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Google Wallet launch delayed in Canada?

In October Techvibes reported that Google Wallet would be coming to Canada in early 2012. No word yet on when the official launch will be but it looks like its introduction to Canada could be delayed because of a number of reported vulnerabilities.

According to Security Watch's Neil Rubenking, if Google Wallet is installed on a rooted Android phone, a quick and simple brute force attack can extract the PIN and allow a thief to spend your Google Wallet funds.

A Google spokesperson responded to Rubenking's post saying that "there is no known vulnerability that enables someone to take a consumer phone and gain root access while preserving any Wallet information such as the PIN". And added "we strongly encourage people to not install Google Wallet on rooted devices and to always set up a screen lock as an additional layer of security for their phone."

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13 Samsung Smartphones offered by the Big Three Carriers

What kind of smartphone - or "superphone" you have as Bell is calling some of these feature-laden mobile devices these days - is a hot topic of discussion at a social event.

The person struggling for a conversation piece takes out their phone and the guy next to them goes: "I have a Samsung smartphone too! We have the same phone!".

That's not the case very often with Samsung though as there's stunningly an unlucky thirteen different smartphones you could potentially own from the big three carriers- many of which look the exact same. 

Click the jump to figure out how your Samsung phone stacks up to what else is out there.

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Smartphones Outsell PCs For the First Time Ever, Tablets Lead Growth by a Long Shot [REPORT]

For the first time in history, smartphones are outselling PCs worldwide.

Canalys released its full report on smartphone and PC shipments for the fourth quarter of 2011 and the numbers are incredible. Over 158 million smartphones were shipped globally in Q4, blowing away PC shipments—which include notebooks, netbooks, and even tablets! PCs sold a combined 120 million—58 million notebooks, 29 million desktops, 7 million netbooks, and almost 27 million tablets. Many people don't bundle tablets in with PCs, so if you take them out, smartphone shipments nearly doubled PC sales, 158.5 to 93.7. Wow.

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Mediative Shows in iPhone Study That Mobile Listings Need Social Proof to Be Effective in Google Places

This past fall and just recently, we've talked about a various number of newer advertising optimization technologies on Techvibes as part of our advertising technology series. One of them is known as eye tracking which produces a heat map in the image to your right. Mediative, a division of Yellow Pages Group says the red areas represent which areas where more time was spent looking at the screen on the iPhone when using Google Places.

Eye tracking techniques for "content and ad optimization" on websites have been somewhat widely used by marketers online, but Mediative set out to see what changes when taking the iPhone into consideration due to a considerably smaller screen size and easy scrolling ability compared to the web. You can download the full whitepaper here.

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Tennis Video Goes Viral and It's Not Even About Tennis

Tennis fans will have had their eyes glued to the boob tube these past couple of weeks, which saw several epic matches, crowned by a record-breaking finals match between the world number one, Novak Djokovic, and the world number two, Rafael Nadal. As the sport of tennis continues to delve deeper into social media—both Novak and Rafael have Twitter accounts—tons of game highlights were added to YouTube. And the most-watched of them all—by far—wasn't even of people playing tennis.

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Facebook Developer Launches 'Dont Be Evil' Plugin For Less Biased Google Search Results [VIDEO]

A group of engineers has built a bookmarklet that redirects Google's new social search to results that include all social networks—including Twitter, Tumblr, and even MySpace—versus just Google+. Led by Facebook developer Blake Ross, the plugin is called "Don't Be Evil"—Google's now controversial mantra—and is hosted on a website called "Focus on the User," another jab at Google's seemingly corrupt philosophy.

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Twitter: Google+ Does Not Concern Us

Twitter has spoken. And Google+ is not on its radar.

Co-founder Jack Dorsey spoke at a technology conference yesterday and stated that his company was much more than a social network and that Google's latest bid in the social space was not a concerning issue.

Describing Twitter as a personal news service as much as a "social network" like Facebook is considered, Jack called his microblogging platform an "information utility" in which "the biggest value is finding out what's happening in your world in real time." He also said that Twitter was still busy building itself and not focused on the competition.

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Tumblr Reaches 15 Billion Pageviews Per Month; YouTube Streams 4 Billion Videos Per Day

Tumblr founder and CEO David Karp revealed today at the Digital Life Design Conference in Munich that his blogging platform is visited by over 120 million unique users per month, resulting in more than 15 billion pageviews. Tumblr is now host to nearly 42 million blogs.

These numbers stack up well to four months ago, when 30 million blogs tallied up 13 billion monthly pageviews. Tumblr has raised incredible amounts of money, too—over $120 million in total, which it uses to "scale" its business and apply "real focus to further development." However, as a result, controversy surrounds the startup because it has thus far failed to monetize sustainably.

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Google Numbers: 250 Million Android Devices, 11 Billion App Downloads, 90 Million Google+ Users

Search engine and software behemoth Google released several big non-financial numbers today during its Q4 earnings report. (The financial numbers, while decent, actually fell short of Wall Street expectations, causing the stock to tumble 9% in afterhours trading.)

GOOGLE+

Chief executive officer Larry Page said during the company's earnings call that its social network, Google+, now has 90 million users globally—double the amount three months ago, and nearly half of 5-year-old Twitter's user count. But, like Twitter, not everyone is active. Roughly 60% of Google+ are active daily while 80% are active weekly, Larry says, although I suspect that these numbers are manipulated in Google's favour by counting indirect or involuntary engagements through the company's search engine and other tightly intertwined products.

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