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Amazon.com Inc. leads the pack again.

This year's Black Friday has been a great success for e-tailers such as Amazon.com Inc., with online sales in the United States jumping 26 percent, according to research from comScore. The jump compares to the year-over-year growth for Black Friday 2010 of 9 percent.

Online sales last Friday reached $816 million, easily the heaviest spending day on the Internet so far in 2011. There had been some fears that online sales would suffer as brick-and-mortar retailers offered big discounts to shoppers this year, and even in some cases, opened late on Thanksgiving to get an early start.

"With brick-and-mortar retail also reporting strong gains on Black Friday, it's clear that the heavy promotional activity had a positive impact on both channels," comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni said.

The amount of Americans who visited an online retail site on Black Friday this year topped 50 million, around 35 percent more than last year.

"Amazon.com once again led the pack, with 50 percent more visitors than any other retailer, while also showing the highest growth rate versus last year," Fulgoni said.

Samsung boosted by Galaxy-branded gadgets.

Driven by positive sales of its Galaxy smartphones, South Korean electronics firm, Samsung, has revealed that it expects to beat its own smartphone sales target for this year.

"We are pinning high hopes...on achieving sales higher than our previous plan," a mobile executive said at a press conference today. He did not give any details on how much the firm expects to beat its own estimations, however.

He was speaking to journalists at a local launch event for the Galaxy Note, Galaxy Nexus and for the Galaxy Tab 8.9 long-term evolution (LTE) device.

Samsung has seen strong demand for its Galaxy gear in recent years, despite being caught in a global patent war with Apple Inc.

U.S. judge rubbishes market domination claim made against Netflix, Walmart.

US District Judge Phyllis Hamilton was overseeing a case against the two firms, in which they were alleged to have conspired to dominate the DVD-by-post market. Specifically, the lawsuit alleged that Walmart dropped out of the mail DVD rental market so Netflix could consume its previous customers, and in return, Netflix stopped selling DVDs.

Judge Hamilton disagreed, pointing out that Walmart's mail rental service had just a small 1.5 percent of the market, and that its exit simply would have aided Netflix in any significant way. Furthermore, Netflix's DVD selling business was nowhere near that of the retail giant, and so it's decision to abandon it would not have affected Walmart in any significant way.

The lawsuit was filed against both companies January 2009, and after more plaintiffs joined the case it was eventually granted class action status.

?The court concludes that no reasonable juror could believe that Netflix would have lowered its [rental plan] to $15.99 in response to continued competition from Walmart, whose [comparable plan] 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,? Hamilton wrote in his decision.

High-speed connection tests at DreamHack LAN event in Sweden.

Attendees of the event, estimated at 20,000 in total, were invited to test the world record-setting 120Gbps connection, which ran 186 miles between Stockholm and Jönköping. A previous record speed of 20Gbps had been set at the DreamHack Lan event too.

The test used Cisco hardware along with Telia's fiber network in the country. The project has been in the works since last summer, building a network that can connect up to 750,000 people and allow them all to stream multimedia at the same time and experience no ill effects to their Internet connection as a result.

The firms claimed that users would be able to download an entire movie in 47 thousandths of a second, putting aside the obvious problems of writing the data to a storage device, for example.

Nexon Korea Corp's online games targeted by hackers.

The Korea Communications Commission (KCC) said that Nexon reported the incident to it late Friday afternoon. Specifically, Nexon reported to the regulator that it discovered a data leak involving personal information of subscribers of its Maple Story online game.

The leak affects up to 13.2 million people, all of whom are located in South Korea. The report comes just weeks before the company planned an IPO of its Japanese affiliate on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, aiming to raise ¥95 billion ($1.2 billion).

The leaked data includes user IDs, names, resident registration numbers and passwords, according to KCC. Nexon insists that the leak did not include information on financial transactions, bank account numbers or credit card numbers.

The gaming firm is advising its subscribers to change their passwords to avoid any more damage, even though the passwords leaked were encrypted.

Authorities describe scene as "customer vs customer shopping rage."

How determined would you be to get your hands on a discounted Xbox 360? A woman waiting for Black Friday deals at a Porter Ranch Walmart in Los Angeles waited in line with her two children, and some pepper spray. According to reports, she started to attack other customers with the pepper spray as soon as she saw store employees removing plastic packaging off discounted items for Black Friday.

She was apparently looking to get a discounted Xbox 360 console and some games. Witnesses say as soon as the doors opened, she used the pepper spray to subdue other customers there determined to get discounts.

Firefighters and the LAPD responded to the attack quickly, treating 20 customers suffering from coughing, extreme swelling and redness of the face. One other customer required treatment at a nearby hospital.

Police are trying to track down the woman and will release photos to the press. They were reportedly looking into her method of payment in an attempt to get details that might lead them to her residence. Unfortunately, there were other reports of Black Friday violence across the U.S., as there is every year.

Patent firm talks tough after HTC withdraws appeal.

It announced on Friday that it would enforce an injunction from a February 2009 court decision in Mannheim, aiming to get HTC smartphones removed from German retail stores before the crucial holiday season. The news is a blow to HTC, which already is struggling to maintain its position in the volatile smartphone market.

"IPCom now intends to execute this injunction in the shortest possible time," the company said in a statement, after HTC withdrew an appeal against the February 2009 decision, due to be decided on next week. "We will use the right awarded by the courts, likely resulting in HTC devices disappearing from shops during the crucial Christmas season."

HTC said it pulled the appeal because it found the ruling to be redundant, given that a German patent court is questioning the validity of the patent at the center of the injunction. Legal experts say that HTC can still battle to delay the injunction, while it is also expected to address two other patent issues.

HTC reported last month that revenue would fall up to 8 percent from the October - December period, leading to a drop in stock value.

Droid-Life now has official pics of the upcoming Motorola Droid 4.

Leaked spec sheets imply the phone will be released on December 8th.

Motorola's latest device will have a 4-inch qHD screen, a 1.2 GHz dual-core processor, 1GB RAM, a form-factor similar to the Droid Razr, a 5-row keyboard that is "edge-lit" and dual cameras 8MP/1.3MP.

The phone will also have a large 1785mAh battery.

Additionally, the device will be a world phone, including support for all radio bands and be 4G supported.

Pics (including a comparison that taunts Droid 3 owners, who bought the phone just months ago):

Deutsche Bank analysts have forecasted this week that Nokia will indeed be able to reach its 2 million unit estimate for Lumia sales in the Q4.

The devices, the Lumia 710 and 800, are the company's first to run on Windows Phone 7.5.

Other analysts had expressed doubt that Nokia would reach its goal, including Jefferies and Pacific Crest.

Each said the Lumia models "showed mixed development, leading to doubts that fourth-quarter volumes would reach the expectations."

Nokia says first week sales were the highest for a Nokia smartphone in the UK in 5 years.

Analyst Rob Enderle has torn the rumored Facebook 'Buffy' phone apart this weekend in a post, going as far as to call it "stupid."

Additionally, the analyst compared the phone to the now-defunct Zune media player line created by Microsoft.

Facebook is said to be teaming with HTC to create a Facebook phone, one that is based on Android, but a variant.

By doing so, the company risks angering Google, a major HTC partner, who may not like having its operating system altered. Additionally, Facebook could anger Microsoft, an investor in Facebook and the creator of the Windows Phone 7 operating system.

Says Enderle (via PCM):

You see, HTC is on the other side of the Zune problem. Just as Microsoft lost trust from its hardware partners, an OEM like HTC stepping out against their software partner should have the same kind of collateral damage.

The newly launched BlackBerry Bold 9790 caused a riot this weekend in Indonesia, leading to 90 people being injured.

Available for 50 percent off at a mall in Jakartam, it appears that the crowd became "disorderly" after the retailer said there would not be enough units for everyone waiting on line.

200 police officers and mall cops were called in before the crowd was subdued.

Three people were hospitalized with broken bones.

The BlackBerry normally sells for 4.6 million rupees in Indonesia (about $520) and BlackBerry remains the top brand in the nation. BGR says that four of the top five selling smartphones in the nation are BlackBerrys.

A video of the crowd before it got crazy:

Sales of the new Apple iPhone 4S have been very slow in South Korea, as the phones has been deemed "uncompetitive" in the nation.

Customers have passed on the device due to its lack of 4G, bad battery life and lack of other high-end features.

Says one current iPhone 4 owner in the nation:

I dropped my plan to buy the iPhone 4S. It's not wholly-new and also there are big problems relating to hardware-related issues. I am a big Apple fan. But I'm very disappointed by the uncompetitive iPhone 4S.

Except for the 'Siri' function, I didn?t find any wow factors about the iPhone 4S and that's why I decided to buy Samsung's LTE smartphone. Also Siri doesn't support Korean language and that means the iPhone 4S is technically the same as the iPhone 4. Why should I pay more to buy the same thing? It's nonsense to purchase the 4S just to show my personal tribute to the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

Sony has said it will not be selling the PlayStation 3D TV in the UK this year, delaying the launch until next year.

Amazon, on its page for the TV writes:

We have been informed by our supplier that there will be a delay in obtaining stock for this item and it will no longer be released in Europe in 2011.

If you have ordered this item from us at Amazon.co.uk your order will take longer to fulfill than originally estimated. We are expecting an update in the new year.

Google has given a first look into its upcoming Aura window manager for Chrome and Chrome OS.

Aura is a hardware accelerated UI that will give users a chance to manage their multiple windows much easier.

The company has revealed a quick teaser (posted below), showing off the UI's features which include translucent window frames and constrained window dragging.

Furthermore, Google is adding a data "timeline" for graphing data sent/received by the browser, a new pointer lock and a new flag.

Finally, the browser will get a chrome://sessions local URL showing the user what tabs are open, no matter how many windows are open.

A newly leaked ROM for the BlackBerry Bold 9900 shows off a new unexpected feature, Wi-Fi Hotspot.

The latest build, which is for BlackBerry OS 7.0.1.74 will likely be sent to devices in the next month, but you can download it at the end of the article if you have the latest BlackBerry and want to tinker.

Additionally, the ROM brings Wi-Fi Calling (if you have a T-Mobile device) which allows phone calls to be made over the wireless instead of cell network.

Other carriers have refused to add the ability to call with UMA (Wi-Fi Calling) but T-Mobile allows you to do so wherever there is connection. The minutes go against your minute plan, however.

Finally, the ROM may add BlackBerry Tag, the NFC tap-to-share solution RIM just announced.

Download here.