Maybe you’ve heard that today is Black Friday, so named because it’s the biggest shopping day of the year, the day that many retailers go from being in the “red” to being in the “black”.

Personally, I’d rather eat nails than go out shopping today, but fortunately, many online retailers offer great deals too, making your holiday shopping far less painful. Some notable retailers to check out if you’re in the market for new equipment or software are Apple, Buy.com, and Amazon.

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Apple has released iOS 4.0, the renamed OS for their portable devices like the iPhone and iPad. This version will work on the iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, and upcoming iPhone 4, but not on the original iPhone. Some of the new features require an iPhone 3GS or better.

There is no cost for the upgrade and you can download and install it all through iTunes. While the list of benefits and improvements is long, there are also some bugs of the annoying variety. My advice is to wait until Apple fixes some of them in a 4.0.1 update (or whatever they call it) before taking the plunge.

You can read more about the upgrade and its new features here.

Let me start by saying this: If you are in the market for a new mobile phone and ask me which will best suit your needs, my answer will be an iPhone. Every day, for everybody, the answer is “iPhone”.

But I understand that some of you need to use, or even prefer, a Blackberry, and your main concern is how to sync and manage that device on your Mac. Until now, the solution has been software called The Missing Sync for Blackberry from Mark/Space, and while I still recommend that (especially over the PocketMac software that came with the Blackberry), it costs $40.

Now, Blackberry has released their free Blackberry Desktop Software that is supposed to let Mac users synchronize with their Address Book and iCal, and backup their Blackberries. It will also let you manage your Blackberry applications.

What you still can’t do with either software is synchronize over the air as you can with an iPhone coupled with a MobileMe account.

As an iPhone user, I have no way of testing this software to see if it lives up to its claims so my suggestion is, if you already have The Missing Sync, stick with that. If you use Mac OS X 10.4 or older, get The Missing Sync as the new Blackberry software requires 10.5.5 or better. If you have Leopard and aren’t syncing now, or are trying to use the PocketMac software that came with your device, try the new app instead. If it fails to meet your expectations, or is missing some features that you’d like, take a look at The Missing Sync.

Apple last week released Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). Although it contains a few new interface features (welcome back, Put Back!), it is mostly under-the-hood refinements designed to make the OS faster and more secure. You can read about some of the changes here and a detailed review here.

As always, you should let others become the early adopters and work out the kinks. The biggest concern is the compatibility of older applications, and you can find lists of what has been tested here and here. It’s also important to note that Snow Leopard will only run on Intel-based Macs. Those with PowerPC chips like the iMac G5 or the PowerMac series will go no further than OS X 10.5.

Finally, if you do decide to take the plunge, be sure to backup first, preferably to different media, just in case something goes wrong. In fact, the steps I outlined for upgrading to Leopard still apply. The only addition is to be sure to include “Rosetta” during the installation process.

As for me, I will be installing Snow Leopard later this month and will report any issues that you might need to be aware of.

For the past few months I’ve been having trouble downloading my bank statements through Quicken. With one bank, it was hit or miss, and with another, it just stopped working entirely, always returning an “OL-249” error. I finally discovered that there is an update to the security certificates that allows Quicken to make encrypted connections with the banks. To install it, go to this page and follow the instructions.

It would have been nice if the people at Intuit had actually publicized this…

One of the greatest benefits of the iPhone is that you can surf the web in the same way that you do from your desktop. The promise is that you can view a site in all its glory rather than some dumbed-down version meant specifically for a portable device. Unfortunately, not all sites want to cooperate with this plan.

Take, for example, the New York Post. If you navigate to their site from a portable device like the iPhone, you get redirected to a version that is meant for the iPhone. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing as the special page has less code (so it loads faster) and fits the screen nicely, but it doesn’t give you access to all of the same material. Usually a well-designed site will give you the option of going to the full version if you choose, but sometimes there is just no obvious way to do it.

The web site knows that you are attempting to connect via an iPhone through the “user agent,” a string that is part of the header you never see that is sent to the web server every time you navigate to a page, so the only way to “trick” one of these stubborn sites is to make them think you are connecting from a different browser, but the iPhone doesn’t give you that option.

The solution: Use a web proxy to connect to the site.

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The social networking aspect of Internet life these days is intriguing and, for some, even fun, but there can be a downside to providing too much information. For an example, see this story about a man who was offered a lucrative job and probably should have kept his thoughts to himself.

The lesson bears highlighting: Never put on the web (and that includes e-mail!) anything that you wouldn’t want seen on the front page of the New York Times.

By the way, after you read the article, be sure to check out the R-rated (for language) YouTube spoof that it mentions.

I’m back from the lovely Little Dix Bay Resort in Virgin Gorda and yes, I had a wonderful time. My only complaint is that, while we were away, the lady who was watching our cats did something that shrunk all my clothes, even the ones I took with me. I’ll have to ask her about that…

But I digress. Virgin Gorda is part of the British Virgin Islands, which meant that I had no direct cell phone service unless I wanted to pay the exorbitant cost of using my iPhone internationally without an international plan. Since I don’t travel abroad all that often, such a plan would not be cost-effective, so I was left with four apparent choices if I wanted to call home: Use the cell phone anyway, use the hotel phone (also not cheap), use iChat (or similar) for audio chats, or do without.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

If you’re in the market for new equipment, software, or gifts, this is the time of year when companies offer some great deals. For example, tomorrow Apple will offer their traditional “Black Friday” discounts both online and at their retail locations. The rumor is that the specials this year will be both deeper and broader so it’s worth a gander.

Another vendor that is already offering great deals is Other World Computing. These guys are normally my recommended RAM dealer, but these specials are on a wide array of products and you can find them here. For example, you can get the full retail version of Microsoft Office 2008, normally over $400, for $99, but be careful because, in what is a rather tricky move, it doesn’t look like every item listed is actually on sale. If buying hardware, be sure that the quoted price isn’t on a refurb.

Look around for other deals too. My guess is that, with the economy going through its current slowdown, many companies are more willing to fatten the carrot that will bring in shoppers.

Now that iPhones and video iPods have become so popular, you may be wondering how you can convert your videos to work on these devices. Luckily, several developers have created easy-to-use, often free, programs that make video playback and conversion as simple as a click.

If you already have a video that you want to convert for your iPod/iPhone, then the free iSquint is just what the doctor ordered. iSquint is a video conversion app for Mac OS X that’s many times faster than QuickTime Pro, works with almost all popular video formats, and is also really easy to use. You just drag in your file, choose “TV” or “iPod” size, set your quality, and then click start.

If you want to be able to convert just about any video to any format, the same developer makes an inexpensive program called VisualHub. The nice thing about this software is that it has preset choices for the iPod, TiVo or web sites that remove all of the technical complexities of video conversion while still allowing you to tweak the settings manually if you prefer.

But what if you just want to play a particular video in iTunes or QuickTime? In that case, a video codec for the particular format must be installed. To cover most of the bases, make sure you’ve installed the two most important video codecs that Apple does not include: Perian and Flip4Mac.

Perian, while not a video codec by itself, installs a preference pane which contains most current video codecs that Apple doesn’t license and many older and lesser used video codecs. Flip4mac installs the Macintosh versions of the Windows Media codecs. Unfortunately, if the video is using a DRM-protected version of Windows Media, you won’t be able to play it in on your Mac until Microsoft allows it.

If you’ve found a stubborn video file that still won’t play, and you’re sure it isn’t a DRM protected Windows Media file, don’t give up yet. The free VLC Player can play just about any video file.

How about the DVD that you’d like to watch on the plane without taking the disk? If it’s a Disney DVD or other commercial studio DVD, it is probably encoded with Macrovision, and the free MacTheRipper will allow you to copy the DVD to your hard drive without the Macrovision or region code for your private, non-commercial use only.

If you’d like to convert that decoded DVD you just saved for your iPod or iPhone, then the free HandBrake program is fast and easy. Even better, if the DVD isn’t Macrovision encoded, you can just run HandBrake.

With these tools, you should be able to watch just about any DVD or video on your Mac, iPod, or iPhone. Don’t forget to thank or donate to the hard working developers who made this possible, and enjoy your videos!