Holiday season is upon us! Before you break out your winter jacket and brave the cold this Black Friday, take a look at the Pulse Holiday Gift Guide. We're curating some of the best deals from TechBargains, LogicBuy and Deal News, so you can skip the long lines to get your gadgets from home this year. For something rare, handmade or even hand-picked - take a look at Etsy, Robb Report and Polyvore. Of course, our partners Enterase, YA.JO.MIA and Werd curate gifts all year long, but this year is the time to stock up. Read more about our gift and deal curators below!

Robb Report: Featuring the latest in international luxury, Robb Report features the ultimate gifts. 

Enterase: The buyers guide for men, featuring mens gadgets, shopping, online lifestyle magazine, and gift ideas.

YA.JO.MIA: A lifestyle magazine and buyers guide  for the modern woman.

Werd: A men's gear blog bringing unique finds and gift ideas to you daily.

Polyvore: Browse and shop looks created by a global community of independent trendsetters and stylists.

Etsy: Buy handmade or vintage items, art and supplies on the world's most vibrant handmade marketplace. 

TechBargains: Browse top bargains on technology products.

LogicBuy: The best hot deals, coupons, news, reviews, shopping bargains to save money.

Deal News: Where everyday is Black Friday, Deal News brings you the best deals, coupons, and promotional offers from over 2000 online retailers every day.

Thanksgiving is upon us and while we know you love reading the news on Pulse, it's that time of year to browse new recipes to make a splash at your family dinner. Go to the featured section on Pulse to find our most popular food and recipe sites in the Pulse Recipes category. We're featuring our favorite food sites like Bon Appetit and Saveur and recipe sites Yummly and Punchfork. For more about the sources that give us hunger pangs, keep reading!

Bon Appetit: Cook with Confidence. Enjoy your Food. Find recipes, cooking tips, tools, and ingredients, watch slide shows and videos. 

CHOW: Your home for recipes, restaurant reviews, food videos, and cooking how-to on the web.

Food Network Dish: Go behind the scenes at food network featuring your favorite chefs, shows, recipes, events, and more!

Leite's Culinaria: Educating and entertaining cooks and readers of all levels who are interested in the diverse world of food. 

Programming is a difficult feat.  As Jean, one of our engineers, noted, some believe it's an unattainable superpower.  Superpower, yes.  But Jean also declared that it's very attainable!  The rest of the Pulse team could not agree more.  With hard work and perseverance, learning to program can be done.  And if you're interested in learning the tricks that our engineers use to bring you Pulse, check out the Pulse Engineering Blog.

On this blog, you'll discover helpful tips on developing for different screen sizes, analyzing lots of data to uncover top stories, and design tips every programmer should keep in mind.  There are many sources online, according to our lead Android developer, Albert.  There's no need to pay an exorbitant amount of money to learn. Check out Stackoverflow and the Android Development blog if you're an Android fan.  The coding community is very collaborative so you can always find folks interested in sharing their knowledge.  

The weekend is nearly here and you can start becoming a master of programming now so hop to it and peruse the Pulse Engineering Blog.  

Happy coding and happy Friday!

-The Pulse Team 

Today is a big day for Pulse. After months of hard work, we are excited to announce our partnership with Amazon today. One of the biggest devices of the holiday season, the Amazon Kindle Fire, is featuring Pulse as one of the only apps to be pre-loaded on the device upon shipping. When you receive your Kindle Fire, you will see the Pulse logo right on your main screen. No need to visit the App Store, no need to download anything. Pulse will be available right out of the box – just tap on the Pulse logo and get started. 

Here is a sneak peak of how Pulse looks on the Kindle device. All the latest content will show up on the Kindle carousel, alongside your books, magazines and other content. Also shown above is the home view of the app, which will display subscriptions to your favorite publishers. Clicking on an article shows a clean, elegant rendering of the news article. To enjoy the beautiful Pulse experience for Kindle Fire, head over to Amazon to order now.  

Pulse for Kindle Fire joins our existing family of applications including iPad, iPhone, Android, Nook and Windows Phone. 

Thanks to the Amazon team for making this happen. It's an honor.

- Pulse Team

This week we're featuring many of our (and your) favorites on Pulse. No matter the category, from health to gaming, you can find our most popular sources in the Featured section now. For what's hot and why, keep reading more about our top sources!

USA TODAY: USA TODAY is a multi-platform news and information media company. Founded in 1982, USA TODAY’s mission is to serve as a forum for better understanding and unity to help make the USA truly one nation. Add the top news from USA TODAY to Pulse to connect and engage in the national conversation.

THE ATLANTIC: Founded in 1857, The Atlantic is America’s top destination for brave thinking on the most important issues of our time. One of the first magazine brands to launch on the web in the early 1990s, The Atlantic has evolved into a multi-media must-read, offering ground-breaking insights into the worlds of politics, social trends, business, technology and arts.

NBC NEWS: NBC News has been a leading source of global news and information for more than 75 years. NBC News operates around the clock to provide immediate coverage and in-depth reporting of major events to a worldwide audience. 

INC. MAGAZINE: Inc. is the premier resource for entrepreneurs looking for the advice, insight and inspiration they need to lead growing companies. Add Inc. to Pulse from the Business category.

Staying informed can get a little daunting at times, especially when you have so many great sources to choose from (Pulse's catalog is 200 publishers and counting).  For some inspiration, one of our co-founders, Ankit, shared his favorite sources.  Have a gander and perhaps you'll gain some new favorites from Ankit's pages. 

News:

Admittedly, Ankit doesn't spend as much time here as he likes but when he does visit this page, he's getting the most important news.  A few news giants he reads includes The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, and TIME. 

Tech: 

Ankit spends most of his time on the tech page.  On this page are popular sources such as TechCrunch, GigaOM, and Gizmodo.  Some must haves include the "Top Stories in Technology," as it collects the most shared and read stories, and Hacker News.  Hacker News only shows headlines when viewed on the web but when reading it on Pulse, it's customized to render beautifully for easy viewing. 

Fun:

Ankit's fun page comprises a wide collection of his interests.  He has the Thomas Hawks photography site, AskMen, the perfect men's site according to Ankit, and fashion blogs like the Sartorialist and AskMen Fashion to keep his styling sharp.

Looking for more sources?  Drop Ankit a line on Twitter and he'll send some sources your way.

This week we're featuring some of our top science picks on Pulse. From Popular Science to Discovery News, we've got everything to keep you ahead of the curve on astronomy, evolution, health, the environment and more! To add these picks on Pulse, head over to our featured section and tap away.

Wired Science: News for your neurons. What’s new on the front lines of science, from deep space to DNA sequencing.

NATURE: As the most watched documentary film series on public television, NATURE delivers the best in original natural history films to audiences nationwide.

Popular Science: Your ultimate online portal to the future. Reporting on what's new and what's next in technology, science, gadgets, space, green tech and more.

Discovery News: Discovery News digs deep into our world's mysteries. Join us to explore current events and uncover the science behind the headlines. We Dig. You Discover.

Smithsonian Science: Featuring articles, photos and videos of Smithsonian scientific research that is seriously amazing and pushing the boundaries of human knowledge.

Discover Magazine: Science news, articles, current events and future views on technology, space, environment, health and medical, more.

KQED Quest: Explore science, nature and environment stories from Northern California and beyond with KQED's multimedia series.

io9: A daily publication that covers science, science fiction and the future. 

Ever wonder who uses Pulse?  Because we do!  To get to know some of our users, we're launching a new series--Pulse Profiles.  Over the next few weeks, we'll sit down with some of our enthusiastic users and see how Pulse fits into their different lifestyles.  Our first profile features Dan Wasyluk, founder of CollegeBlender.  Some of you may have seen his Inc. profile where he shared how Pulse helps him, ahem, get a pulse on content that matters to him.  Keep reading for his thoughts on bringing an idea into fruition and sustaining it with Pulse.   

Q:  What is CollegeBlender and how did it come to be?

CollegeBlender is a source for students to engulf themselves in the college experience by decreasing the friction in getting to know your peers.  We aggregate blogs and we’re working on expanding to different social media verticals.  You can get an accurate picture of what college is actually like because users can bump posts up or dump posts down.  We try to build a real community for students to tap into what’s happening around them.   

I started CollegeBlender because as an undergrad, I had trouble searching for blogs that were relevant to my community.  Blogging was the hot thing at the time and I knew there were plenty of bloggers at Rochester Institute of Technology, RIT, since it's a technical school.  Now that CollegeBlender exists, college students can easily find blogs and other sources relevant to their school.  

Q:  How does Pulse integrate into your life?

I use Pulse daily.  As a software engineer and founder at CollegeBlender, I’m interested in tech, social media, higher education, and the intersection between those three.  My Pulse pages are structured around these topics I care about.  Part of CollegeBlender is spreading news that is relevant so I need to stay current on those different industries and Pulse’s interface allows me to surface all these topics.  With the multitouch, scrolling, and grid-feature, I can take in information incredibly fast.  Also, sharing is easy as you don’t need to leave the app to do it.  

Q: What features would you like to see in Pulse?

I would love to see user pages for people with a Pulse account--get friends clued into what I’m all about.  That'd be awesome.  The Pulse team has been pretty responsive to user feedback so I'm excited to see what's next. 

Want to hear more of Dan's musings?  Follow him on Twitter. 

Can't get enough from the folks bringing Pulse to life?  Meet our newest engineer!  Ketaki Deo joins Pulse from Kabam, an interactive mobile game company, and is working with Filip to bring exciting features to Pulse on the web.  I sat down with our newest web maven to learn about her background and hear her thoughts on Pulse's future.  Keep reading to learn more. 

Q: How did you become interested in web design?

A: Before grad school, I did a lot of backend work.  Then at Georgia Tech, I took a Human Interaction UX/UI course and it fit my personality much better.  That's how I got into web design and the mobile space.  The things happening with frontend mobile engineering is really exciting with web, CSS, and HTML5.

Q: What are your favorite sources on Pulse?

A: I have so many favorite sources!  I like "Top Stories in Tech" because it aggregates everything.  Being a techie, TechCrunch is something I follow a lot and then I'd say Design Taxi because of its design-oriented articles.  

Q: What have you liked about working at Pulse? 

A: The learning environment is really cool.  We have a lot of speakers and design workshops which makes it something more than a regular workspace.  I also truly enjoy the experience that Pulse provides.  I took a computer and journalism class in grad school that sparked my interest in developing a user friendly experience for news consumers.  I feel very lucky to get to do this on a daily basis. 

Q: How do you see Pulse growing?

A: I see Pulse becoming the go-to application for content consumption.  I want to see everyone using it because it's easy to use and also easy on the eyes--a designer's dream!

-- There you have it folks!  Ketaki has some big dreams for Pulse! For our web aficionados, stay tuned for amazing updates.  For more thoughts from Ketaki, follow her on Twitter.  

Thanks,

Karen & The Pulse Team