Black Friday Apps For Deal Hunters
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As the hysteria of Black Friday reaches its peak you can expect a number of Canadian retailers to join in with specials and discounts, sometimes at the very last minute. Some stores hold a different set of sales for the web than on the street, others will announce secret deals through their Twitter or Facebook accounts. Here are three services that try to gather them all in one place.
RedFlagDeals
iPhone/Web
Free
A Canadian forum where avid dealhunters gather to share their finds and rate the best bargains, the RedFlagDeals app offers coupons as well as links to the latest deals. You can use your GPS to search for sales in your area and your camera to photograph and share any sales you come across in your travels.

You can visit their forum where they currently have threads going for both Black Friday and CyberMonday and if still seems like a lot to sift through, there’s a Deal of the Day section to help you jump to the most popular entry right away. The popularity of RedFlagDeals is its strength, with so many active fans the site is very quick to pick up on great bargains.
Shopwise Canada
iPhone/Android/BlackBerry
Free
From The Yellow Pages comes this well-organized deal finder that will locate nearby sales through GPS and help you refine searches for sales online and through national retailers. You can search by product type, specific store, and style of deal such as coupons, freebies, or limited time offers.

With photographs and helpful icons it makes it easy to take in information at a glance, but does a poor job of filtering out good deals from bad on its own. Half price wings and Swiss Chalet’s Festive Special are not the kind of sales bargain hunters are looking for, so prepare to use the search tools to separate the good from the bad.
Bargain Moose
iPhone/Android/Web
Bargainmoose is based on the blog of the same name and gathers deals from Canadian stores, sorting them into categories that are easy to take in with a glance. Coupons, freebies, and deals, each has a thermometer icon to let you know how popular they are based on user feedback.

I like that they link directly to the stores instead of trying to be an in-between service and that it’s easy to see comments from other users. You can even customize the notifications so they only happen within certain hours of the day.