Manufacturers brought the industry radical new ways to build PCs in 2008. Here are some of the coolest components we came across in 2008.
So even though there remain a significant number of questions over whether the economy's travails will hold back the success of today's Cyber Monday - - the day when people are said to buy holiday gifts online following the end of the Thanksgiving weekend in the U.S. - - it might be worth watching.
A running news ticker of sorts, at the microblogging site Twitter.com, is trying to keep up. Storefrontbacktalk.com is running this page at Twitter as a continuing update of which retail sites are working and which are buckling in the Black Friday aftermath. (Hat tip: Steve Friedberg.)
As of the 7 a.m. hour, Eastern Time, there didn't appear to be any major snarls at retail sites. Plenty of time remained in the day, though.
"Black Friday" online turned in a 1 percent, year-over-year increase for online retailers over 2007, , according to comScore. While that may appear tepid compared to earlier years, it's actually better than some expected and on Thanksgiving Day itself, there was a six-percent, year-over-year increase in online retail sales.