily-illustrated printed volume.

But that era existed. The best books about computers were enormously successful, and many of them were really good. They deserve to be celebrated.

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iPhone Radio Station Apps Not Welcome Anymore

Apple’s become more relaxed about the iOS App Store recently, with policy revisions and the notable admission of Google Voice for iPhone, but that’s not stopping Apple from rejecting app categories that it simply doesn’t like.

The latest victims are single-station radio players, according to a developer who builds and submits these apps to order. Jim Barcus, owner of DJB Radio Apps, claims that Apple recently rejected 10 of his radio apps, on the grounds that they’re essentially spam and are no different than generic fart apps. He even appealed to Steve Jobs, who reportedly wrote back, “Sorry, but we’ve made our decision.”

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HDMI Cables: Thin is In

Last Gadget Standing Nominee: RedMere-enabled Ultra Thin High Speed HDMI Cables

Price: $20-$85

RedMere-enabled Ultra Thin High Speed HDMI Cables make smartphones, cameras, camcorders, laptops and other portable devices that supports HDMI output even more portable. Unlike traditional HDMI cables–which are thick, heavy and unwieldy–a cable powered by RedMere’s unique smart cable technology is thin and light, long and portable, just like the sleek and slim portable devices they’re designed to connect. Not only do these cables look and feel really good, but they’re also tiny enough to fit in your pocket or your camera case. And RedMere’s self-powered 10.2Gbps booster module, which fits inside the HDMI cable connector, allows the cables to be extremely long, so you can view HD content comfortable viewing distance of your couch.

The Curse of Beta Hardware

[NOTE: Here's the lead story from last week's Technologizer's T-Week newsletter--go here to sign up to receive it each Friday. You'll get original stuff that won't show up on the site until later, if at all.]

Once upon a time, everybody agreed that the fact a product was in beta testing meant that it wasn’t yet ready for prime time. When I started writing about technology back in the early 1990s, pre-release versions of applications never got anything approaching mass distribution; I remember acquiring a beta copy of Windows 95, as a member of the press, and feeling extraordinarily privileged.

But times changed–and so did the role of betas. The Internet made distributing prerelease software cheap and easy, so many companies began releasing applications widely. Today, if you’re curious about an upcoming version of a program, there’s a very good chance you’ll be able to download a beta and try it for free. (With stuff like Web browsers, life without widespread betas is nearly unimaginable.)

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