Black Friday is expected to kick off a more upbeat e-commerce season this year, but heavyweights Amazon.com (AMZN), Google (GOOG) and eBay (EBAY) are poised to make the biggest holiday gains, analysts said.

In a research note, Jefferies analyst Youssef Squali said that Google stands to benefit from increased search-ad spending among marketers and an updated product-search feature that lets Web users more easily see pictures and reviews of items.

“The integration of search, user-generated content, comparison shopping, YouTube, location information and mobile shows the impressive span of Google’s product portfolio that the company can leverage to drive traffic for its e-commerce customers and advertisers,” Mr. Squali wrote.

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The day after Thanksgiving is one of the biggest shopping days of the year and marks the official beginning of the holiday retail season.

So where can you find the Black Friday deals? Google (GOOG) the term and a host of compilation sites pop up, many of which began posting information a month ago to alert customers to the best deals.

Black Friday Ads, for example, publishes daily updates featuring the best deals on electronics across the Web. SlickDeals.net categorizes offers by retailer, including major ones like Amazon.com (AMZN), Best Buy (BBY), Macy’s and Target, and the number of deals available at each one. BlackFriday.info allows shoppers to create a Black Friday shopping list and specifies which deals are online-only.

Some sites offer a highly organized look at what could otherwise be a jumble of information. DealsVista has created a deals spreadsheet that can be viewed online or downloaded, and Shoppers Shop created an online table of deals that includes start and end dates.

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Internet researcher comScore (SCOR) said consumers spent more shopping online in the first 22 days of the holiday season than they did during the same period last year.

But even though they are expected to spend more this season than during last year’s downtrodden holiday season, consumers are likely to keep their online spending tempered, the group said.

ComScore said consumers spent $8.21 billion online from Nov. 1-22, a 2 percent jump from the same period a year earlier. It expects the total for both November and December to reach $28.8 billion, a 3 percent gain from last year’s holiday season. Results fell 3 percent last year and comScore noted prior-years growth was 20 percent or higher.

“Online spending this holiday season will likely be tempered by the stark reality of 10 percent unemployment and less disposable income in many consumers’ wallets,” said comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni.

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What’s Twitter Inc. worth?

Venture investors valued the social networking start-up at $1.13 billion in its most recent financing round in September. Some holders of common stock think it’s worth even more–$1.3 billion. But NYPPEX LLC, a Greenwich, Conn.-based firm that advises buyers and sellers of private company shares on the secondary market, pegs Twitter’s worth at $474 million based on its paltry revenue. And institutional buyers want a big discount, valuing the company at $135 million.

NYPPEX, which includes these valuations in a report it is releasing to clients Wednesday, also believes Facebook Inc. common stock is overpriced, but not by as much as Twitter’s, while LinkedIn Corp. is somewhat undervalued. “Caveat emptor” clearly should be the motto of anyone venturing into this market. “We believe higher industry standards may be needed for research disclosures and price transparency to protect investors,” NYPPEX says.

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At the threshold of a sterile lab at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, I pull on a white clean-room suit, a surgical cap and mask, booties and latex gloves.

My host, a mineralogist named Mike Zolensky, swabs my digital voice recorder with alcohol to remove flakes of skin and pocket lint. He doesn’t want any detritus to contaminate the precious dust in the room.

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Forget PageRank, at least if you’re a news publisher looking to do well in Google News.

Google’s (GOOG) news service doesn’t rely on the same algorithm used by “regular” Google, of which PageRank is a part of. Instead, Google News taps into its own unique ranking signals, which include user clicks, the estimated authority of a publication in a particular topic, freshness, geography and more.

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The fundamental problem on the iPhone is not Apple’s (AAPL) App Store approval policies, but the iPhone developers’ arrogant disdain for Web technologies.

It was only last Friday I told a roomful of Web developers that Apple is evil, and a spontaneous applause erupted. Since then, however, I have changed my mind completely.

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I don’t think Apple (AAPL) realizes how badly the App Store approval process is broken. Or rather, I don’t think they realize how much it matters that it’s broken.

The way Apple runs the App Store has harmed their reputation with programmers more than anything else they’ve ever done.

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Unless you were hiding under a rock for most of the day yesterday, you’re aware by now that Google (GOOG) held a press event at which the search giant pulled back the curtain on ChromeOS, the OS that’s really a browser (and is based on the browser that’s really an OS). The search giant announced that it is open-sourcing the OS, and described in detail much of its nature and function.

In this article, we’ll recap only a few of the highlights of the announcement, because the news has been covered exhaustively elsewhere. Our main focus here is to provide some analysis and context, and to think about what ChromeOS means.

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The Internet Archive and more than 20 Web companies are banding together to preserve the historical records of the abbreviated Internet addresses that are passed around on services such as Twitter.

Services such as Bit.ly and TinyURL allow consumers to convert a lengthy Web address into a miniaturized one. They have soared in popularity in recent years with the advent of Twitter, which limits users to 140 characters per post. Shortened links are also used in emails, text messages and updates on social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.

Bit.ly, for example, says consumers use its site to shorten 40 million Web addresses a day. However, since most link-shortening services are unprofitable start-ups, archivists and Internet users worry that if one goes under, its links would stop directing users to the correct, longer Web address.

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With more people emailing and fewer people sending physical mail in recent years, the U.S. Postal Service is taking steps to move into the digital world–and using a venture-backed company to do so.

Goodmail Systems Inc. has partnered with Epostmarks Inc. to launch a product, Postmarked Email, that has the approval and protection of the U.S. Postal Service.

The deal will essentially make emails handled by this service the legal equivalent of physical mail. That’s important for businesses that are seeking to cut the costs of physical mail while also improving communication with customers and become more environmentally friendly.

Goodmail, which has raised about $45 million from Bessemer Venture Partners, DCM, Emergence Capital Partners, Omidyar Network and Softbank Capital Partners, isn’t the only venture-backed company working with the postal service. Earth Class Mail Corp. covers different terrain–it doesn’t deal with email, but it provides users with access to their physical mail online. Earth Class Mail has raised more than $20 million from Ignition Partners, Alliance of Angels and Keiretsu Forum, according to VentureWire archives.

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With Twitter exploding–and the focus on real time data exploding along with it–there are a number of new companies that are seeking to develop more specific applications of this technology.

Several such companies presented at a conference in San Francisco last week organized by TechCrunch.

Hot Potato organizes real-time content about specific events, which can be big public events such as a conference or sporting event or private events such as a person buying a car. The company is backed by $1 million from First Round Capital and RRE Ventures.

Using the service, people can see a stream of the text updates for the events, as well as photos directly in the stream of news. People can participate in the events whether they are at the event in person or watching remotely.

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Google’s (GOOG) chief executive Eric Schmidt said during a trip to Baghdad this week that Iraq’s stabilization could lead to business opportunities in the country.

Mr. Schmidt was part of a delegation, led by Peter Pace, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to encourage business development in Iraq.

“After this tremendous investment in Iraq, we see business recovery finally happening,” he said in a video interview provided by the U.S. Army. “The creation of a new Iraqi state ultimately means business opportunities for global firms.”

“Google’s interested in making sure that Iraq ends up being an open and transparent democracy–after all, information makes a big difference in everybody’s lives,” Mr. Schmidt added.

The delegation met with both military and civilian leaders in Baghdad, he said. “It’s clear that the government is reaching out now to business, to try to get us to begin our part in the reconstruction of Iraq.”

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Madison Avenue has joined forces with Internet companies in a last-ditch attempt to stop privacy regulations over the $29 billion online-ad industry.

The industry is finalizing an ad campaign to educate consumers about how digital advertising works, creating an icon that would appear on Web pages or ads alerting consumers if their activity is being tracked and deploying new technologies to police the Web for illegal activities. At issue is the practice of tracking consumers’ Web activities–from the searches they make to the sites they visit and the products they buy–for the purpose of targeting ads.

The efforts follow calls from the FTC earlier this year for Web advertisers and Internet companies to do a better job explaining how they track and use information about consumers’ Web activities and creating a simple way consumers can opt out of being tracked.

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Consumers are generally cautious heading into the critical holiday shopping season, with preseason trends suggesting that electronics sales may be solid while sales of apparel, particularly women’s styles, could get pummeled.

Spurred by the release of a hot videogame and earlier-than-usual promotions on televisions, U.S. shoppers spent 6.1 percent more on electronics in the first half of November the month, through Nov. 14, than a year ago, according to a recent analysis from MasterCard SpendingPulse, a unit of MasterCard Advisors.

The new data, based on MasterCard SpendingPulse data, which reflect estimates on all payment forms, including cash and checks, comes days before Thanksgiving, the traditional kickoff to the holiday selling season, when consumers traditionally spend several hundred billion of dollars. Retailers count on holiday sales for as much as 40 percent of their annual sales and half their annual profits.

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