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Black Friday receives a great deal of press as the busiest shopping day of the year, but as consumers are increasingly turning to online retail stores to fill their holiday wish lists, Cyber Monday is rapidly becoming a significant presence in retail sales. Online sales for Cyber Monday in 2011 broke the $1 billion dollar record for the second year in a row, showing a 22% increase in sales from the time of its inception.

Cyber Monday was originally coined in 2005 by Shop.org, the digital division of The National Retail Federation, which is the world’s largest association of retail traders. The association includes many different kinds of retailers, from department stores to chain restaurants and grocers that all offer a variety of savings from discounts to coupons through the Shop.org portal.

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Black Friday never fails to make headlines in the following morning’s newspapers—shoppers scramble for hot deals, hoodlums occasionally resort to violence to get an unfair advantage, and the status of an entire economic system is given a 4 AM gut check as bleary-eyed analysts cull statistics from across the board.

On a national scale, Black Friday sales were higher this year than the last, with Shopper Track reporting that Black Friday sales were 6.6% higher than last year. In addition, the National Retail Federation estimates that the average shopper spent $400 dollars during this national event. Between 2008 and 2009, Black Friday sales only increased by 0.3%, and so this year’s figures may indicate a broad-scale improvement in the economy.

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If you are bored with your emails and text messages, it is possible to make them a little more interesting. Typewriter is the name of an iPhone app that does just what its name implies. It types out text messages like in the olden days. Check out this new iPhone app here in this informative article.

Get Back To Your Typing Roots

Some things just get your attention in a good way. The Typewriter iPhone app is one of them. This is an app for those who miss the day of the old "hunt and peck" typewriter with the "ding" at the end of every line. The app imitates those old typewriters of yesteryear with an amazing retro feel to it. It actually has a little more freedom than the typewriters it imitates. The typewriter arm can be placed anywhere on the screen and the typing can begin there.

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Some people have really big ideas and the Megaphone is one of them. This is an amplifier for your iPhone that looks just like its name. It should prove to be a nice gift for the holidays. Get a closer look at the megaphone for the iPhone here in this informative article.

Old Meets New With The Megaphone

The Megaphone reminds a person of one of those horns used from days past. It is a simple but powerful artistic statement as well. The iPhone sitting in the top looks out of place for those who are not accustomed to technology. The design is one of quality and good looks. The Megaphone itself is formed out of hand made ceramic with a small three-legged wooden frame to support it. The best part may be that this device is totally passive and uses no energy to work. There are no batteries to install and no wall chargers to hook up. This makes it something of a work of art with aesthetic value to accompany its audio amplification.

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As the first half of Cyber Monday ended, sales were brisk, as buyers bought lots of discounted items from stores online all over the globe.

That is impressive, considering that last year sales for the same day were over 1 billion in the US, and many shoppers had already spent a significant amount shopping on Black Friday.

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There are always new apps coming out for the smartphones and tablets of the world. The iPad and iPhone have some new and cool apps out. Check out some of the best iPhone and iPad apps here in this informative article.

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Users of Google+ can now make their Klout scores rise starting Tuesday. Klout is a company that measures the online influence of users based on their activities in their respective social network site memberships. It has recently added the infant networking site Google+.

Klout allowed its users to add Google+ as one of the social media platforms being calculated to measure their online influence. This was done just a short time after the Google+ was opened for public use. It now has a new system that deals with the scoring model of Google+.

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The Occupy Movement, which initially began in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in late July of this year, has spread like wildfire throughout the world. The most influential of these Occupy demonstrations occurred in New York City during the month of September, when more than 1,000 protestors marched through the Wall Street district to demand greater social and economic equality. This group, calling themselves the “99%,” wished to make the public aware of the growing disparity between the tiny minority of the wealthy elite and the economically-depressed majority. Since this event, tens of thousands have been forming their own Occupy movements in cities throughout the world.

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Computers, despite their many useful and entertaining applications, occasionally run into problems. Components can break or malfunction through improper maintenance, mechanical error or simply aging. The average desktop PC has an operational lifespan of two to five years. When this happens to the computer system as an integrated unit the user faces the question of whether to upgrade or replace his computer. Both choices have much to recommend them but the answer ultimately depends on the circumstances surrounding the machine. The user must look at the ups and downs of each option before committing time and money to either one.

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In a world in which technology grows ever more complex, advanced and overall impressive, many of us strive to own the best gadgets and gizmos on the market. One of the 'must have' items which always seem to be growing in price as well as technological complexity is the modern day smartphone. Often sporting a built in camera of up to 12 megapixels and a range of entertaining and practical applications, the modern day mobile phone has an almost limitless amount of uses. It doesn't seem so long ago that our cell phones were incapable of carrying a signal without a chunky and unsightly antenna protruding from the top; now, they are capable of more than we ever could have imagined.