The Best Things to Buy In December

Feeling the cold yet? Winter is coming, and so are the holidays—which make for some pretty great deals to round out the end of the year. Every month, we look back at the best times to buy anything during the year, and pull out items each month to remind you what's coming. Obviously, none of this is to say you should go on a shopping spree—but if you've been holding off for a lower price on something, these are the things that get the sale treatment in December. And if you're shopping today, be sure to check out the best Cyber Monday deals available right now. All Autumn Cars: New car models come out in the summer, which makes the end of the year a great time to buy a car—as long as you're willing to get last year's model, say Consumer Reports, Bankrate, and Dealnews. Deals should be even better in October than they were in September. Make sure it's not better for you to lease a car instead of buy, and if you're looking to get a good deal, you can save some money by haggling or (if you're evil) screwing with the car salesmen. Cookware & Kitchen Accessories: Anyone who's walked into a mall in October knows that the holidays get earlier and earlier every year, which means the sales start now! Cookware is one of the more popular things to start early say Bankrate and Dealnews, so check out Consumer Reports' cookware buying guide, our five must-have kitchen tools, and give your kitchen a makeover. Digital Cameras: Cameras see some nice deals early in the year, but if you need one now, you'll probably see another round of deals coming off the latest announcements. According to Digital Photography School and Digital Camera HQ, check out older models for a lower price. Gas Grills and Air Conditioners: Just like in September, most stores are trying to get rid of their summer gear. As Forbes says, no one wants to store the stuff no one is buying—it's cheaper to just sell it at a discount. So if you have the space to store it, stock up on your grills, air conditioners, and other summer-only items now. Plants: Most plants aren't going to survive the harsh winter ahead, but if you have an indoor garden or greenhouse going on, Real Simple and Dealnews recommend picking up your new plants cheaply as the weather starts to cool down. Toys & Games: Places like Toys R Us are starting to ramp up their holiday sales, so now's a good time to get kids' stuff at a discount—whether for Christmas gifts or not. Wedding Supplies: As beautiful as it is, winter isn't exactly prime wedding season for most people, which means planning one gets a lot easier. Find a venue, negotiate services, and buy or rent supplies for much less as the fall and winter go on say Bankrate and Dealnews. December Champagne: New Year's is coming up, and that means champagne is actually going to get cheaper, according to Sharon Castillo, director of the Office of Champagne USA. In this case, the high demand means companies are trying to undercut their competitors to sell more during this peak time. Golf Clubs: As you might expect, it's not exactly the best month to go play a round of 18 holes, so golf clubs are going to be on sale right now. New England Golf Monthly points out that they'll probably be last year's models, so you won't be getting the absolute latest and greatest, but if you're hunting for a deal, now's the time. Pools: You may not be looking to go for a dip in the cold winter, but it's a good time to get that pool set up for summer. A number of pool installers have blogged about the fact that winter is the best time to buy a pool, mainly because no one else is buying them, so they need to keep prices down in order to keep up work. And, since they're doing so much less work in the winter, it's often of higher quality, too. Televisions & Other Electronics: You should see sales continue after Black Friday and through the holidays. Though if you can wait, February is probably a better time than now to buy that new TV. Tools: Like we said last month, tools are on sale during the holiday season. If you shop around, you can probably find some good holiday sales on tools, so it's a good time to buy—particularly if you want to winterize your home before the cold really sets in. Check out our guide to stocking the perfect toolbox and our list of the DIY home repairs you can do yourself while you're at it. We'll be posting updates for you guys every month, so you're aware of the deals going on all year round. If you're curious to see what's coming up, you can always check out our full best time to buy guide to see the entire year at a glance. And, if you know of any deals we didn't mention, share them in the comments below.

5 Things Successful People Do Before 8 AM

Rise and shine! Morning time just became your new best friend. Love it or hate it, utilizing the morning hours before work may be the key to a successful and healthy lifestyle. That's right, early rising is a common trait found in many CEOs, government officials, and other influential people. This post originally appeared on Forbes. Margaret Thatcher was up every day at 5 am, Frank Lloyd Wright at 4am, and Robert Iger, the CEO of Disney, wakes at 4:30am (just to name a few). I know what you're thinking—you do your best work at night. Not so fast. According to Inc. Magazine, morning people have been found to be more proactive and more productive. In addition, the health benefits for those with a life before work go on and on. Let's explore five of the things successful people do before 8am. Exercise I've said it once, I'll say it again. Most people that work out daily, work out in the morning. Whether it's a morning yoga session or a trip to the gym, exercising before work gives you a boost of energy for the day and that deserved sense of accomplishment. Anyone can tackle a pile of paperwork after 200 ab reps! Morning workouts also eliminate the possibility of flaking out on your cardio after a long day at work. Even if you aren't bright eyed and bushy tailed at the thought of a 5am jog, try waking up 15 minutes early for a quick bedside set of pushups or stretching. It'll help wake up your body, and prep you for your day. Map Out Your Day Maximize your potential by mapping out your schedule for the day, as well as your goals and to dos. The morning is a good time for this as it is often one of the only quiet times a person gets throughout the day. The early hours foster easier reflection that helps when prioritizing your activities. They also allow for uninterrupted problem solving when trying to fit everything into your timetable. While scheduling, don't forget about your mental health. Plan a 10 minute break after that stressful meeting for a quick walk around the block or a moment of meditation at your desk. Trying to eat healthy? Schedule a small window in the evening to pack a few nutritious snacks to bring to work the next day. Eat a Healthy Breakfast We all know that rush out the door with a cup of coffee and an empty stomach feeling. You sit down at your desk, and you're already wondering how early that taco truck sets up camp outside your office. No good. Take that extra time in the morning to fuel your body for the tasks ahead of it. It will help keep your mind on what's at hand and not your growling stomach. Not only is breakfast good for your physical health, it is also a good time to connect socially. Even five minutes of talking with your kids or spouse while eating a quick bowl of oatmeal can boost your spirits before heading out the door. Visualization These days we talk about our physical health ad nauseam, but sometimes our mental health gets overlooked. The morning is the perfect time to spend some quiet time inside your mind meditating or visualizing. Take a moment to visualize your day ahead of you, focusing on the successes you will have. Even just a minute of visualization and positive thinking can help improve your mood and outlook on your work load for the day. Make Your Day Top Heavy We all have that one item on our to do list that we dread. It looms over you all day (or week) until you finally suck it up and do it after much procrastination. Here's an easy tip to save yourself the stress—do that least desirable task on your list first. Instead of anticipating the unpleasantness of it from first coffee through your lunch break, get it out of the way. The morning is the time when you are (generally) more well rested and your energy level is up. Therefore, you are more well equipped to handle more difficult projects. And look at it this way, your day will get progressively easier, not the other way around. By the time your work day is ending, you're winding down with easier to dos and heading into your free time more relaxed. Success!

Eventifier Raises A $500K Seed Round From Accel, KAE To Make Social Media Archives Of Your Events

Eventifier, a Bangalore-based startup that aggregates and then creates archives of social media content from conferences, has raised around $500,000 in a seed round from Accel Partners and KAE Capital. The financing will be used to hire data scientists and beef up the sales and marketing efforts to carve out a position in an already-wide field of event-planning startups that include Eventbrite, Conferize, Epilogger and Doubledutch. It's a crowded market, but with nearly 1.8 million events and conferences taking place every year (according to the Convention Industry Council), there is opportunity. And both Eventifier and its investor Accel believe its solution is unique, at least for now. While Eventbrite and Doubledutch primarily focus on event ticketing and organizing, Eventifier claims that none of them come close to the startup in terms of offering a complete view of pre and post-event data for both organizers and attendees. Eventifier archives all social media data including Facebook posts and Tweets, during and after an event. All this knowledge is then offered as analytical insights about how popular a particular event was, the most talked about sections, discussions etc. The closest rivals for Eventifier are Epilogger and Conferize that offer similar archiving services. The startup's founding team, Jazeel Badur Ferry, Nazim Zeeshan and Mohammed Saud, studied computer science together and graduated in 2010. The trio travelled down south to the Indian city of Chennai in 2012 to attend a hackathon organized by the Startup Center, an incubator. The core product came out from this hackathon, and since then, Eventifier has signed close to 100 paying customers who are paying an average fee of $200 per event. At the Startup Center run by Vijay Anand, a technology entrepreneur and investor based in Chennai, Eventifier received about $50,000 to build the product, apart from other operational, mentoring help. “We were quite shy of the idea until June last year when we attended the hackathon at the Startup Center and realized this can be an idea worth pursuing,” Jazeel tells me. He adds that the startup has archived 2,000 events across the world including customers such as Pearson, UBM, Clinton Foundation, Twitter, NASA and the WWW Conference. “This seed round is definitely a great milestone for the Eventifier team. We look forward to building Eventifier into the largest event archiving platform in the world,” says Jazeel. Accel has to date invested in 17 startups in India at the seed stage from its $150 million+ Accel III fund. Anand Daniel, a principal with Accel Partners in Bangalore, tells me that he is looking to announce more such deals backing startups incubated across several accelerators in India. “Focus areas for these seed investments include big data, Internet, mobile and healthcare startups,” Daniel says.

FTC Signs Off On The Nokia-Microsoft Deal

The Federal Trade Commission has signed off on the Nokia-Microsoft deal, meaning that there is little if anything left that could derail the potential marriage of Microsoft's money and Nokia's hardware business. The deal, worth around $7.2 billion, will see Microsoft absorb the largest OEM for its Windows Phone line of smartphones. Nokia controls more than 90 percent of Windows Phone hardware sales, meaning that Microsoft is purchasing hegemony over its own platform. The sticker price, something that can be presumably paid using offshore cash, is a sum that Nokia will revel in and Microsoft won't miss. The company is intensely cash rich at the moment and is trying to find places to stick its excess monies. Microsoft provided a statement to The Verge indicating that it is “[looking] forward to the date when our partners at Nokia will become members of the Microsoft family, and are pleased that the Department of Justice has cleared the deal unconditionally.” The deal has already achieved approval from Nokia shareholders. Microsoft's hard turn into the device business is about to greatly expand. Its Surface line of tablets is a new move for the company, as it has long depended on third-party OEMs to vend computers running its software. However, with the addition of the Lumia line of handsets to Redmond's portfolio, Microsoft will manufacture its own computers, smartphones and consoles. Those three device classes are, of course, the three screens on which the company is building out and unifying its Windows platform.

Supreme Court Refuses Consideration Of Amazon Sales Tax Case

The Supreme Court has rejected Amazon's calls to consider their case against New York State's sales tax on goods sold outside of its borders. By effectively upholding a New York Court's ruling, the Justices tacitly imply that they are fine paying sales tax on black body robes purchased online and shipped from outside the DC area. Ever since the 1992 Supreme Court case, Quill v. North Dakota, savvy Internet retailers could avoid sales tax if they didn't have a “substantial nexus” in the state where a customer lived. States lose an estimated $23 billion from online sales, according to the National Conference of State Legislators (hardly an unbiased group). New York State gets around that law by taxing an online company if they leverage local businesses, such as Amazon's affiliate program, to sell goods. The federal government isn't sitting out this game, either. Dueling bills in Congress seek to both ban and enact a federal sales tax. But, considering we have the most unproductive congress in history, Amazon may not have to worry about that law any time soon. Amazon officially supports a federal sales tax law if it creates a standardized set of rules across the entire country.

Healthcare.gov: Mission Accomplished

Apparently, no President is above the temptation of propaganda. Yesterday, the White House released a much-anticipated report on the beleaguered insurance e-commerce website, heatlhcare.gov, proudly declaring that “we believe we have met the goal of having a system that will work smoothly for the vast majority of users.” Compared to its opening launch of October 1st, the website has gone from a 40% uptime to 95% and can manage 50,000 concurrent users (vs. the estimated 1,100). “The site is now stable and operating at its intended capacity with greatly improved performance,” according to new project lead, Jeffrey Zientz. Operating-as-intended is a curious sleight-of-hand. There's a few on-going issues. 1. We still don't know how many users can actually enroll without any problems. Health insurance companies issued a stern warning that healthcare.gov may still be transmitting false user information. So-called “834″ data is critical to verifying a consumer's identity and if they're eligible for discounts. In other words, we still don't know whether the “vast majority” of users can actually get covered by January 1st. 2. The progress report has graphs that brazenly obscure the truth, like this one below of “bug fixes”: The graph makes it look like the team has solved all the bugs, but how many more bugs are left to fix? If it's 10,000 bugs, then it'll look a lot different. Here's the one thing that this graph tell us: the communications team is still in charge at the White House. A technical team, concerned with giving the full picture, would never design a graph so obviously deceptive. The most serious problem isn't a malfunctioning website–which will get fixed soon enough–but that we don't know if the administration has learned any lessons. Savvy tech companies are excluded from health insurance e-commerce, the federal procurement process let a mediocre beltway-based developer design the failed site, and the entire project has been shrouded from public scrutiny. Other than the acknowledgement that procurement must be improved, President Obama has not given any specifics about how his administration will do things differently. I don't think a buggy website is comparable to a botched war. But, Obama could have ushered in a new standard of honesty for the office of the presidency. This failure has far reaching consequences. I am losing hope that there is change we can believe in.

AppHero Acquired By Mobile App Publishing Firm Fuse Powered, Will Turn Its Attention To Ads

App discovery startup AppHero has been acquired by fellow Toronto-based company Fuse Powered, the company announced today, in a deal that will see the entire AppHero team including 19-year old founder Jordan Satok join Fuse Powered and develop its products for app publishing, marketing and distribution. AppHero, founded in 2011, was a pure play discovery network that developed sophisticated algorithms for suggesting mobile software to users, but now it's crossing the line into territory it stayed specifically out of when it was operating under that guise: paid placement. The recommendation platform built by Satok and AppHero was designed to survey what kinds of apps a user already has and then make intelligent predictions about what else they might be inclined to download – taking into account that if you already have an excellent grocery list app, for instance, you're not likely to want to get another one. But Satok says that some months ago they started to realize that more and more users are downloading new apps based on what they find through advertisements, rather than through suggestion networks like the one he and his team had built. “[Fuse Powered] has a monetization product that they offer to their monetization partners, so what we're looking at doing, and this is something we've been working on the last few months, is we recognized that people are discovering a lot of apps via ads,” Satok explained in an interview. “So Facebook ads, etc. The difficulty is that most mobile app ads today are really impersonal and not at all relevant to what people are really interested in. So we started using the same processes we'd developed to find apps that people would really like, and then show them ads for those apps.” Satok says it's a much more straightforward business model than any they'd created for AppHero, and also really well-aligned with their goals and technological development. He says that they were always worried about doing the same thing in AppHero itself, for fear of compromising the user experience, but notes that now there's nothing stopping them from using that tech in that way, as it'll be clear to any and all that this is an advertising product. The terms of the deal aren't being disclosed, but AppHero has raised some $1.8 million in funding from OMERS Ventures and others, and Satok says that all investors and stakeholders are more than happy with the deal. App discovery is a dangerous market to operate in, as Apple has proven time and time again with its ability to shut out companies who do similar things from the App Store entirely. An exit here for AppHero actually manages to help Satok and the company he built mitigate that risk entirely, while giving both them and new parent Fuse Powered a way to quickly chart a relatively uncomplicated path to monetization. I asked Satok, who started AppHero when he was just 17, if he's feeling entrepreneurial again, but he said he sees this as the chance to build something more long-term with his new partners at Fuse Powered.