Want to keep a pulse on the retail action when the clock strikes midnight Friday(or in the case of Toys R Us, 10 p.m. Thursday)? We’ve got you covered. From Thursday night through Friday morning, I’ll be on the scene at Fargo’s early openings, hopping from sale to sale and tweeting updates on conditions, crowds, and any chaos that may unfold (don’t call me a hero – somebody’s got to do it).

To track those updates, follow me on Twitter @MarinoEccher, keep an eye out for a write-up of the morning’s events at Inforum.com on Friday and in The Forum on Saturday (to get the full experience, of course, I can only recommend reading all three).

If you’re hitting the stores tomorrow night, happy hunting.

As the retail feeding frenzy that is Black Friday draws near, Amazon.com is making a play to scoop the competition early. The online retail giant is rolling out Black Friday “lightning deals” throughout the week.

The sales revolves around timed offers on selected products – right now, for instance, customers can get the “Twilight” DVD for $5.99 for about three and a half more hours, or until its sold out (in this case the site’s progress bar says 75 percent of copies are gone so far). It’s also teasing upcoming deals with question marks and brief blurbs – “the premier device in handheld gaming” will be available in about an hour. The site seems to be rolling out about half-a-dozen deals an hour.

The online experience may not match the thrill of lining up for a “door buster” at a brick-and-mortar store, but it’s not a bad idea if you want to get a jump on your shopping and prefer not to hazard the elements.

Dropping by West Acres for some holiday shopping over the next few weeks? You might want to bring your camera. If you snap a photo of a gift you’d like to buy for someone else, the mall just might hand you a gift card to help you pay for it.

The contest, which started Nov. 15 and runs through Dec. 3, works like this: Partcipants submit a picture of a gift they’d like to give from a store at the mall, along with information on whom it’s for (it doesn’t have to be a photo – the contest rules say it can be a hand-drawn image or something else altogether, and encourage entrants to “be creative”).

Once all the pictures are in,  people vote for the top four on Facebook, and judges pick four winners by Dec. 15. The grand prize is a mall gift card in the value of the winner’s chosen gift, up to $1,000. Second place gets a similar card worth up to $300; third place, a card up to $150; fourth place, a card up to $50.

You can read the complete rules here (One caveat of note: no pictures featuring liquor, tobacco products, contraceptives,  guns, fireworks, drug paraphernalia, or gambling, among other things. If that nixes your plans for the contest, your holiday shopping list is a bit more colorful than mine). No word on whether winners have to use their gift cards to get the gifts they picked out, but in the holiday spirit, it wouldn’t seem right to do otherwise.