The much-hyped “biggest shopping day” of the year is just around the corner. I’m not usually a go-out-at-midnight shopper, but I might find something to tempt me this year.

This just about blew my mind. In an interesting Newsweek article by Daniel Gross, he discusses how most text messages from companies are ignored and ineffective, but those that correspond with a receivers wishes (like wanting to save money) can be useful.

There is a new PocketCPR for iPhone app from ZOLL Medical Corporation that can help prepare you to perform CPR. Using Real CPR Help, a technology used in ZOLL’s debrillators and AEDs, the app coaches you through realtime feedback on the rate and depth of compressions. The app provides clear visual and audio step-by-step instructions and feedback.

Forget the pedometer, no one cares how many steps you’ve taken in a day if you can’t find any relevant meaning in your movement combined with the rest of your day. That’s where the Fitbit comes in.

The Fitbit can calculate anything from the miles you’ve traveled and the calories you’ve burned to how long it took you to fall asleep and how many times you woke up in between. For $99 the Fitbit is definitely a calculating time savor, and with the health obsessions sweeping the states I can’t see how Fitbit can lose. I don’t know how I’d feel about wearing the little thing around all the time, but hey, it’s not as ugly as it could be.

The University of Washington has set out to manufacture another super power (sort of).

Researchers at the university are working on the first bionic eye designed like a contact lens. Forget correcting vision, how about improving it? Picture visual holograms for pilots, web surfing, science fiction in general. Circuits and antennas are all included within the contact itself. Currently a separate device will send info to the eye, but hey, it’s closer (and smaller) than anything designed currently.

Right now everything is still in prototype mode, it’s all still too big, too expensive, and too toxic for use in the real world. But it’s nice to know someone’s working on super vision.

We’ve made cameras disposable, accesorizable, and shiny. Now, at least in the design world, there’s another type to keep a watch on.

The OneShot Camera is just that. A simple lipstick sized digital point and shoot. It would come without an LCD display and without a memory card slot. So basically what you buy would be what you get. What do you get beyond a miniscule device? Simple charging, just shake the thing (like you would a bottle of orange juice) to recharge. Storage capability will make a huge difference, but I can see a market for this thing.

Just a quick update on the Great Facebook Experiment:

All of a sudden, all sorts of electronics need to access the internet and they are nowhere near my network. I didn’t hard-wire my living room for ethernet. My media pc is wireless and I never foresaw the need. Now I need multiple net connections and I don’t want to tear the walls open again.

So, as part of the grand experimment in social networking, I’ve been on Facebook for over a week. I have 32 “friends”. Some of those people have over a hundred Facebook friends. I know for a fact that hese people aren’t nearly that popular away from their PC.