Apple announces Black Friday deals: $101 off laptops, up to $61 off the new iPad

The finest Black Friday deals may involve risking life and limbin a Best Buy scrum, but that doesn't mean you can't save some cash shopping online. Apple's one-day shopping event has begun, with the company knocking $41 off the price of the 16GB 4th generation iPad and $61 off the 64GB model. If you'd prefer to stick with the older iPad 2, it's available with $31 taken off the tag, and you can also get money off accessories like the AirPort Extreme ($21 cheaper) and EarPods ($7 cheaper). On the computing side, Cupertino has deducted $101 off the MacBook Pro with Retina Display, MacBook Pro andMacBook Air. More here.

Instagram Records Broken on Thanksgiving

Over 10 million photos with Thanksgiving mentions were posted on Thanksgiving Day. At its peak, 200 photos per second were posted with Thanksgiving mentions. According to Instagram, every single traffic record was broken.

Were your images one of the 10 million? Post yours below. More here.

YouTube App Comes to Nintendo Wii U, Works on GamePad

Those of you who picked up a Wii U this week will likely be spending some of your free time this Thanksgiving enjoying your new console. You’ll be pleased to know, then, that you can now use it to show off your favorite YouTube videos on your HDTV, thanks to the official YouTube app.

Available from today, the app can be downloaded from directly within the Wii U main menu. Its user interface resembles that of the YouTube app released for the original Wii, but this time around, it supports 1080p media playback, as well as the Wii U’s new GamePad. Get one here.

Location Marking Stickers Guarantee People Will Put Your Stuff Back Where It Belongs

Designed for neat freaks, the obsessive compulsive, or anyone tired of borrowed gear not returning to where it belongs, these simple location marking stickers serve as the perfect reminder as to where your stuff goes.

At $17 for a pack of 60 they're a little expensive, so thankfully you DIY-minded types can accomplish the same thing with a roll of electrical tape and a pair of scissors. That is, if you can find where the last person who used them left them. More here.

This Delicious Lego Turkey Platter Will Feed No One on Thanksgiving

Tomorrow, you could spend six hours cooking a stuffed 18-pound turkey for a bunch of ungrateful family members. Ugh but so much waiting—not to mention the tedious preparation. Instead, spend considerably less time on following the step-by-step instructions for this 102-piece Lego build just posted by international man of bricks Chris McVeigh. More here.

Spill-Proof Sippy Cup Wine Glasses Solve Your Drinking Problem

Are you tired of getting drunk on wine during dinner and then spending the rest of the evening trying to keep your balance and not spilling your libations everywhere? Well there's now a simple solution to that problem that doesn't require 12 time-consuming steps.

These $15 Vino2Go wine glasses look like sophisticated stemwear, but are actually designed as durable double-walled tumblers complete with a spill-proof sippable lid. So they won't shatter when dropped, and won't leak a drop of whatever fine vintage you've filled them with. Just make sure to keep them out of the reach of toddlers. More here.

Samsung Galaxy S IV Rumored to Get 8-Core Processor, 13MP Camera, 1080p Display

With Samsung’s Galaxy S III becoming this year’s best-selling smartphone, the Korean company will obviously want to follow it up with a fourth. But how does it improve upon a device that is already way ahead of most of its competitors? Well, according to new rumors, with an 8-core processor, a 1080p display, and a 13-megapixel camera.

Let’s tackle the possibility of a 13-megapixel camera first. This seems like a more than feasible upgrade for the Galaxy S IV. Reports had suggested that the Galaxy Note II would get a 13-megapixel shooter, but Samsung was forced to use an 8-megapixel one because Sony couldn’t manufacture them fast enough.

By the time the Galaxy S IV enters production, Sony may be able to churn them out a little quicker. What’s more, it’s unlikely Samsung would release a fourth Galaxy S handset that has the same 8-megapixel camera as its last two predecessors.

As for the 1080p display, that’ll measure in at 4.99 inches, according to a source for Korean site Asiae, with a whopping 441 pixels per inch. Samsung has already been producing 1080p smartphone displays, according to recent reports, and its own flagship handset is likely to be the first to employ one.

What about the 8-core processor? Well, that’s a different story. The Galaxy S III was one of the first smartphones to offer a quad-core processor, and it’s plenty fast enough for the things we do on our devices in today’s world. That may change over time, but for the foreseeable future, a quad-core CPU is just fine.

With that said, adding an 8-core processor to the Galaxy S IV seems crazy to us. Not only is it entirely unnecessary, but just think how quickly it’ll kill your battery — especially when coupled with a 4.99-inch 1080p display.

It’s probably going to be some time yet before we see the Galaxy S IV — its predecessor was only released five months ago — so expect these rumors to change a lot over the next few months.

Are you looking forward to the Galaxy S IV? More here.

Western Digital Ships 4TB WD Black Hard Drive

The 4TB hard drives that we've seen gradually filter into the marketplace have come with a few snags for desktop users; they're usually either external drives we'd never boot from or pokey internal models not meant for anything speed-intensive. Western Digital doesn't want us settling. 

It's shipping a 4TB version of its WD Black desktop drive that holds nothing back for the sake of the extra storage, spinning at a healthy 7,200RPM while packing 64MB of cache, dual processing and a two-stage actuator that together keep the drive working at full burn. At $339, the SATA 6Gbps drive undoubtedly carries a premium in trying to be the best of all worlds; it may be worth the expense for performance-minded types who've been out of options (and capacity) for awhile. More here.

Here’s What You Need to Know About the Next Robocop Movie

I hardly remember the original Robocop movie other than I thought he looked freaking cool. The upcoming remake of Robocop may have die-hard fans worried but I'm always for any sort of movie that marries futuristic weapons with robots and humans.

This sizzle reel shows some concept art for Robocop along with director Jose Padilha's thoughts of the whole thing. Joel Kinnaman, who's going to be Robocop, also pops up to discuss his take on remaking the movie. Are you guys excited for this movie or do you worry that it's going to ruin everything? More here.

Call of Duty: Black Ops II Rakes in $500 Million on Launch Day

Call of Duty: Black Ops II is being said to have earned an Earth-shattering $500 million on the first day alone. All across the board, retailers are claiming the biggest selling game launch of all time. Gamestop sold one million copies through midnight launches alone. Amazon has never seen anything like it before.

And of course, CEOs are out to compare their earnings next to movies rather than the competition within their own markets. Activion’s Bobby Kotick seems more concerned with Star Wars and Harry Potter than Halo or Battlefield:

“With first day sales of over half a billion dollars worldwide, we believe Call of Duty is the biggest entertainment launch of the year for the fourth year in a row. Life-to-date sales for the Call of Duty franchise have exceeded worldwide theatrical box office receipts for ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Star Wars,’ the two most successful movie franchises of all time. Given the challenged macro-economic environment, we remain cautious about the balance of 2012 and 2013.”

More here

More Than 1 Million Apps Have Been Submitted to Apple’s App Store

More than 1 million applications have been submitted to Apple’s iTunes App Store since it opened its doors in 2008. The milestone was noted by Appsfire, which tracks the iTunes App Store.

493,289 of all of the applications submitted were paid apps and the company estimates that there are currently 736,247 applications in the app store, 45 percent of which require a payment to own. Since that’s far below the 1 million figure, one has to assume that thousands of apps have either vanished or were rejected entirely by Apple. A report at the end of October revealed that Google’s Play Store now has more than 700,000 applications, too, which suggests it’s quickly catching up to Apple’s ecosystem offering. More here.

Are Facebook and Yahoo Teaming Up on Search?

Are Facebook and Yahoo getting ready to go in on a search venture together? According to a report from The Sunday Telegraph sourced by anonymous insiders, yes. Rumor has it that Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg have been chatting about working together to maybe get a search engine going.

Ever since Mayer took the helm at Yahoo, the company has been taking a bit of a turn towards search, and by teaming up with Facebook, it may be able to get itself back into the game full time. A partnership with Facebook could get Yahoo the kind of traffic it needs to work on its algorithm, and Facebook has been expressing interesting in getting into search for a while now.

At the moment, Yahoo relies on Bing, and signed up to do so for a whole ten years, only three of which are up. A search agreement with Facebook would likely put some stress on that deal, quite possibly bringing it to a breaking point. Of course these rumors of an alliance are only that, rumors. And there's no way of telling how far along any actual negotations may be. More here.

Apple Now Has a Patent On Turning Digital Pages

I hope you're not a huge fan of skeumorphic virtual page turning. If you are, I hope you have an iOS device. Why? Because Apple just got a patent for that. Yup, Apple has a patent on turning fake pages.

The patent is—as valuable patents tend to be—both simple and extremely broad. The design patent merely covers the sequential animation of the frames show in the three figures, but makes no mention of what this animation applies to. So this patent is actually broader than just an eBook thing, although that's probably it's only use. On the other hand though, it should only apply to that specific animation, not others like it.

This is just a design patent, so it's not like Apple's ownership of this patent will keep other eReaders from providing functionality; it'll just keep them from looking like books while doing it. Or force them to simulate page turning from the top corner instead of the bottom. Granted, this isn't world shattering stuff, but it all seems pretty stupid. Is this really stuff that we need to be patenting? More here.

Sina Weibo Exceeds 400 Million Users, Sees Increasing Mobile Traffic

Microblogging site Sina Weibo, China's answer to Twitter, reported a pretty dazzling statistic in its third quarter results: it now boasts over 400 million registered users. It can't be sure how many are active, of course, but it's still a vast number considering appeal is localized to the People's Republic. It also means is winning the popularity contest with social media competitor Tencent, although it humbly acknowledges their services are somewhat different. The company's platform is still evolving, and it's only recently seen mobile usage exceed computers, so is shifting product focus accordingly. More here.

What the Hell Is China Building Here?

Not happy with building mysterious gigantic structures in the desert, the Chinese are now building inter-dimensional portals in the middle of their cities. What the hell is this 515-foot (157 meters) high metal structure in the the city of Fushun, in northeast China's Liaoning province?

Oh wait, I know, it's just another example of the China's building craze, the one that has got them to build entire ghost cities made of thousands of pre-fab buildings.

It's made of an astounding 3,000 tons of steel and it will glow at night—decorated with 12,000 LED lights. According to Fushun Municipal Government's officials, this titanic structure does absolutely nothing except serve as an elevated sighting position. They claim it is pretty "landscape architecture"—like the Eiffel Tower. It uses four elevators to take people to the top.

The Chinese media has been harsh about the building after a blogger posted these photos on Sina Weibo, which is the country's "largest microblog platform." Not surprising, since this thing costs $16 million.

The ciy's defense: "there's not enough people to build entertainment, so we just build something pretty, OK?! ARE WE COOL NOW!". Or something like that. They also claimed that they don't have enough citizens to build other more useful buildings. They have all the hospitals, recreation centers and municipal buildings they need, so they probably decided to blow their excess budget in this thing.

According to Fushun's Urban Construction Bureau, the "Ring of Life" means "a round sky and a path leading to a paradise in heaven." More here.

Apple Stock Falls to Lowest Price Since May

Apple’s stock has been tanking for the past several weeks, perhaps adjusting to market conditions. Here’s a trivial explanation for why a stock price might fall even when a company appears to be performing well: sometimes in a weaker market a firm’s stock price will decline to meet demand expectations, suggesting that perhaps it was too high before.

One might assume, in that scenario, that it will climb back up to somewhere between its current low and its previous high. Right now, it’s trading at the lowest price since May, six months ago, as noticed by 9to5Mac. The stock price is around $529 at the time of publication, and its market cap is at $499 billion. In August, the company became the most valuable company in the world when its market cap hit $621 billion on a stock price of $663. It closed just above $702 in September. More here.

This Keyboard’s Numpad Doubles as a Gesture-Friendly Touchpad

If you want to take advantage of all the handy gesture shortcuts in Windows 8, but would rather skip the tablet or touchscreen display, Elecom's got a new space-saving keyboard that's right up your alley. It's a full-sized wireless keyboard complete with a dedicated number pad that does double-duty as a gesture-compatible touchpad.

When it drops in December for around $105, the Elecom TK-FDP055BK will also be able to be used like a laptop's trackpad for controlling the cursor and performing more common gestures like scrolling. But at the push of a button it will revert back to functioning like a typical number pad. Accountant-types who work with numbers all day might not appreciate the lack of physical keys, but the average PC user should find the added functionality more useful, particularly if they've already updated to the latest version of Windows. More here.

Skype Updated with iPhone 5 Support

The iOS 6 version of Skype has been officially updated to support the larger 4-inch display on the iPhone 5. Prior to today, the application showed borders along the top and bottom of the screen, which was a bit frustrating since it didn’t provide an full, more immersed experience. Skype also said it fixed several bugs in the application, although it’s initially unclear what bugs were prevalent. As always, Skype is available from the iTunes App Store for free. More here.

Baseball Bat Flashlight

You can pretend you're just a baseball fanatic, or prefer batting practice at night, but there's really only one reason someone is going to buy this heavy-duty machined aluminum flashlight shaped like a baseball bat. It's for protection—or more likely—for delivering physical intimidation to one's enemies under the darkness of night.

It's available in both 15-inch and 23-inch lengths for $36 and $46 respectively, but most will probably opt for the longer, heavier version. It's got a 3-watt LED bulb and various flashing modes, but again, these are features the flashlight's true target market probably cares nothing about. More here.

Are These the Most Popular Keys on a Keyboard?

In a cute, little art project, this keyboard supposedly shows the most used keys on a keyboard. Think of it as an infographic IRL. Do you agree that these buttons are the most popular key? I swear I use C more than that! More here.