Samsung Galaxy Note II Global Sales Exceed 5 Million Units

Samsung announced Sunday that sales of its 5.5-inch phablet have exceeded 5 million worldwide since it first began selling two months ago. The South-Korean consumer electronics company stated the sales of the Note II have exceeded far more quickly than its predecessor which saw worldwide sales reach the same 5 million mark in five months after its release.

Apple just added the Note II on the long list of devices it is asking the court to include with its recent win against Samsung. It is no surprise the Note II is selling at such a quick pace considering its large screen, multi-tasking, and speedy quad-core processor. More here.

BlackBerry 10-N Series Parts Leaked

With BlackBerry 10 and its associated devices slated to be released early next year, news and leaks keep hitting the Internet with increased frequency. Last week a BlackBerry 10 L-Seriesimage made the rounds and now this weekend we get treated to an alleged image of N-Series keyboard parts.

Immediately one change that is noticeable is the elimination of a curved keyboard that previous QWERTY BlackBerry devices have sported. Which makes sense considering a curved physical keyboard takes real estate that could otherwise be used for a larger display or be consolidated for smaller form factor.

For BlackBerry users out there, are you likely to go with touchscreen or QWERTY keyboard? More here.

Facebook Proposes Changes, Closer to Instagram Integration

Facebook Inc is looking to make some changes to its policies and terms of services, starting with eliminated the current process that allows users of the social network to vote on changes.

Additional changes include who can email users, opening the emailing network to everyone, not just to those in your immediate social network. When asked about potential spammers gaming the system, Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said Facebook will monitor user interaction and feedback to improve services.

Finally, Facebook hopes to merge Instagram and Facebook profiles in to one shared social network profile, making it users to share photos through Facebook.

These changes are meant to improve Facebook profitability, especially since Facebook’s stock has taken a beating for not being able to monetize at a rate that investors had expected.

Through this week, Facebook is allowing users to comment on whether to approve these changes. If the more than 7,000 comments are made the changes will be put to a vote, if vote reaches 30% yeses then it is approved.

What do you think of the proposed changes? More here.

PSY’s Gangnam Style Is Now The Most Watched Video on YouTube Ever

Justin Bieber’s “Baby” has been knocked out of the throne as the most watched YouTube video of all time. South Korean pop-star PSY’s “Gangnam Style” now has more than 806,283,000 views on YouTube — and that’s just since July, when it was published to the popular video site. According to Billboard, the video also has the most “likes” ever (5.37 million). Bieber’s “Baby” only has 1.4 million likes. More here.

Shopping From Mobile Devices Spiked 65.3% This Thanksgiving

Mobile devices, including tablets and smartphones, are more and more used as a way to purchase goods remotely. Instead of running off from Thanksgiving dinner early to hit up deals at local stores, shoppers this year were purchasing products directly from their mobile devices.

According to IBM Smarter Commerce, mobile shopping jumped 65.3% on Thanksgiving this year from the same day last year. iPad owners were specifically responsible for 10.7% of all mobile purchases, too. As The Boston Globe suggests, mobile devices not only help us make purchases without having to sit at a computer or get in long lines at a brick and mortar store, but they also allow us to compare prices across multiple outlets very quickly.

Did you sneak your phone or tablet under the Thanksgiving table to make a purchase? If so, for what? More here.

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.