Some of you may have already heard about lala, a small side project I’ve been tinkering with recently. The idea of course being an Los Angeles play off of the Silicon Valley gossip blog Valleywag. A must read in the this crazy biz, the site recently downsized (a few times), now its just Owen running the show. Ironically with each squeeze, the websites content got beefier and better. We can only hope the valley doesn’t completely implode up there so the site can live on. Personally I think it’ll be just fine, and Web 3.0 can only bring a wealth of new material for the ol’ wag.
Of course the wag has always focused on the valley, only occasionally covering bulldog related news out of LA. As most of you also already know, there is much more going on down here. This is Los Angeles after all.
Sure it’ll cover some gossipy juicy stuff, with that comes the allure. I’ve even hired former Valleywag snarker in training Alaska Miller to call you out, should you slip up. Really though the major focus is going to be on the events and people of the LA tech scene. The space here is unique to say the least. So whether you want to break into it or just watch from a far, I want to give you best the experience possible here.
Being a big fan of anticipation, that’s all I’ll say for now. Please follow the twitter account or friendfeed for updates on launch, should be early next week.
Hey guess what, Twitter is either the best or worst place to get your breaking news from. You know when its going to be a really *great* place? When the terrorists themselves start broadcasting.
Hella grim yes, and most certainly on the horizon. Straight outa a bad sci-fi movie, and into your living room, phone and beyond.
Black Friday is upon us once again, a joyous occasion where Americans show just how far they’ll go to save a buck. Of course for many that’s very important these days, so I imaged this Black Friday to be especially crazy. While we have to wait till early tomorrow morning to find out, we can get some insight thanks to Google Trends.
As I was scanning it tonight I thought it spoke very well for the current economy here in the states. With tighter budgets this year, where is everyone looking for deals? Let’s take a look at current search trend rankings and find out.
Right away in the top spots we see outlets are going to be big. I’ve watched trends over a few Black Fridays and never seen this many listings for outlets, in fact other outlet related terms are included throughout the rest of the list (over a dozen times). Looks like folks are going to try to score deals on already discounted goods this year.
Further down we see Apple and iPods are still the hot product to snap up. I’m sure they will do just fine this year, unlike many other retailers who don’t start to appear till further down the ranking list.
Finally we start to see some of the big name retailers, all the usual suspects are here. Circuit city placed a little higher as well, with their recent bankruptcy announcement you can bet they’ll see lots of looters shoppers.
Finally down at the very very end of the like we have Saks. The premium department store is still generating some buzz, but not even close to the others.
So there you have it, I encourage you to scan trends a few times over the course of the day. It’s a unique insight into this strange pastime.
As for me, I’ll be doing all my shopping with Amazon Prime this year.
Black Friday is always a unique time of the year online. Folks create massive amounts of content to share the once held secrets of the retail giants. Someone even made the ultimate black friday guide, in freaking excel format! Check it out below (click full screen in top right corner), or you can also download the Black Friday Guide excel file.
Sean Percival is a web developer and author with many years experience of messing around on the Internet for fun and profit. He has been featured in Forbes Magazine, The Orange County Register and several online publications. Sean Percival lives in Los Angeles, CA.
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