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Reported on 9to5mac.com, the released beta of iOS 5.1 with new firmware for the iPad. Likely the new iPads launching in March – having appeared months ago, it’s possibe this iPad 2,4 could be the Sprint version that Apple recently completed work on – but only if it has WiMAX. A 3G-only Sprint iPad would be the same hardware as the Verizon iPad. Other options include an iPad for China’s TD-LTE, an early LTE model or a dual-mode device like the current iPhone 4S. The rumored March iPad 3 launch quickly approaching so there will be more information to come.

It seems that e-commerce spending is up 26% to a record $816 Million. From the looks of the reports Amazon gets the nod as the most visited retailer online. As we heard on Saturday, IBM reported a 24 percent increase in online sales for Black Friday this year. ComScore is announcing even stronger results for e-commerce, with Black Friday seeing $816 million in online sales, making it the heaviest online spending day to date in 2011 and representing a 26 percent increase versus Black Friday 2010 ($648 million spent). ComScore says fifty million Americans visited online retail sites on Black Friday, which is an increase of 35 percent versus year ago. Each of the top five retail sites achieved double-digit gains in visitors vs. last year, led by Amazon. Walmart ranked second, followed by Best Buy, Target and Apple.
This is a great sign that maybe things will be picking up in the economy soon. Even I got in on the e-shopping. Although it was on Saturday I picked up a nice GPS for about $120 bucks saving over $80. Sometimes when the deal is good enough you just got to grab it.

The highly anticipated sequel to ASUS’ convertible Android tablet, the Eee Pad Transformer, is now available for pre-order in North America. Set for release some time next month, the Transformer Prime features a 1.3GHz quad-core Tegra 3 processor, Android 3.2 Honeycomb, a 10.1-inch display, 1GB of RAM, an 8-megapixel rear camera, a 1.2-megapixel front-facing camera, a microHDMI-out port and SD card support. ASUS has also promised that an update to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich isn’t far off. The tablet will cost $499.99 for the 32GB model and $599.99 for the 64GB model, and it is available in gray or champagne. ASUS had trouble keeping the original Transformer on store shelves for quite some time after it was released, so pre-orders are definitely recommended for those who hope to snag a tablet out of the first batch to ship.

Millions of Netflix subscribers received an email about the price fixing issue. Well it looks like in a ruling handed down yesterday in San Francisco, a federal judge dismissed a class action suit that accused Netflix of colluding with Wal-Mart.com in 2004 to divvy up the DVD market. According to the complaint, the CEO’s of the two companies struck a deal over dinner in which Netflix agreed not to sell DVD’s if Wal-Mart said it wouldn’t rent them. Lawyers for the plaintiffs said that the scheme resulted in Netflix subscribers overpaying for DVDs between 2005 and 2010. The dismissal is a surprise because Netflix’s alleged conspirator agreed to settle the suit earlier this year. The email last week announced that Wal-Mart had set aside $27 million and provided a website that will soon announce the terms of collection. In her ruling, U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton said the existence of a promotion agreement between the two companies coupled with Wal-Mart’s decision to exit the online DVD market shortly after, was not enough to establish an automatic antitrust violation. She added that a court would normally determine the effects of the agreement of the agreement on the market—but there was no reason to do so. The court had this to say on the issue: ” no reasonable juror could believe that Netflix would have lowered its 3U price to $15.99 in response to continued competition from Walmart, whose 3U price was set at $17.49 – particularly when those facts demonstrate that Netflix chose not to lower its price in the face of Blockbuster’s $14.99 price cut, despite the fact that Blockbuster had a higher market share than Walmart.”

Well it has been said that the online deals will be very poor this year but there are still deals to be had and Microsoft has some nice ones. Here is some of the highlights about what you can grab from the Microsoft store.

• Samsung RC512 laptop running Windows 7: $499, normally $799.
• Xbox Ultimate Gaming Bundle: Up to $200 off.
• Kinect Sensor Holiday Bundle (with Fruit Ninja, Gunstringer and Kinect Adventures): $99.99, normally $149.99. (Not available online.)
• Free Windows Phone with a two-year service agreement. (The site doesn’t yet name the model or carrier.)
• Office Home and Student: $119.99, normally $149.99
• Up to $40 off Office for Mac.
• Sony S137GX Notebook: $599, normally $999. (Online-only deal)
• Acer Iconia Dual-Screen Touchbook: $599, normally $999.
• Price cuts on games including Madden 2012, Halo Anniversary and others (available in stores only).

9to5Mac has released all of the sales for black Friday the Apple store. I don’t think any of these will blow anyone away but if you were in the market to buy and an Apple or an iPad/iPod this could be the time to save the most money on them.

The deals on the Mac end cover the iMac, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro, while the iPod nano and iPod touch are the discounted iPod offerings. The Macs will be $101 less, the iPads will go from $41-$61 discounts depending on capacity (16GB, 32GB, 64GB), the iPod nano will shave off $11 for both 8GB and 16GB storage sizes, the iPod touch will follow the iPad’s lead of bigger discounts for bigger capacities, ranging from $21-$41 discounts. Above are photos from 9to5Mac on what you expect to save.

On the Apple in-house accessory list is $11 off the iPad 2 Smart Cover (comes out to $28 for the polyurethane and $58 for the leather), $11 off ($58 in total for each) for the Apple Wireless Keyboard and Apple Wireless Magic Trackpad, $5 off ($45 total) for a $50 iTunes/App Store/iBookstore gift card, in addition to discounts on the AirPort Extreme, Time Capsule, and AirPort Express. Third-party accessories such as Western Digital hard drives, the mophie JuicePack Air, Speck CandyShell iPhone 4/4S case, Jawbone Up, a Griffin Universal Remote Control system for the iPod touch, the Jawbone Jambox, a Phillips clock radio, and more are also on sale

Tumblr has been very against the online piracy act and they started a phone call attack. Over 87,000 people called to put their two cents in to this act. Tumblr staff had this to say The well-intentioned, but immensely flawed “Stop Online Piracy Act” is still in the House Judiciary Committee. The hearing was yesterday and now members will debate and bring amendments to the bill. The Committee will reconvene in a few weeks — the date has yet to be scheduled. Nothing has been brought to a final vote. Everything is still very much in play. Tumblr will keep you posted on what’s going on and what you can do to help. But for now, Tumblr want to thank you.

So even with all of these new tablets out a study shows that iPad owns the tablet market and that 88% of all the web traffic comes from guess what? An Apple iPad. Go figure right? I mean they did really start the tablet revolution and everyone else is trying to just keep up. I think many people are going to but the cheaper alternatives like the Kindle Fire or the Barnes and Noble Nook but I still don’t think that will dent the numbers of the iPad too much. So here is some interesting facts I’ve learned that I want to share with you all.

• Earlier this year we learned that iPad had close to 1% of all web browsing traffic, which put it ahead of its nearest competitor by almost 53 times. That number had in the latest stats from NetMarketshare from October 2011 grown to 1.58%.
• Ooyala reported that iPad accounted for the “vast majority of video played on a tablet in Q3 [2011].” In fact, iPad stood for 95.7% of total video hours streamed.
• In StatCounter’s data for web traffic and operating systems, it has separated out small screen devices from the operating system statistics. But tablet-sized devices remain, so this way we can see the actual share of iOS for iPad, Android on tablets, etc. Back in April 2011, iPad accounted for 1.18% of operating systems used to browse the web in the U.S. That number is 1.93% now in November.

In the past I written about this issue and online piracy and have also brought up the online piracy act. Well it looks like the sea of change maybe happening as more are coming out against this act. People of note are Nancy Pelosi and Darrell Issa. “Need to find a better solution than #SOPA #DontBreakTheInternet,” the liberal Democratic House leader tweeted on Thursday, in response to a tweeter who asked: “Where do you stand on internet censoring and #SOPA?”
And, from the right, California Rep. Darrell Issa has told The Hill newspaper that the House of Representative’s anti-piracy act has no chance of passage.
Congress, the leading Republican lawmaker said, is “realizing there are so many unintended consequences that they can’t just use Google as a piñata and bash on it here.”
There is, he said, “a very broad coalition from far left to far right who realize this will hurt innovation, something we can’t afford to do. And there are other ways to accomplish what they say is their goal.”
While Pelosi hasn’t elaborated on Twitter, her office did put out this statement early Thursday afternoon:
“Leader Pelosi strongly supports protecting intellectual property. The problem of rogue websites duping consumers is a real one and deserves Congress’ attention. The internet, human rights, and cybersecurity communities have raised concerns that SOPA doesn’t strike the right balance that protects the needs of copyright holders and internet users alike. Tens of thousands jobs in all the affected industries require us to find an effective solution that all stakeholders can support.”

Google Music has finally launched and there is plenty to talk about for all you Android users out there. You can get it on the Android marketplace.

The store offers more than 13 million tracks from artists on Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI, and the global independent rights agency Merlin as well as over 1,000 prominent independent labels including Merge Records, Warp Records, Matador Records, XL Recordings and Naxos. Google has also partnered with the world’s largest digital distributors of independent music including IODA, INgrooves, The Orchard and Believe Digital.

You can purchase individual songs or entire albums right from your computer or your Android device and they’ll be added instantly to your Google Music library, and accessible anywhere. Google is also giving you the ability to share a free full play of a purchased song with your friends on Google+.
So let’s see what Google Music can do!