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It's episode 59 of the Digital City, and if our cast looks a little different today, your eyes are not playing tricks on you. Joey, Julie, and Scott all called in sick, so we recruited some of our CNET colleagues to step in and offer their holiday shopping advice.

David Katzmaier, John Falcone, and Matt Fitzgerald weigh in on Black Friday tips for big-screen TVs, home theater equipment, and digital cameras, and we go over some of the best and worst laptop deals around.

Also discussed was the high-concept Tony Hawk: Ride skateboard video game, the surprise popularity of Assassin's Creed 2, and Dan showed off his new Forza-3-branded Pumas.

Added bonus: we've got a handful of beta invites for MAG, the massive 256-person PS3 shooter to give away. Ping me on Twitter , or e-mail us at digitalcity@cnet.com, and we'll hook the first five people up.

Related links:
>>Are these Apple's Black Friday laptop deals?
>>Rating Black Friday laptop doorbuster deals
>>Review: the ColcaSac hemp MacBook sleeve
>>Hands on with 15th-century Italy in Assassin's Creed II

>>Watch the Digital City live every Monday at 3pm EST on CNET Live!
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>>Need more? Follow Dan on Twitter!

(Credit: Google)

One of the highlights of Android 2.0 has been the Google Maps Navigation app that delivers voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation on your phone for free. Until now, only Motorola Droid owners could take advantage of this sweet perk, but times they are a-changing.

On Monday, Google announced that its navigation app is now available for devices running Android 1.6 and higher, including the T-Mobile G1 and T-Mobile MyTouch 3G. While still in beta, the app provides voice-guided directions between two points, traffic information, and business searches.

This release also includes a new Layers feature that lets you overlay more information on the map, such as transit lines and Wikipedia articles about places, but it does not support the "Navigate to" voice command feature found on Android 2.0, so you'll have to input all your destinations using your phone's keyboard.

Google Maps Navigation for Android 1.6 is now available for download from the Android Market. Unlike other navigation apps or location-based services from the likes of TomTom, Garmin, and TeleNav, you don't have to pay a one-time fee or monthly subscription to use Google Maps Navigation. All you need is a data connection and you're good to go.

Samsung Omnia II

(Credit: Samsung)

On Monday, Verizon Wireless announced that it will offer the Samsung Omnia II starting December 2 for $199.99 with a two-year contract and after a $100 mail-in rebate.

First introduced in early June, the Omnia II will take over for its predecessor, the Samsung Omnia, and brings a number of enhancements and new features, such as a 3.7-inch WVGA AMOLED touch screen and Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional Edition.

The Omnia II will sport Samsung's TouchWiz interface, allowing you to customize the home screen with various widgets and shortcuts and includes a similar 3D cube interface like the Samsung Behold II. In addition, Samsung has included a virtual QWERTY keyboard with Swype technology, which allows you to input text with a continuous swiping motion onscreen. (Check out a video demo here.)

Other goodies of the Samsung Omnia II include a 5-megapixel camera, support for DivX and Xvid movie files, 8GB of internal memory (expandable up to 16GB), Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Opera 9.5.

Dell and China Mobile on Monday offered up more details about the Dell Mini 3i smartphone, which will be going on sale in China later this month.

Dell's Mini 3i smartphone

(Credit: Dell)

The Android-based device, Dell's first smartphone, will support e-mail, instant messaging, and both MMS and SMS messaging. It will include Bluetooth and GPS capabilities and a Mini USB connector, and will accommodate Micro SD cards up to 32GB.

The quadband GSM/EDGE phone weighs 105 grams and includes a 3-megapixel camera with zoom, auto-focus, flash, video capture, and photo-editing capabilities. The touchscreen has a 640x360 resolution. Dell had already confirmed earlier this month that the Mini 3i would have a 3.5-inch high-definition screen.

Under the hood, the device is running China Mobile's OPhone software, a customized version of Google's Android operating system.

Like other Android phones, the Mini 3i will provide access to an online store, in this case, China Mobile's Mobile Market, where people can download apps, games, wallpaper, and ringtones. Users will be able to run different widgets on the home screen to keep on top of the news, weather, stock prices, and sports scores.

Dell said it has been collaborating with China Mobile for about a year on the development of the phone. The two companies teamed up earlier in the year to integrate a 3G data card for Dell's Inspiron Mini 10 netbook for the Chinese market. With more than 500 million customers, China Mobile is the world's largest mobile service provider, according to Dell.

Dell was initially mum on details when it first mentioned the Mini 3i about 10 days ago. But the company did reveal that China Mobile and Brazil's Claro would be the first global providers to carry its new smartphone.

Like China Mobile, Brazil's Claro boasts a huge subscriber base, with 42 million customers in Brazil alone. By selling the Mini 3i through both providers, Dell can potentially capture a much larger mobile audience than it could through any U.S. carriers.

Arriving in China Mobile stores by the end of November, the Mini 3i will shortly thereafter be sold directly from Dell. For those interested in color schemes, the Mini 3i will be available in Red Passion and Oiled Bronze--the image below shows the Red Passion treatment:

Dell Mini 3i smartphone

(Credit: Dell/China Mobile)

(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)

Last Sunday, Palm and Sprint released their second WebOS device together, the Palm Pixi, for $99.99 with a two-year contract.

In the grand scheme of things, $100 for a smartphone is a pretty darn good deal, but when you consider the fact that there are other products out there with more power and more features (for example, Wi-Fi) for the same price or lower, it makes the Pixi look foolish. Fortunately, thanks to third-party retailers, you can now get the entry-level smartphone for much less.

Both Amazon and Wal-Mart have lowered the price of the Palm Pixi by 75 percent, so now the smartphone is only $24.99. You will still need to sign up for a two-year service agreement, but it's certainly a much more enticing offer. In addition, the Palm Pre is now available from Amazon for $79.99, which is $70 less than Sprint's price.

(Source: Wall Street Journal)

The Twitter service with the cutesy raccoon mascot is making a new home on BlackBerry and Google Android phones. The free Seesmic, like its proliferate rivals, lets you read, manage, and compose Twitter messages much more flexibly than you can do from Twitter's Web site. We crash-tested both mobile versions as soon as we heard the news.

Seesmic on Android
Seesmic 1.0 for Android is available from the Android Market app, which is located on the smartphone. It takes up just over 1MB. The interface spreads four tabs along the top in both landscape and portrait mode, one each for the timeline, replies, direct messages, and your profile. There's also a ribbon on the screen that you can tap to refresh the feed. Click to open a tweet and you can save it as a favorite, retweet, or reply as a public "@" message or as a private posting. From the menu button, you can refresh, compose, or tinker with the settings.

Although Seesmic's Android interface is much more stripped down than its desktop AIR app for Windows and Mac, the app manages to remain flexible by giving you a choice over the kinds of notifications you'd like to receive, and over the partner services you'd prefer to use to send a photo, video, or shorten a URL.

Sure, it's blurry (blaming the BlackBerry camera), but squint hard enough and you'll see that Seesmic associated a picture with my account that's not actually my face.

(Credit: Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

The biggest flaws we've noticed so far? ... Read more

(Credit: Screenshot by Matt Hickey)

T-Mobile on Friday rolled out a new unlimited prepaid program called T-Mobile Complete. It's actually a pretty sweet deal: unlimited minutes and unlimited texting for as little as $50 a month. It also gets you a Samsung T239 flip phone at $59.99 or the T229 slider at $79.99, which isn't bad.

But then it gets a little more complex. At $149 you can have the Samsung Gravity, a full-QWERTY slider. But your plan would be $60, presumably because you'd be texting a lot more with the full keyboard than you would with a T9 phone. OK, we can see that.

Or you can go all-in and pay $299 (!?) for a Blackberry Curve 8520. Your monthly plan would be $80 a month, but would include unlimited 3G Web access and e-mail, so it's actually a fairly decent deal in the end.

The only weird part about these new plans is that they're only available with the purchase of one of these handsets--there's no BYO phone option. And you can't buy the phones online or even at a T-Mobile store. To get these deals you have to buy from Best Buy or Wal-Mart. We aren't sure why.

These Complete prepaid plans nicely complement the Even More and Even More Plus plans that T-Mobile launched last month about this time. Now T-Mobile is offering aggressive unlimited pricing on both the traditional and prepaid fronts. And as we go into the holiday shopping frenzy the timing couldn't be better.

In addition to releasing a new touch-screen phone this week, U.S. Cellular also added a new overage protection service for customers. It's a simple concept, but it should come in handy for chatterboxes hoping to avoid costly fees for going over their monthly anytime minutes. The service will work for your text message bundles, as well.

When your minute or message use reaches 75 percent of your monthly allotment, you'll get a text message advising you of the news. If you keep talking or texting, you'll get a second message when you reach your maximum number of messages and texts. You then can decide to put down your phone, change your plan, or suffer the overage fees. The service is free, but you must sign up for it by contacting U.S. Cellular.

Motorola Droid

(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)

Shortly after we posted our Motorola Droid review, we received quite a few e-mails from CNET readers who were concerned about the phone's inability to support hands-free voice commands and dialing. Indeed, the readers were correct and Motorola's support forums continue to buzz with user complaints regarding the issue.

As part of our original Droid review we did not test whether the handset supported hands-free voice dialing. We apologize for that, but we've now updated the review to reflect our findings.

Below is the passage from the review:

Unfortunately, the Droid does not support Bluetooth voice dialing or commands. In order to use the Voice Dialer feature, you first must select the icon from the main menu (you can move on a shortcut to the home screen). After speaking your command, you then must confirm it via a prompt on the touch screen. Though we found the voice dialing feature to be quite accurate--it successfully picked up a command when we were a few feet away--it is not an ideal scenario for people who need to completely hands-free. We hope this omission is corrected in a future software update.

In the future, we will report on hands-free voice dialing in our smartphone reviews. As more state and local areas pass laws mandating hands-free driving, such capability will only grow more important.