Brad

Anyone who would like to volunteer, please PM me. While this has always been a "non-official" event, we want to make sure there is a smooth transition and that everything is handled well this year. Keep in mind that this role requires you to be VERY organized and spend a significant amount of time working on it, so PLEASE only volunteer if you know 100% you'll be able to handle it as you'll have A LOT of people counting on you. Thanks to eve for taking care of this these past years. She's done a great job and hopefully that can continue with the next volunteer.

It takes a small army of people to run the Black Friday site each year and while we already have a great group of people who've been helping in recent years, we could always use more people who are willing to be called on should the need arise if things get really busy. So basically we're looking for people who will have some free time to dedicate to the site. The time period will likely be the month leading up to Black Friday - late October through late November - when 95% of the ads are released. There are no set hours or anything - we're just looking for people who will be around and will likely have time to do some work. Some of the tasks we might need help with include: - entering sale ad item info into database (item, category, price, etc....) - finding sale ad items on store web sites and making a list of links - cropping ad scans into individual item pics for posting on the BF site - contacting the media to suggest story ideas / e-mailing our press releases - various online promotion for the site (responding to news/blogs, etc...) - emergency forum mods (not too likely, but possible if things get busy) So if you are interested, send me a PM and let me know 1) what things you'd feel comfortable doing from the list above and 2) what skills/experience you have that might help you with these tasks. Please only volunteer if you truly believe you'll have the time and are comfortable with doing the kind of work listed above. While these are volunteer positions, should you help out you will be rewarded for your time. You might also get other perks such as seeing ads before anyone else. Thanks :)

The 5 winners are (drumroll please...): Gator Pam cherry33778 his_lil_gemini teach2nuts mcwalker Congrats. You'll be PMed shortly to get your shipping information. Look for another contest soon. And don't worry, we have plenty more shirts to give away and 2 months to do so, so just be patient...

Bumping this for today. If you are using the app (and like it), please take a minute to leave a review for it. Thanks :)

Contest is now closed. Winners will be announced later today.

Android people can use the standard mobile skin. Works fine for me on my BB. Or code an Android app and we'll use that too, lol

Well you can still use tapatalk with other forums that you visit that support it I guess. This app is made by the people who make Forum Runner which is a similar app to Taptalk that lets you browse many other forums. However there is a free and "pro" version of that app. So basically we pay $250/year so that everyone who downloads the GD app gets all the features of the "pro" version for free. That cost also includes updates, bug fixes, etc...

Some of you didn't read the whole 10-words-or-less part, lol.

Maybe we'll have to give away an iPad this year to celebrate the launch of this app...

We had a little app made up that would allow you to more quickly browse the forums on your iOS mobile device. If you are interested in downloading it (it's totally FREE!), go here: http://itunes.apple.com/app/gottadeal-com/id391431083?mt=8# For other devices, we also have an updated mobile "skin" which you can access from the drop-down menu at the bottom left of every forum page. Enjoy, and if you download the app, be sure to leave us a glowing, 5-star review (even if you don't like it, lol). We hope to have a full GottaDeal.com app within the next year that has the forum, the latest deals, Black Friday sales, etc... but this will definitely make browsing the forum easier for those of you with these devices.

We had a little app made up that would allow you to more quickly browse the forums on your iOS mobile device. If you are interested in downloading it (it's totally FREE!), go here: http://itunes.apple.com/app/gottadeal-com/id391431083?mt=8# For other devices, we also have an updated mobile "skin" which you can access from the drop-down menu at the bottom left of every forum page. Enjoy, and if you download the app, be sure to leave us a glowing, 5-star review (even if you don't like it, lol). We hope to have a full GottaDeal.com app within the next year that has the forum, the latest deals, Black Friday sales, etc... but this will definitely make browsing the forum easier for those of you with these devices.

There isn't really a good way to tell the record at one given point in time, but for example during the week of Black Friday last year, at any given minute we had on average nearly 4,000 people on the Black Friday site. This is over 24 hours of course, so during peak times you're probably looking at 10,000+ actively using the site. I got the 4,000 number by taking the number of visits * the average time spent on the site / the number of minutes in a day. The forum record is kind of unofficial because you are considered "active" for 15 minutes after your last activity, so we don't know how many of those 3,677 that set the record were actually active at that time.

We don't send people to the forum as much as we used to back in 06 and 07 as we'd rather keep them on the actual Black Friday site for several reasons, so it's doubtful that record will be broke anytime soon. The number of people on the actual Black Friday site at any given time during the week of Black Friday is probabaly 5-10x that number.

Time for another t-shirt contest. This contest will run until noon ET on Monday morning. To be entered, simply reply to this thread and in 10 words or less, tell us why you love Black Friday! On Monday I'll randomly select 5 people who reply to win Black Friday t-shirts. Easy enough? I thought so :)

Shirts will be printed on Monday so I should have them soon. Next contest within the next 24 hours..... could be here on the forum, could be on the BF site, could be Facebook, Twitter, ????

Here is the thread from last year: http://forums.gottadeal.com/showthread.php?149196-Dates-When-Ads-Came-Out-(2005-2008)-amp-Ad-Item-Lists-(2003-2008) We'll have the new thread up with 2009 dates soon.

Only Walmart sent a letter of the ones in the poll. But yeah, those stores usually don't come out until November.

I won't even have the t-shirts for a few more weeks, but we're going to start the first contest anyway. This one is going to take place on the Black Friday site itself via the new comments feature, so go there and read all about it: http://blackfriday.gottadeal.com We'll be running contests on the forums, the Black Friday site, Facebook and Twitter (although most will still take place here on the forums). Good luck and be sure to post your entry on the site itself so that it counts, not here on the forums. In fact, I'm going to close this thread just so there is no confusion.

I'm just going to ignore that awful joke as to not embarass you anymore and say that the issues were not as bad as expected and everything is still on schedule. Look for the first contest within a week :)

Having some communication "issues" with the printer. Hopefully it doesn't delay the shirts. Otherwise we'll just go with a different printer.

In about a week, but I'm guessing they won't hit Target until days/weeks after they first appear in Apple Stores, so I'd be very surprised if they were at Target on Monday. With it being almost 3 months until BF, I doubt stores will have enough inventory of the old model to make them a BF ad item.

ok, attachments should be working now. might not be able to fix the issues witht he old attachments, but new ones should be working.

testing image attachment

YouTube links should be working now. Give me examples of the other problems like the picture issue and I'll try to fix those as well.

$99 netbooks are definitely possible, although the specs probably won't be great. we've posted deals on the site in the past for netbooks around that price. just a week or two ago we had a refurbished model for $89. but those cheaper models usually have smaller screens (7" typically), very small amounts of ram/storage and either linux or windows ce for the operating system.