The good folks at our sister site, unwir3d.com, have scoured the world of Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals to pick out this year's best deals. Not many stores advertise their Black Friday sales before the day itself arrives, because they usually have a plethora of other sales going on in the preceding days, and they wouldn't want you waiting around for a better deal. This electronics-themed list, however, has managed to dig up some of the best deals around for the start of this year's holiday shopping season.

The deals pretty much cover the electronics spectrum, including HDTVs, laptops, digital cameras and other must haves. One of the more notable deals (hence number one) is the 50 inch Panasonic Viera HDTV. unwir3d found that NewEgg will be selling this 1080p beast for just $1399, which is almost 50% off its list price of $2699. Another gem is the Nikon D300 DSLR. This 12.1 megapixel camera will be $1324 on

Hot on the heels of the latest iTunes update (8.0.2) the latest iPhone firmware (2.2) was released early this morning. It appears there are some pleasant surprises, as some unexpected features have been added, including a 3G baseband update. This update will not affect first generation iPhones but promises to reduce dropped calls and call setup failures on 3G models.

Other unexpected improvements include improved sound quality of Visual Voicemail messages, enhancements to Mail, and a new use for the Home button. Now from any Home screen pressing the Home button will display the first Home screen. This is a simple change that will cut down on tiresome swipes between screens.

Three more days until the latest iPhone software release. Ever since the September release of firmware 2.1 there has been speculation of what features might be added to 2.2. Confirmed improvements mostly revolve around the maps application, including pedestrian and Google Transit directions, Street View, and location sharing.

Firmware 2.2 also includes improvements to the MobileSafari browser, support for audio input from third-party devices, and over-the-air (OTA) podcasts. Downloads of audio or video podcasts will be limited to 10MB file sizes when using 3G or EDGE, similar to app store downloads.

The beta 2 release of iPhone firmware 2.2 is here. There are major improvements to the Maps application. Directions can now be found in three different modes, for driving, mass transit, and pedestrians. Street View has also been added, and allows the user to see street level photographs of a location just like Google Maps on the web.

When getting public transportation directions, subways and buses are both included along with scheduled times from Google Transit when available. Want to send your location to someone you're supposed to meet? Location sharing is another built-in feature that makes this easy.

Now that your iPhone running the latest firmware (2.1) has been jailbroken it's time to find some cool applications. Feel the need for some P2P filesharing? Now you can download music from the SoulSeek network using MewSeek (formerly known as iSlsk). The application is available for free on Cydia.