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According to social media analytics firm SocialBakers, Brazil now has the second largest population on Facebook.

The social networking giant has over 900 million total users from nearly every country on the planet.

After seeing a large jump in the last quarter of 22 percent, Brazil now has 46 million Facebook users, beating out India who has held the spot for some time now.

What has lead to the growth? SocialBakers says: "Brazil owes its success [on Facebook] to brands building high social awareness and a proactive and creative approach in gaining more fans especially in the FMCG, alcohol, beauty and fashion sectors."

Until January, Google's original social network from 2004, Orkut, was the top social network in Brazil and the site still has over 30 million users in the nation. However, the site is beginning to lose support from game and app developers as they move to the greener pastures of Facebook.

Read the rest of the report here; SocialBakers

According to sources, early manufacturing is already being done for the Xbox Next (Durango).

If accurate, the work is being done in Austin, Texas by Flextronics, the same company that manufactured the original Xbox and the current-gen Xbox 360.

Of course, the manufacturing will not be for retail SKUs but likely for developers to work out debugging.

As has been standard, Microsoft declined comment but did add the following: "Xbox 360 has found new ways to extend its lifecycle like introducing the world to controller-free experiences with Kinect and re-inventing the console with a new dashboard and new entertainment content partnerships.

"We are always thinking about what is next for our platform and how to continue to defy the lifecycle convention. Beyond that we do not comment on rumours or speculation."

California resident Robert Herskowitz has sued Apple this week for punitive damages.

Apparently, the company double billed him for purchasing a song on iTunes and would not offer a refund.

Last month, Herskowitz purchased the track "Whataya Want from Me" by Adam Lambert and was charged $1.29 twice for the song in an apparent glitch. After reaching out to Apple via email, he received this response:

"Your request for 'Whatya Want from Me' was carefully considered; however, according to the iTunes Store Terms of Sale, all purchases made on the iTunes store are ineligible for refund. This policy matches Apple's refund policies and provides protection for copyrighted materials."

The angered consumer has now filed a lawsuit against Apple seeking an injunction and punitive damages of $5 million. Herskowitz claims there was a breach of contract, breach of faith, unjust enrichment, unfair competition and business law violations.

Over the past few days we have discussed at length the new hardware in the Samsung Galaxy S III, which was, to be completely honest, not revolutionary.

The device has a 4.8-inch HD Super AMOLED display, a powerful 1.4GHz quad-core Exynos processor and an 8MP camera, all of which are high-end but not leaps and bounds better than previous generation devices.

However, what should differentiate the phone from others in the market is its software, which Samsung has customized and tweaked to the point where it does not feel too much like the stock "vanilla" Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich you may be accustomed to.

The phone will have an emphasis on "natural interaction," says the company. First off, a feature called "Smart Stay" uses the front-facing camera to monitor your eyes and keep a "bright display for continued viewing pleasure." Even if you have your phone set to go to sleep with inactivity, Smart Stay will keep it on if you are staring at the screen, reading, or otherwise. When your eyes are no longer staring at the screen, the display dims to save battery life, as well.

In a move that has been a long time coming, Verizon has announced it has selected a vendor to help the company deliver users the ability to make texts to 911 emergency services.

With the new ability, those with speaking or hearing disabilities can have the same access to 911 as those without have had for half a century. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski applauded the carrier for the move, and encouraged others to follow suit.

Says Verizon: "Verizon is at the forefront of 911 public-safety innovations, and today's announcement is another step in making SMS-to-911 service available to those who cannot make a voice call to 911."

The service would require that your device can text, which all phones, smart or not, have the ability to do.

Verizon says the service should launch in early 2013.

Last week, the High Court ruled that all UK ISPs must block The Pirate Bay.

Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin Media must now block all access to the Swedish file sharing site but it appears the ruling is doing wonders for the site's traffic.

A source from the site has told Torrentfreak that The Pirate Bay's traffic has actually increased by over 12 million following the court ruling. "We should write a thank you letter to the BPI," says the source.

The ban began on Wednesday when Virgin Media's four million customers lost access, followed by other ISPs throughout the week.

As expected, The Pirate Bay did not take the ban lightly, and offered a work-around and a call to arms:

As usual there are easy ways to circumvent the block. Use a VPN service to be anonymous and get an uncensored internet access, you should do this anyhow. Or use TOR, I2P or some other darknet with access to the internets. Change your DNS settings with OpenDNS. Or use googles DNS servers... we could go on...But don't forget that we can't allow this shit to happen. Next time they're coming for something else. And yes, there will be a next time if we don't stop them. Write to your ISP and tell them to appeal the case. Write to your local MPs and tell them that this is not allowed. Make sure your voice is heard. Remember, we're all the pirate bay, and we must stand united against the censorship from our opponents!

First unveiled at the Mobile World Congress event in February, LG will begin shipping the Optimus L7 smartphone this month.

The device will first hit the UK and other nations in Europe, followed by Asia later in the year. There was no word on a U.S. launch.

LG's latest device runs on Android 4.0 ICS, following suit with other LG phones.

In terms of features, the phone has a 4.3-inch WVGA display with "ultra-wide viewing angles," a 1GHz dual-core Cortex A5 processor and a 5MP standard camera with LED flash.

Says the company: "For consumers desiring high-end style and sophistication in a smartphone, LG Optimus L7 offers beauty and performance in one smart package. The L7 is a significant addition to our L-Series portfolio and we are confident that it'll prove highly attractive to users. We expect it to be one of our most popular smartphones."

Last year, Microsoft announced that users with Windows Mobile devices would lose access to the marketplace for the OS on May 9th.

Today, the company has pushed back the date for the shutdown, giving those old smartphone users one more week.

After May 17th, users will not be able to update any apps they've purchased and the apps will be lost forever if the device is ever wiped or even hard reset.

Microsoft does note that if you want to stay with your Windows Mobile device and have lost the apps due to a wipe, you can contact the individual developers and ask them for a copy directly.

As they have been saying for a year now, Microsoft wants you to know it is time to upgrade.

The comments came via an interview with Samsung mobile president J.K. Shin.

Shin, sitting with the WSJ, says the company has certainly embraced the possibility of making mobile company acquisitions. Furthermore, they are "aggressively" hiring foreign software engineers in an effort to remain the top dog in the smartphone world.

Notes Shin: "The technology industry is growing very quickly and it is too much of a burden to try to do everything in-house. There are many qualified workers from India that are very skilled in software. And there are small companies that we can acquire that have good research and development capabilities."

Without naming companies, Shin did shut down the speculation the company is looking into purchasing RIM, the struggling BlackBerry maker.

It has also become clear that Samsung is in fact angry at Google's purchase of Motorola Mobility and its expected foray into the hardware business later this year. However, the company will continue to ridewith Android as it is the top open mobile operating system.

LG has introduced their Optimus LTE2 Android device this week, the first to feature 2GB of RAM.

The unveiling came within a day of Samsung's high-profile 'Unpacked' event, where the company showed off the much-anticipated Galaxy S III.

Outside of the 2GB of RAM, the LTE2 also features some other powerful specs. The device has a 4.7-inch HD IPS display, a dual-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 processor, LTE support and a large 2150mAh battery.

The device will go on sale in mid-May, beating out the Galaxy S III which will hit Europe at the end of the month and the U.S. and Canada in June.

Pics via AndroidandMe:

Dropbox and Samsung have agreed on a deal for the new Galaxy S III.

Owners of the upcoming flagship device will receive a huge 50GB of free storage through Dropbox.

The deal doubles the recent storage pact between the company and HTC, which was 25GB for anyone with a Sense 4.0 device.

Samsung says the deal will remain valid for two years after you register the Galaxy S III, and afterwards your storage will revert back to whatever you would have had normally.

The company unleashed the phone at an event on May 3rd. There is more info here: Samsung Galaxy S III Press Shots, Release Date

In 2010, Paul Ceglia claimed he was a 50 percent owner of Facebook, citing a contract signed between him and founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Paul Ceglia says he entered into a contract with Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, for a 50 percent share, doing so for $1000 USD. Ceglia's suit included a copy of the "work for hire" contract the two men allegedly signed in 2003. In return for the $1000 payment, Ceglia "would own a 50 percent interest in the software, programming language and business interests derived from the expansion of the [Facebook] service to a larger audience."

Since the suit was brought, Zuckerberg and Facebook's independent forensic experts have maintained the contract is a complete forgery.

This week, Ceglia was ordered to pay Facebook's lawyers another $16,851, bringing his total sanctions to just above $97,000. The sanctions began in January when Ceglia refused to provide his email passwords to those same forensic experts. The investigators believe the email accounts include an engineering contract between Ceglia and Zuckerberg which did not involve Facebook but did have the future CEO's authentic signature.

If Ceglia cannot afford to pay the fees, he will have to provide financial statements proving so.

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson has made it clear today that he believes AT&T Mobility should have killed off unlimited mobile data earlier than it did.

The company got rid of the $30 unlimited bandwidth plans last year, moving to a tiered structure instead.

When asked about unlimited data and the iPhone, Stephenson says: "You ask, do you ever look back and ask, do we wish we hadn't [launched the iPhone]? No. No, I never reflect on that. Should we have changed the pricing model sooner? Yes. I wish we had moved quicker to change the pricing model to make sure that people that were consuming the bandwidth were paying for the bandwidth. And so we had a model where the high-end users were being subsidized by the low-end users. We got that model straight ? took a while to get that straight. But no, it has revolutionized our industry, and I don't regret it at all."

The CEO is also delusional after the company lost its multi-billion dollar bid for T-Mobile:

"Make no mistake about it, if you don't find solutions like [acquiring T-Mobile USA], there is nothing but upward pricing pressure in this marketplace. And you're experiencing it and you're living through it today. Since the beginning of the year when that deal got killed, our data prices have gone up 30 percent. You want to upgrade to a smartphone? Every carrier in the industry now has put in place an upgrade fee to try to slow this down. Virtually every carrier is now throttling, meaning when you hit a certain threshold of usage in a given month, your speeds get scaled back to try to reduce the utilization of these networks."

Microsoft has announced that their next security update will patch 23 bugs in Windows, Office, Silverlight and .Net.

The bugs will be fixed in seven security updates, three of which are considered critical.

Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Security, tracks the number of updates Microsoft issues each month, and says this month is historically high for May. In 2010, the software giant patched two bugs in May and in 2011 that number increased to three.

Says Storms: "May has been a light month, historically, very light. So, this is a big number."

Outside of three critical updates, the other four are dubbed "important," the second-most serious score on Microsoft's scale. Three updates will patch vulnerabilities in Windows, another four will take care of exploits in Office and one will be for Silverlight. (There are 8 because one affects all three).

Horace Dediu of Asymco has posted some fantastic data this week on where all the profits in the smartphone market are going.

It appears HTC, Apple and Samsung are collecting 100 percent of the profits, with most handset makers actually losing money.

Apple is the big winner in the market, making a full 73 percent of all the profits, with Samsung taking 26 percent and HTC taking the last 1 percent.

Motorola, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, LG and RIM all either break even or lose money every year.

The following charts should make the data even more clear: