Tech tools for Black Friday

Whether you are bravely navigating the crowds in the stores on Black Friday or bravely surfing shopping websites from the comforts of your couch, tech can greatly enhance your shopping experience.

One of the frustrations of shopping at stores is discovering later that your purchase could have been much cheaper online. Use your smartphone as a scanner to compare prices using the RedLaser app. Open the app, point your camera at a product's bar code to get price comparisons from major websites. Some big box stores, such as Best Buy, may match a competitor's online price, giving you the best of online shopping and instant gratification. RedLaser is available free for the iPhone - shortlink:

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If you have scoured newspaper inserts for the best deals, then forgot to bring the ads as you headed out the door for the mall, no worries. Download the Black Friday app by Brads Deals that has Black Friday ads from major retailers, sorted alphabetically and by best deals. The ads can be difficult to read on a small smartphone screen so this app isn't the best for planning your holiday shopping, but it can be very handy when you're at the stores shopping. Black Friday is free for the iPhone - shortlink: http://bit.ly/soumzo.

TGI Black Friday is another smartphone app that gives you access to fantastic deals when you are at the stores. This app lets you search by products and stores, and displays the deals by the newest ads as well as by the most popular deals. TGI Black Friday is available free for the iPhone - shortlink: http://bit.ly/ssCNk5 - and Android - shortlink: http://bit.ly/usRW0D.

You may think of foursquare as an app that allows you to race others to become mayor of a store, but foursquare also offers great deals from partner merchants. Make sure you check into foursquare as you navigate your Black Friday deals to make sure you don't miss out on any specials. Foursquare is available free in the iTunes App Store - shortlink: http://bit.ly/tnxi3k - and the Android Market - shortlink: http://bit.ly/rxr34X.

If you're headed to the mall tomorrow, check out the Fast Mall app, which will help you navigate from store to store quickly. The app shows you the fastest way to get places and you can choose whether you use stairs, escalators or elevators to move between floors. The app even has a handy feature showing you where the closest restrooms are. The app covers malls throughout the U.S. and 31 other countries. You can download mall maps ahead of time if Internet coverage isn't available when you're at the mall. Fast Mall is free for the iPhone - shortlink: http://bit.ly/vM8eHF - and Android - shortlink: http://bit.ly/uQ5i33.

If you choose to avoid the stresses of in-store shopping to take advantage of buying online, many Internet tools will help you find the best deal.

InvisibleHand is an add-on to Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer browsers that runs in the background and then pops up when you shop online to let you know about better deals at other sites. Find out more about InvisibleHand here: InvisibleHand - For Economical Online Shopping! - shortlink: http://bit.ly/uhkbWv.

RetailMeNot (http://www.retailmenot.com) is an online coupon site with links to over 130,000 sites. Users submit online coupons and vote whether a coupon worked for them. Coupons aren't guaranteed to work, but you can see from the success rates which coupons are most likely to be successful for you. Check out the site's Black Friday section for the best deals.

Rather-Be-Shopping (http://www.rather-be-shopping.com) is a coupon site with coupons certified to be successful by Kyle, the owner of the site who verifies each coupon. In addition to listing coupons on the site, Rather-Be-Shopping will e-mail you any time a new coupon is listed from your favorite store. If your favorite store isn't listed, just let Kyle know and he will add it to his site. I've never met Kyle, but you have to respect a guy whose life mission is to save you money. Check out the site's Black Friday section for coupons from stores such as Wal-Mart, Kmart, Target and Macys.