NEW YORK – This weekend, after the turkey is carved and the football games have been watched, there’s only one thing left to do: Shop. The Friday after Thanksgiving, known as Black Friday, marks the official start of the Christmas shopping season and ushers in a frenzy of sales and deals for eager shoppers.

But instead of waiting until today or Friday to find out what deals retailers are offering, you can go online right now to get a head start on the holiday sales. There is a spate of new Web sites dedicated to publishing Black Friday specials well before the famed shopping day.

These sites, such as www.bfads.net, www.blackfriday.info, blackfriday.gottadeal.com and www.blackfridayads.com, compile the newspaper ads retailers will run for Black Friday and post them online.

For example, a Home Depot ad on the sites reveals that a 32-inch LCD HDTV will be on sale for $478, while CompUSA will offer a 17-inch Acer Media Center Notebook for $699.99 on Friday from 5 a.m. to noon only.

The sites rely on various tipsters for their content. Jon Vincent, owner of BlackFriday.info, says that he receives tips from various company insiders or people who work in the distribution chain of the ad’s printing process. Many will send in photos of the actual ads themselves.

How accurate are the ads on these sites? Vincent has maintained the site for three years – and in the first two years, he claims its postings were 100 percent accurate. It’s been so accurate, in fact, that Best Buy asked him to remove the ads his site had obtained, threatening to file a takedown notice with the site’s ISP under the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Vincent says that he has researched the issue with his lawyers and believes that sale prices are facts and thus not copyrightable. However, BlackFriday.info still removed the Best Buy ads, telling users that “we do not want to risk having this Web site shut down due to a DMCA takedown notice.”

But some retailers actually like the extra publicity these sites afford them. Representatives of Ace Hardware told Vincent that they’re thrilled the ad leaked out, because the store is not always top of mind for Black Friday shoppers.

You don’t even have to brave the stores to take advantage of some of the deals, Vincent said. You can buy some items directly online and even before Friday. The preview sites will provide the links if that’s the case.