holiday

It appears Amazon will have its much-anticipated tablet on the market to challenge Apple before the end of the year.

Taiwan-based component makers say the online retailer will launch a tablet PC as early as August, with global sales for 2011 pegged at 4 million units, according to a report from tech site DigiTimes. With monthly orders expected to hit 700,000 to 800,000 units a month, the tablet's launch is timed to take advantage of the pre-Thanksgiving shopping rush, DigiTimes' sources pointed out.

Taiwan-based Quanta Computer has reportedly already received orders from Amazon to build the retail … Read more

After a rocky start with Android, AT&T has slowly started embracing the platform and its potential. Starting earlier this year with the Atrix 4G and continuing right up to the new Samsung Infuse 4G, the carrier is showing great momentum. Things look to get even better this summer as a trio of new HTC devices are expected to come to market, including a 10-inch tablet.

Over the last few days, preliminary details and pictures have emerged from two oft-reliable sources, Pocketnow and 911Sniper, both pointing at a solid Android horizon for AT&T and HTC.

The first handset to keep an eye on will be the HTC Lead, with its 1.2GHz dual-core processor, 4.3-inch display, 768MB RAM, and a 5-megapixel camera. Falling right in line with today's top Android phones, the Lead also looks to run Android 2.3.4 (Gingerbread) and offers support for Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g/n) and Bluetooth 3.0 when it arrives. As terrific as this one sounds, it's actually lacking when compared to its bigger brother, the HTC Holiday.

The Holiday is expected to have a slight edge in nearly every aspect, putting it at the top of the Android food chain when it debuts. Among the details anticipated for this handset are a larger, 4.5-inch qHD display (960x540), 1GB RAM, and an 8-megapixel camera and front-facing 1.3-megapixel camera. Like the HTC Lead, the Holiday will also run Android 2.3.4, presumably with the latest version of HTC's Sense UI. … Read more

St. Patrick's Day traditions: wearing green-colored clothes, drinking green beer, celebrating the Irish, and, now, flinging birds at pigs. (Kinda fits, don't you think?)

That's right: Rovio just rolled out a St. Patrick's Day-themed update to Angry Birds Seasons, with 15 new levels, two Golden Eggs, a "St. Paddy's Day surprise," and St. Patrick's Day greeting cards you can send to friends via Facebook.

(The above link takes you to the iPhone version. It's also available for iPad, and Android users can get the update starting tomorrow, March 11.)

The "… Read more

Did you know that my birthday is on St. Patrick's Day? It is; it's true. And did you know that my favorite iPhone game (though it's on other platforms now) is Angry Birds? Also true. I was hoping that Rovio, makers of the game, would continue the holiday theme it's been on lately with Angry Birds Seasons and publish a St. Pat's version of the game for my birthday. And The Unofficial Apple Weblog says that, according to Rovio CEO Peter Vesterbacka, it's doing just that.

Vesterbacka said the game should be "very … Read more

Best Buy posted disappointing sales during the critical holiday season.

The retailer reported today that it generated $8.4 billion in revenue during the five-week period ended January 1, representing a 1.6 percent decline year over year. Same-store sales--a key barometer of how the company is operating--were down 4 percent globally. In the U.S., same-store sales were down 5 percent.

In comparison, December 2009 same-store sales were up 8.2 percent globally and 9.3 percent in the U.S.

Domestically, Best Buy's declines were "driven by softness in entertainment software and televisions," the company … Read more

The weekend encompassing New Year's Eve and New Year's Day led to a record number of photographs uploaded to Facebook, according to a tweet from the social network: "People celebrated New Year's on Facebook by uploading a record 750 million photos over the weekend." Looks like there were many people eager to document champagne and revelry.

Last we heard, Facebook averages about 100 million photo uploads per day. Thanks in large part to its feature that let users "tag" their friends in photos, it's become the biggest photo-sharing service in the world.… Read more

It's tit for tat in the world of e-readers these days.

After Amazon recently announced that the Kindle had become the company's best-selling product of all time, Barnes & Noble announced today that, "with millions of Nook eReading devices sold, the line has become the company's biggest bestseller ever in its nearly 40-year history."

The company also announced that even as its online sales of paper books continues to grow, it now sells more digital than physical books on its Web site, BN.com, which is not surprising. And while some consumers complained of being … Read more

Online stores scored record sales this holiday season, but it's not just low prices and a tentatively improving economy that may have brought in the buyers.

Though customer satisfaction with the top 40 online retailers dipped 1 percent this year, scoring 78 out of 100, that number still proved much higher than in prior years, according to survey results released yesterday by ForeSee Results.

Among the online businesses tracked in ForeSee's E-Retail Satisfaction Index (U.S. Holiday Edition), Amazon, Netflix, QVC.com, Avon.com, LLBean.com, Newegg.com, and Apple.com were highest in customer satisfaction, each scoring … Read more