Black Friday –- the day after Thanksgiving, and one of the busiest shopping days of the year — might be a bit darker this year. Consumer spending is expected to drop slightly with 128 million shoppers planning to head to the malls Friday, Saturday or Sunday, down from 135 million the year before, according to the National Retail Federation (NRF). According to Nielsen one third of U.S. consumers expect to spend less during the holidays than last year and those still shopping are planning to purchase necessities and value goods like gift cards for groceries, gas and phones.

That can’t be good news for companies that are selling green goods and gadgets, since cash-strapped consumers aren’t likely to pay a premium for eco-friendly products. But green products that can actually help consumers save money could gain some traction, as could green-themed products that are just flat-out cheap enough. Green technology is still high up in public awareness thanks to renewed pledges from President-elect Obama, and according to Nielsen 85 percent of U.S. adults say they care about protecting the environment.

With that in mind, here are 10 green options that just might fit your slimmed-down budget and help fight global warming:

Ditch Junk Mail for Good: GreenDimes is a service that says it will remove 90 percent of your junk mail and deliver only the mail that you want. One year of GreenDime’s junk-mail-busting service is $20, and you can send it in the form of a GreenDimes emailed gift card.

Your Appliances Suck, Power That Is: The Kill A Watt energy monitor is one of those devices that gives you some good info — but not much to do with it. Plug your appliances in to the $45 device and measure how efficient they are. You’ll be able to see if you need a new Energy Star air conditioner or fridge…next holiday season.

Go Used Gadget Shopping: There have been an influx of sites lately that will buy and sell used gadgets and cell phones. Go e-shopping for your loved one on Gazelle, FlipSwap, ReCellular, and the old standbys Craigslist and Freecycle. In this case, it’s OK to re-gift.

Grid-Free Gear From Freeplay: Freeplay started more than a decade ago with a grant from the British government and the goal to develop geeky rugged gear. The company sells items like a $30 crank cell phone charger, and solar-powered radios and flashlights for under $100. You can buy them at REI and on Freeplay’s web site.

A Power Strip That’s Smarter Than You: This $42 Smart Strip Power Strip works by automatically switching off power to some of the 10 or so outlets when your gadgets aren’t in use. Hopefully the power switching is smart enough that it won’t interfere with your charging as it delivers the electricity bill savings you’re looking for.

Stop Flying, Start Webcamming: Plane flights can easily negate any work you’ve done on your carbon footprint; telepresence devices can really cut down on the carbon emissions of travel. A good webcam like the ones at Logitech can make IT-based personal communication cross country a pretty good option.

Go On A Carbon-Free Diet: Yes, they’re controversial, but the good thing is, you can give as many or as few as you want. Carbonfund.org, which is one of the more reputable sources around, has a “give the gift of carbon neutrality” option available.

Give the Gift of Knowledge: There are more than enough books and publications out there that’ll teach you about what’s really going to help save the planet from global warming and how dire the situation really is. Check out Thomas Friedman’s Hot Flat and Crowded, Bill McKibben’s Deep Economy and Spencer Weart’s Discovery of Global Warming.

Electric Wheels — Budget Style: Is the fancy-pants Tesla Roadster — or even GM’s overhyped Volt — way, way out of your price range? Razor makes an electric scooter that sells for under $200. It only goes 15 miles per hour and the max weight is 220 lbs., though, so go easy on the stuffing this year.

Warm Woolies Can Battle the Power Bill: Not to be a Jimmy Carter, but the energy to heat buildings consumes a massive amount of energy in North America. The same way insulating your house can cut energy consumption, warm clothing or better bedding can do the same.

This article also appeared on BusinessWeek.com

This has been the year TV networks finally embraced the web. As 2008 wraps up, nearly every broadcaster posts its shows online within half a day of first airing them on TV. And the audience for such programming is growing, especially among desirable younger demographics. Twelve percent of teens and 11 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds watch online TV at least once a week, respectively, as compared to 4 percent of 35- to 64-year-olds, according to Knowledge Networks. But the major networks’ strategies aren’t cut from the same cloth. It’s instructive to consider each network’s overall strategy holistically, and we recently got a chance to do that with Fox. Continue reading at NewTeeVee

Updated: It’s a classic PR play: When you start to look like the bad guy, call out a bigger bad guy. And it seems to be the strategy that the Securities and Exchange Commission — besieged by accusations of lax enforcement before and during the credit crisis — is using in going after Mark Cuban for insider trading. It’s too early to say definitively whether Cuban is guilty of insider trading in Mamma.com (now called Copernic), a search also-ran whose management has, in Cuban’s own judgment, “a checkered past.” On his blog, the normally voluble Cuban simply accused the SEC of acting on “win-at-any-cost ambitions” and a process that “was result-oriented, fact be damned.” Still, it’s not looking good for him at all.

The SEC’s complaint against Cuban outlines some pretty compelling evidence: Cuban bought 6.3 percent of Mamma.com in March 2004. Three months later, the company CEO told him it was issuing a controversial, and heavily dilutive, private placement. “Well, now I’m screwed,” Cuban told Mamma’s CEO. “I can’t sell.” But he did, before the offering’s official announcement, sparing himself $750,000 in losses.

Whatever the outcome of the case — Silicon Alley Insider discusses some possible wriggle room — the timing of this news is fishy. Cuban’s attorney said the investigation has been pending for nearly two years, yet it’s only being announced now, less than a month after SEC chair Christopher Cox was raked over the coals at a House committee hearing.

Cox has hardly been a champion of investors. Back in April, some Senators asked the General Accounting Office to investigate the SEC’s enforcement division. Years of budget cuts had left a lean crew, prompting many talented staffers to leave. Disgorgements — repayments of ill-gotten profits — fell 50 percent last year. With a credit crisis looming, Cox’s 2009 budget called for a 1 percent increase in funds — not enough to account for cost of living increases, so another 32 jobs were cut from the enforcement division.

There’s no quicker way to show your watchdog has teeth than to bite a big name. The Cuban story is dominating business news today, just as the Martha Stewart insider trading case did in the wake of the last round of financial scandals — Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, etc.

Martha Stewart did regulators a big favor: She kept the story alive by making statements that prosecutors deemed false. The SEC had been facing charges of lax enforcement back then, too. Stewart’s stock sales saved her only $46,000, but her trial and jail time not only eclipsed other financial fraud cases, it left many people thinking the SEC had learned its lesson and was getting tough.

To be clear, I’m not defending insider selling. Cuban may or may not be guilty, and as I said it’s not looking good. My point is that it’s very suspicious that the SEC tends to wheel out a big, headline-grabbing case whenever it’s chairman is on the ropes.

Whatever happens to Cuban, this case will do absolutely nothing to prevent the SEC from falling asleep at the wheel again.

Update: Cuban is fighting back, as VentureBeat sums up. Cuban’s blog has a memo attempting to refute evidence in the SEC ’s complaint; and the NY Times has a purported email from an SEC staffer accusing Cuban of being unpatriotic because of his involvement in a documentary critical of President Bush. Very odd, but it suggests Cuban may run a media-savvy counter-campaign.

Photo Courtesy of Brian Solis via Flickr.

Herman Miller, the creator of the wildly popular Aeron chair, have built a high-end chair that will make you all the more comfortable as you sit for eight hours staring in disbelief at your plummeting stock portfolio. At $1,600 the Embody chair doesn’t come cheap, but you’ll be shelling out for nostalgia — hearkening back to the boom times of 2007 when stocks were soaring and people spent $5 on a cup of coffee and $60,000 on an all-natural horsehair mattress from Sweden.

In fact, the Embody chair makes claims quite similar to those made by luxury mattress manufacturers about improving your health. The promotional copy on Herman Miller’s web site aims to emphasize the health benefits of this chair and the four different layers of seating materials used to create such bliss:

Designed specifically for people who sit at computers, Embody makes you feel like you’re floating. It promotes health-positive sitting, creating harmony between you and your computer to help you focus on your work and think more clearly … A matrix of pixels creates dynamic seat-and-back surfaces that automatically conform to your every movement and distribute your weight evenly.

Compare that with the promotional copy for the $60,000 Vividus mattress from Hästen that also focuses on wellness and the magic mix of materials:

Hästens’ master craftsmen and product developers have spent two years experimenting with different combinations of horsehair, cotton, flax and wool to find the perfect balance. The result is a bed which lifts your body and provides support, while allowing you to sink deep down and relax … Vividus represents an investment in a better quality of life.

If you spend a third of your life at your desk, just like you spend a third of your life asleep, then it’s almost inhumane to spend that time in something that doesn’t have health benefits or “a matrix of pixels.”

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So, as the market falls, it’s possible that status health conscious office workers will seek to make their misery less all-encompassing with the purchase of this chair. I know venture firms will. After all, the Aeron (retails for $949), which launched in 1994 far surpasses sales of the cheaper Mira ($849) and Celle ($749) models, according to Herman Miller. Perhaps when Embody chairs hit the market in mid January, I’ll drag my butt from my current chair (Office Depot, $69) to a Herman Miller distributor and see what the fuss is about. Or maybe I can pick up a used Aeron at a discount.

Hold onto your tinfoil hats because the government is seeking to chip away at your online privacy through the use of deep packet inspection. Despite what I’m about to tell you, there are good uses of this technology when it comes to managing and monitoring a network. So don’t shoot the technology, but feel free to take potshots at those trying to use it to suggest that ISPs monitor your surfing habits for illegal images, even those including child pornography.

MSNBC has gotten a hold of a proposal made by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to AOL that highlights the use of DPI tools from an Australian company called Brilliant Digital Entertainment. The company is pitching its CopyRouter product (PDF) to help ISPs monitor web traffic, compare it against a list of known child pornography files, and if it makes a match on existing traffic, send the offending subscriber a message warning them that they were about to download child pornography. According to MSNBC, the presentation also says Brilliant Digital could then pass the offender’s IP address over to law enforcement agencies.

Wow, that right there would violate the 4th Amendment preventing unreasonable search and seizure, and would put ISPs in the role of web traffic cop — a role none of them relish. Remember in August when the FCC yelled at Comcast for using deep packet inspection to find and block P2P files? During the hearing related to that enforcement order, FCC chairman Kevin Martin compared Comcast’s tactics to opening up a person’s mail and then deciding which letters to send on. Later, Gigi Sohn, head of the Free Press used that same analogy in describing what ISPs were doing when they used deep packet inspection from NebuAD and Phorm to view a user’s web surfing habits.

As much as I viscerally loathe the exploitation of children, I have to say that just because some of the country’s online “mail” may contain child pornography, it doesn’t justify the use of such software by private companies to enforce federal laws. Because while today it may be child pornography, and tomorrow, information on explosives, followed by those communicating with terrorists…and pretty soon wrapping your PC in foil starts to look appealing. Hey maybe aluminum prices will go up.

Our big NewTeeVee Live conference is fast approaching — Nov. 13, just a month away! — and we’ve got a sizzling hot line-up.

Check out the newest additions to our speaker list:

- Alexis Rapo, who heads ABC.com
- Michael Buckley, breakout star of web show “What the Buck”
- David Verklin, CEO of Canoe Ventures, the new interactive advertising joint venture from the cable companies
- Ben Ling, recent high-profile hire at YouTube and head of product management for all its syndication projects
- Tania Yuki, senior product manager at comScore, who will be launching the firm’s new online video research initiatives
- Xeni Jardin, host of the fabulous new web series “Boing Boing TV”
- Felicia Day, star of the groundbreaking web shows “The Guild” (which she also created) and “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog”

Want to get up close and personal with these folks and the rest of our stellar speakers? We still have a Super Saver discount going for advance purchasers, so buy your ticket today.

Does anyone else find it weird that the rejection of the $700 billion bailout plan was a day of unlucky sevens? The Dow Jones Industrial Average declined 777.7 for the day.

I wrote over the weekend a post that rounded up what some of the big technology companies had to say about the current credit crunch. Today, more information is emerging as to how the malaise is going to impact Silicon Valley. In particular I’ve been reading research reports from various Wall Street firms, and they are all turning increasingly bearish.

“[D]irectly or indirectly, the turmoil in the financial services industry affects most technology stocks,” write the guys at Lazard Capital Markets. “Credit for capital-intensive technology companies may be reduced or revenues may be lowered due to a reduction in financial services-related IT spending.”

On their short list of companies that they expect will be negatively impacted are Sandisk, Micron Technology and Spansion, because these companies turn to outside financing for their fabs and tools.

RBC Capital Markets’ Mark Sue, who covers communications hardware, in a note to his clients this morning wrote that, “Credit turbulence in the U.S., economic slowdown overseas, and an uncertain outlook for emerging markets mean it’s about trimming alpha expectations and moving to a relative defense posture when it comes to communications technology investing in, our view.”

Sure thinks that as the costs of corporate borrowing go up and access to capital becomes restricted, most of the companies that fall under his umbrella of coverage are going to be valued on the basis of cash flow and balance sheet metrics. He think Cisco and Juniper are OK, as is Ericsson. He is not so optimistic about Alcatel-Lucent and Nortel.

The worst off is Nortel, which has been free cash flow negative so far in 2008 (and in 7 out of the previous 10 quarters). There’s $3.1B in cash on the balance sheet but with $4.5B in debt, the company is in a very challenged position, which explains why it’s being forced to sell assets to raise money.

I will update the post as I gather more insights from folks around Wall Street.

Image courtesy of Bloomberg.