pBlack Friday sales up 3% to $10.6 billion, the smallest gain in three years. ShopperTrak estimates 9.9% fewer shoppers this holiday season. The International Council of Shopping Centers expects a 1% sales increase at U.S. stores for the November-December period. A Gallup Inc. poll says U.S. consumers may spend 29% less on gifts this year. (a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087sid=aBvgyrY3aNPgrefer=home"Bloomberg/a)/p pNumbers for Cyber Monday (online shopping on the first Monday after Thanksgiving) aren't yet available, but current estimates are that Internet sales will be even with last year. (a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_11115641"San Jose Mercury News/a) Nielsen Online said web site visits on Friday were up 10% and eBay was the top destination (Amazon.com was second). Paypal said its number of transactions increased 26% over last year. (a href="http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2008/dec/02/120208-online-retailers-report/?zIndex=18135"San Diego Union Tribune/a)/p pMusic retailers reported weak sales on Black Friday. First-week estimates for big new releases by artists such as Kanye West and Guns N' Roses have been pared down. Big box retailers were down as much as 40% while indie chain Newbury Comics said comp store music sales were down 21% for the last two weeks of November. (a href="http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i632e90144f07ffd6a7649226b4aec061"Billboard.biz/a)/p p(If CD sales were down 25 to 30% on Black Friday, that would be par for the course. Weekly album sales are regularly down 20% year over year since September. Take out a 20 to 30% increase in digital album sales and you're looking at a deficit around 25% or more. The a href="http://www.ajc.com/services/content/printedition/2008/11/29/delayedalbums.html"weak release schedule/a can't be helping.)/p pIn a note to investors, Pali Research analysts downplayed strong sales after Thanksgiving. "We do not believe that a strong opening weekend in retail means a strong holiday season for retail. .. In the end, it is hard to predict an entire holiday season based on one weekend of data points and some store checks. However, the data and stores we have seen do not change our thesis that 2008 will be a rough holiday season for (Best Buy). We would continue to avoid the stock, even at historically cheap levels" (a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/shop-talk/2008/12/01/check-out-line-strong-sales-may-equal-weak-profits/"Reuters/a)/p pTNS Retail Forward estimates online retail sales will be up 9% this year (a href="http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/retail/2008-11-30-holiday-shopping-bargains_N.htm"USA Today/a)./phr/[music jobs] a href="http://coolfer.jobamatic.com/a/jbb/job-details/43602"The Beggars Group Matador Records is seeking a Paralegal/adiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/coolfer?a=qIX6o"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/coolfer?i=qIX6o" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/coolfer?a=5NkkO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/coolfer?i=5NkkO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/coolfer?a=prJAO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/coolfer?i=prJAO" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/coolfer/~4/472661921" height="1" width="1"/

Among the premarket stories for Tuesday, Dec. 2, from AP Financial News: NEW YORK (AP)--Shares of cell phone maker Palm Inc. dived in premarket trading Tuesday after the company warned that sales in the current quarter would be just above half of what Wall Street was expecting.div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?a=mx6ZO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?i=mx6ZO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?a=yB0to"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?i=yB0to" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?a=HS9yo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?i=HS9yo" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ibtimes/tech/~4/472535208" height="1" width="1"/

pimg class="float_right" src="/~~/f?id=493402db796c7ab500f4f939maxX=400maxY=230" border="0" alt="CyberMonday.gif" title="CyberMonday.gif" width="400" height="230" /Online retail sales from yesterday, the first Monday after Thanksgiving, increased by about 2.4% over last year, 100 retail CMOs reported in a survey./p p"Some online retailers said consumers were buying less expensive gifts on Monday than in previous years," a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122817819658170827.html"reports the emWall Street Journal/em/a./p pSpending on "Cyber Monday" last year totaled $730 million, growing 21% over the year before./p pMetrics firm Cyber Monday says sales are the most accurate barometer for how online sales will fare during the holiday season./p pSo you'll be interested in theem /ema href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122817819658170827.html"emWall Street Journa/eml's other early findings/a:/p ul liIAC's Shoebuy.com and Buy.com claim traffic growth and sales growth over last year./li liBuy.com claimed double-digit increases in both. "They [holiday sales] are working out better than expected," CEO Neel Grover told the WSJ./li liJCrew, Gap and Staples all saw their sites slow down or go down under heavy consumer traffic./li /ul pstrongSee Also:/strong a href="../../2008/12/microsoft-brags-xbox-beat-the-ps3-3-to-1-in-black-friday-sales-pretends-the-wii-doesn-t-exist-msft-"br /Microsoft Brags Xbox Beat The PS3 3-to-1 In Black Friday Sales, Pretends The Wii Doesn't Exist (MSFT)/a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/NLilY3LcvF5DdeORKCnJ3ipsczo/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/NLilY3LcvF5DdeORKCnJ3ipsczo/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=uwjb9piv"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=uwjb9piv" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=B8l2PPZU"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=nQCi4S9u"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=80" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=rW3Z6Gwb"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=rW3Z6Gwb" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=xwLc4MQ1"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=131" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=aGBwmjM0"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=336" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=PXrVnAaW"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=7lF1HxdS"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=50" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider/~4/BbZpwCp5iL0" height="1" width="1"/

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Bargain-hunting holiday shoppers did not save U.S. retail sales in November, which will likely represent a second straight month of declines for the industry.div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~f/reuters/topNews?a=AOtbwGvI"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/reuters/topNews?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~f/reuters/topNews?a=cGvswaR6"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/reuters/topNews?i=cGvswaR6" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~f/reuters/topNews?a=op8Zlf6c"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/reuters/topNews?i=op8Zlf6c" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/reuters/topNews/~4/UduLXZZZ_CY" height="1" width="1"/

This year's Black Friday showed a three percent increase in retail sales and a death toll of three.

Australia is expected to slash interest rates by at least 75 basis points on Tuesday to ward off a looming recession and support growth. The cut to 4.5 percent would put rates at the lowest level since June 2002, while Europe is also expected to ease this week. China's purchasing manager's index showed a steep drop in manufacturing due to a sharp decline in export orders. Despite the economic gloom, some Asian stock markets edged higher, fuelled by investor hopes about central bank efforts to revive economic growth. Property shares the biggest winners in Hong Kong and China where investors snapped up local developers such as Sino Land, on hopes of better sales. Despite a promising start to the US holiday retail season, analysts say they expect 2008 to end on a down note with retail sales the slowest in years. South Korean mobile phone makers Samsung and LG Electronics are already feeling the pinch, with both companies cutting 2009 sale targets as the global downturn spreads.

Author: NTDTV Keywords: ntd market report asia cenbank australia china export stock economic Added: December 1, 2008

Some retro games you buy to play, others you buy to play a couple times and then put them behind a glass case.

The Gentle Physics and Science of Hazardous Materials is less a game, more a collector's item.Developed by Konami in 1990 for petroleum company Idemitsu Kosan, the title is an instructional tool for employees and never offered for retail sale. To run the game, it's necessary to use an adaptor called a "Q-ta."

http://kotaku.com/5100263/this-konam...expensive-rare