The words "Black Friday"--referring to the big shopping day that comes right after Thanksgiving--can trigger different emotions in people: excitement, fear, anxiety, or just plain indifference. But with these shopping tips and some planning, this year's bargain bonanza should be a breeze.
It's a Microsoft press release, so handle with care, but the company's claiming it did more than admirably on Black Friday, it hit the ball out of the park. Not only did the Xbox 360 outsell Sony's PlayStation 3 by three-to-one, says Microsoft, but the 360 managed its best Black Friday sales ever.
Sears, Saks Fifth Avenue, Costco, Dell, Victoria's Secret, Bloomingdale's and Williams-Sonoma all saw their sites malfunction at some point between Friday and Monday, according to companies that monitor Web performance.
Sidekick: The Good News & the Bad News Either way you look at it Microsoft Data Center management did not follow standards or best practices in this failure. In which case it makes me wonder more about the outsourcing of corporate data much less personal data.
- mburton325
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On a typical day, weather.com, the Web site for The Weather Channel in Atlanta, serves up between 15 million and 20 million page views. But in September 2004, when back-to-back hurricanes ransacked Florida, the peak traffic on one day more than tripled: over 70 million page views by more than 7 million unique visitors. Read the full success story now.
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