_Dear Friends,_

It was -2° F on the way into work today. Hammerhead was shivering on the way to the car but I’m resisting the notion of getting him a coat. I did turn on the heated seat for him, though. We are in the home stretch for the holidays with the busiest shopping day of the season coming up this Saturday.

For details about Christmas delivery (including a coupon for faster shipping), see the Featured Special below or “click here.”:http://www.smalldog.com/shipping

We have some late arrivals this week and next that might be of interest. We have found some of the discontinued (EOL) “MacBook Air 1.86GHz models with the 128GB solid state hard drive”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/72296 that are at an unprecedented price of only $1349.99. What an awesome gift for the road warrior on your list! We have added some great iPhone accessories from MiLi including a “very nice leather case”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/75095 and “cost-effective back-up battery.”:http://www.smalldog.com/search/?find=MiLi+Power+Crystal+External+Battery

With any luck our first “wave” of custom design Hammerhead 4GB USB Flash Drives will be here early next week. The first nine designs are: Imelda’s head (our logo), TekServe’s Tekgirl, Snowboard, Vermont, Bicycle, Guitar, Firetruck, Taxi and an iPhone. These are top quality drives and we are excited about this addition to the Hammerhead line-up.

Kibbles & Bytes will be taking next week off, so I want to take this opportunity to wish each of you a Merry Christmas from the entire Small Dog family to your family. We send our warmest wishes for a happy holiday.

2009 was a great year for Apple. Apple experienced record growth in revenue and profit regardless of the most serious downturn in the economy in a generation. While not recession-proof, Apple has shown that it doesn’t hurt to have the hottest products on the planet even when the planet’s financial system is being stressed.

*January* – The last year of Apple’s presence at Macworld Expo in January. The show had an aura of finality to it and even though there is a Macworld again this year in February, there will be no Apple presence at the show. This year iLife ’09 was released with great new features that made it a compelling upgrade, especially for iPhoto. iWork ’09 was also released as well as a new 17-inch MacBook Pro.

*February* – Apple updated the entire range of Mac desktops with new iMacs, new Mac Pros and new Mac minis. Apple also updated the Time Capsule and AirPort Extreme with simultaneous Dual-Band WiFi.

*March* – Apple introduces the tiny 4GB iPod shuffle! Later in the month Apple introduced iPhone 3.0 software.

*April* – Apple introduces new Xserves with Intel Nehalem processors. They also announced the end of DRM for iTunes and introduced variable pricing for songs. Apple announced their financial results for the quarter with an astounding $1.21 billion in profit.

*June* – Apple introduces new MacBook Pros including the new 13-inch MacBook Pro. They also released the iPhone 3GS updated phone.

*July* – New versions of Final Cut Studio and Logic are released and Apple’s financial report indicates another $1.3 Billion in profit on spectacular Mac and iPhone sales. Steve Jobs is out sick and Tim Cook announced that “The Mac has now outgrown the market a staggering 18 of the last 19 quarters.”

*August* – Another update to the Time Capsules pushing the storage to a large 2TB! Snow Leopard is released at just $29 for the upgrade and the Mac Box set with Snow Leopard, iLife ’09 and iWork ’09 is released, too.

*September* – iPods! The iPod touch goes down in price and up in features and capacity, the iPod nano adds a video camera, the iPod shuffle adds colors and more choices in capacity and the iPod classic is moved from 120GB to 160GB without a price increase. To coincide, iTunes 9 is released.

*October* – Apple crushes the street again posting their most profitable quarter, ever, with a profit of $1.67 Billion. Apple sold more Macs and iPhones than any quarter. To complete the product offerings for 2009 Apple also released a slew of new products and updates.

iMacs were updated and the beautiful 27-inch wide screen iMac was introduced along with a new unibody white MacBook. Apple brought out the new Magic Mouse and even a new Apple remote. They updated the Mac mini again and introduced a server version of the Mac mini bundled with Snow Leopard server for only $999. Time Capsules were updated again, too.

*November and December* – not a time for product announcements but a time for sales and all signs point to another amazing holiday quarter for Apple with their common stock hovering around $200/share.

Christmas shipping deadlines are fast approaching. At Smalldog.com, you can save $20 when you upgrade your shipping to 2-day or next day air on any order over $200. This offer is good until 12/23. Simply add your selected items to your cart, select either 2-day or next day air and use coupon code merrychristmas09.

Here are this year’s shipping deadlines:

• Next Day Air: Last day to ship: 12/21; Receive Date: 12/24

• Two Day Air: Last day to ship: 12/18; Receive date: 12/24

• 3-Day Select: Last day to ship: 12/17; Receive date: 12/24

• Ground: (OH, WV, VA, MD, DE, NJ, PA, NY, Northern Maine) Last day to ship: 12/18; Receive Date: 12/24

• Ground 1 day (VT, NH, MA, CT, RI, Southern Maine) Last day to ship: 12/21, Receive Date: 12/24

We have a lot of fun, inexpensive gifts that are great last-minute finds and stocking stuffers for the person who has everything.

We have Small Dog branded t-shirts in a Euro-style design, Small Dog pint glasses, Retro (see a bonus review below) and Small Dog-themed mousepads, Pure Vermont maple syrup nips, Small Dog Euro Nalgene bottles, Aroma Home lemon-scented screen wipes and more.

“See all of our swag here.”:http://www.smalldog.com/category/x/x/x/Gifts_and_Swag|Small_Dog_Swag They’ll make someone verrrry happy!

***********************

*Reflect Mouse Pad Review*

Hands down, the “Retro Mouse Pad”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/74965 ($4.99) is the best mouse pad I’ve ever used. It’s very thin, so it doesn’t impede my hand’s movement. The reflective surface really does make the mouse cursor move more smoothly, too.

The bottom has the coolest, most ingenious surface. It always sticks really strongly, even if it’s dirty. There is a small crackling noise when you start using it because the pad seems to be made of thin, almost foil-like material, but that goes away once you use it for a couple minutes.

I love the retro design, too!

-Moses “moses@smalldog.com”:mailto:moses@smalldog.com

Several people have recently inquired about browsing the web without leaving evidence of the sites they’ve visited. Are more people suddenly afraid they’ll be caught peeking at naughty websites? Well, maybe, but the recent surge in anonymous web-browsing has more to do with the fact that people are trying to hide their online holiday shopping history from friends and family who share their computer.

Fortunately, it’s very easy to hide your web browsing history. In Safari, solution is simple: Before you begin browsing, go to the Safari menu and select Private Browsing. When the warning box appears, click OK. Now Safari stores none of the sites you visit, history of downloaded files (though any downloaded files will still be present on your computer), images you look at or movies you watch.

If you suddenly decide you need privacy __after__ you’ve been browsing, there have several options: You can remove individual pages from Safari’s page-view history, erase the entire history or clear all traces of your activity, including any cookies and cache files you may have accumulated.

To review the pages you’ve visited and delete them as desired, go to the History menu and select Show All History. Here you can select pages and clear them with the Delete key. To wipe the entire Safari history, select Clear History from the History menu. For a completely clean slate, go to the Safari menu and select Reset Safari.

Apple reminds us that the Private Browsing option does not prevent Safari from collecting cookies (the preference files automatically generated by many websites). The Reset Safari option clears all cookies. If you want to delete only certain ones, choose Preferences from the Safari menu, click the Security tab, and then click Show Cookies. You can select and delete individual cookies from the list that appears. Careful, though–if you’re a frequent web user, this list can be very, very long.

Firefox has a similar provision for private browsing, which you can read about in depth on a Mozilla support page “by clicking here.”:http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Private+Browsing

Likewise, Google’s Chrome browser has a private browsing called “Incognito.” Read how on this “Google Chrome Help page.”:http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=95464