As white-collar workers return desultorily to their desk jobs, they waste time by shopping online. To capitalize on this, a group of online retailers invented "Cyber Monday," a day of Internet discounts to match Black Friday's in-store deals. You'd think that the planned traffic from such a staged event would go off smoothly. But you'd be wrong.

Electronics retailer TigerDirect plans to raise CompUSA from the grave, using its trademarks and a handful of stores to give its own retail presence fresh life. CompUSA went under last month when it was sold to restructuring specialist Gordon Brothers, which is closing most of its stores, including the helpfully located flagship on Market Street in downtown San Francisco, which catered to hordes of Moscone Center convention-goers. If the deal goes through, TigerDirect would pick up the CompUSA brand and website, as well as 16 stores located in Florida, Texas, and Puerto Rico — sorry, San Francisco. (Photo by Mary Jane Irwin)

Those Brits really have a way with words. The witty writers at British IT rag The Register summed it up so well: "CompUSA goes tits up." The computer retailer, which closed a number of stores earlier this year (including one half a mile from my house, natch), has sold itself to Gordon Brothers, a "restructuring specialist" which plans to close CompUSA's remaining 103 locations. The stores will run through Christmas and offer "attractive bargains" to shoppers. CompUSA.com will be closed once current purchases are shipped. This, folks, is why they call Best Buy a "category killer." (Photo by cubicleman)