Blog Focus on Conspicous Consumption of Technology
Blog Focus is Technorati's daily roundup of the top stories as told by the bloggers of the world. Each day a handful of posts, no matter how popular or nascent, will be selected by editors to portray a general unscientific reaction to discussion points around the 'Net.
Do you smell what the flagging economy is cooking? Hopefully, it's the smell of plastic from melting credit cards.
Blogs have noticed that certain gift-friendly holidays are approaching because every gadget maker has been carpet-bombing them with reminders for the last month. Finally, they've relented and started to prep you for your holiday shopping.
From shopping warnings to goodie guides, here's your week's kickoff:
• CrunchGear — The gift guides are here! The gift guides are here! And unlike the Sears catalogs of old, you won't have to flip all the way to the back to get to the toys. It's all toys! (Which Sears eventually did as well. So it's actually just like Sears catalogs of old. Except Sears won't make a dime off it. So it's actually just like the Sears catalogs now.)
• Ars Technica — The next gift guide is here! The next gift guide is here! (Let's call this the JCPenney catalog.)
• UMPC Portal — Chippy spotted a Michael Arrington info drop on Gillmor Gang's videocast about the long-anticipated CrunchPad. It could be ad-supported and will likely be $300-400, though the latter is not confirmed. It's not clear if it'll be out by the New Year, but you could promise this to the friend you swore you'd give Duke Nukem Forever for Christmas one year. Any year.
• Engadget — If you're thinking about a Motorola Droid for you and/or yours this season, you might want to wait until Paul Miller gives you the all-clear. After all, he's the one that collated user reports of external speaker problems that may or may not be software-based.
• androinica — Also, you may want to really REALLY be sure it's what they (or you) want. Verizon just jacked up their early termination fee to $350 according to Andrew Kameka. Sure, the fee drops a dramatic $10 for each month you hold onto that contract, but that won't even get you the latest Transformer out of the Sears Toy Catalog. ("latest" = "1987")
