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We’ve seen the evidence pile up in front of us over the past couple months, but T-Mobile has just made the Galaxy Note‘s destiny official by the law of social media. After user @epicrivas asked “What’s up with the Galaxy Note for T-Mobile?” the carrier responded with the following:

@epicrivas We are excited to confirm the Samsung Galaxy Note will be coming to T-Mobile! More info to come.^JM

— T-Mobile USA (@TMobileHelp) July 16, 2012

There’s good and bad news. The good news is that we can all take a breather now that the company has finally confirmed what we’ve been expecting for quite some time. The bad news is that we aren’t really learning anything new. We’ll have to wait for a release from T-Mo before we can get into pricing and availability, but you can expect the same $249 on-contract price tag as we’re seeing over at AT&T.

Unfortunately, it would seem the one thing that didn’t leak out over the past few months is an availability date. Stay tuned though, and we’ll keep you abreast of any changes.

It won’t be long at all before Microsoft pushes Windows Phone 8 into the wild, and that means we’re probably about to see some serious discounts on existing Windows Phone handsets.

In fact, that price-slashing process has already begun, as Nokia recently announced that their AT&T-bound Lumia 900 now sports a much lighter price tag — it can be had for the terribly-reasonable price of $49.99. The question is, should you buy one?

It’s a tough call considering what Microsoft plans to launch in a few short months, but the Lumia 900 is still a solid (and not very old) piece of kit — wonderful design, LTE support, and a spacious screen all make for a respectable package, early data issues notwithstanding. That new price point plus the addition of a new color (if you’re into that sort of thing) may make for a compelling buy, though it means that you the user will have to do without Windows Phone 8′s warm embrace for nearly two years.

Thankfully, it’s not a total loss. Nokia reaffirmed at Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 unveiling that the company would continue to provide support and updates to their existing line of Lumia handsets, in addition to loading them up with some nifty exclusive features to help ease potential user disappointment. The forthcoming Windows Phone 7.8 update should also breathe some new (and more customizable) life into that Lumia’s homescreen, though neither Microsoft, AT&T or Nokia have commented on when that update is expected to go live.

"Limited-edition whisky bottles labeled with Annie Leibovitz's photos." When I first read that headline on PSFK, about a promotion by Macallan whisky, my initial thought was: Putting pictures of Annie Leibovitz on bottles won't sell whisky. Ha! I crack myself up. Of course, Leibovitz isn't in the photos—she just took them. Which won't sell whisky, either. It's part of some foolishness called "Masters of Photography," and the images on these oh-so-special bottles depict various moods and aspects of … New York City. Pretty creative, huh? Actually, the most creative part of the whole thing is the price tag for one of the 1,000 bottles being produced: $2,750! Now that's the kind of beverage obesity Mike Bloomberg should ban. Oh, there's a making-of video below. You can watch it, but really, I can't image why.

Facebook’s $38 share price would make its deal to buy Instagram worth nearly $1.2 billion, up from the roughly $1 billion price the company announced in April.

That’s a nice little bump but the deal hasn’t gone through given regulatory reviews. On top of that, we don’t know the restrictions on the shares like when they vest or if they’re subject to lock-up period. Plus, shares may pop tomorrow and their value will probably fluctuate a lot by the time six-month lock-up date hits. When Facebook agreed to buy Instagram, it said it would pay with $300 million in cash and 22,999,412 shares of stock. That stock is now worth nearly $874 million, creating a $1.17 billion price tag.

Originally, Facebook said the deal was going to close by the end of June, according to its IPO filing. But now it appears that it may take longer because of a more thorough FTC investigation. There’s a requisite investigation if a deal is more than $66 million. But because of the more than $1 billion price that Facebook paid and the reach of both companies, the commission is said to be looking a little bit more closely at the deal, a source with knowledge of the talks tells us. The FTC usually doesn’t publicly confirm investigations until they’re over, and hasn’t publicly confirmed if they’re doing one on this deal.

But there is evidence that it’s taking longer than expected. Facebook changed its IPO filing earlier this month by amending a sentence projecting a second quarter close for the Instagram deal. It now forecasts a close sometime by the end of the year. If the government blocks the deal, Facebook has agreed to pay Instagram a $200 million kill fee, according to its IPO filing.

Because of this, Instagram’s dozen or so employees haven’t even started at Facebook. They’re still in limbo and they’re working from their San Francisco headquarters on the app, instead of Facebook’s Menlo Park office. Meanwhile, Facebook is also trying to improve its own mobile offerings; it recently boosted the size of photographs in the mobile news feed, making the overall experience more Instagram-like.

While the deal is ultimately expected to go through, a Facebook-Instagram acquisition poses several challenges for the FTC. For one, the FTC’s merger guidelines happen to focus a lot on pricing power, and how a merger would affect a company’s ability to raise prices and decrease output. But both Facebook and Instagram give their products away for free.

The other components of the FTC and Department of Justice’s guidelines have to do with market share. They’ll add up the square of different market shares for competing firms, creating a number called the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index. If it’s above 2500, then the market is highly concentrated. If it’s below 1500, then it’s unconcentrated.

But again, it’s not clear how this applies in a market where companies can rise and fall so quickly. Instagram basically appeared out of nowhere. It racked up nearly 40 million users in about 18 months. Plus, the time it takes for any given company to gain millions of daily active users is declining, partly because of the virality of the Facebook platform itself and then because the iOS and Android platforms are finally reaching scale.

So how do you apply a formula like this when changes in market share are so dynamic? The last time the FTC took a close look at a consumer web deal of this size, it was back in 2009 with the $750 million Google-Admob acquisition. The commission unanimously closed it after Apple entered the competitive field with its acquisition of rival mobile ad network Quattro, which became iAd. However, there hasn’t been a smartphone app deal of comparable size to Instagram — yet.

Even though I think it’s way too big for the average human, Samsung’s Galaxy Note is doing quite well since its debut in January at CES. In fact, Samsung has sold 5 million units of the Galaxy Note thus far, which comes out to about 1 million Notes sold per month. But could it be selling better?

Possibly.

The phablet is only available at AT&T with a rather steep $299 price tag, but that may be changing soon according to TmoNews.

The site stumbled upon a listing for a Samsung product with the model number SGH-T879. Usually that T and the following 8×9 refer to tablets, but the resolution given alongside the listing is 800×1280. To be clear, the GalNote is the only Samsung device with that resolution, and the fact that 800 comes before 1280 likely suggests that this is a device meant to be held in portrait, not landscape. You know, like a phone.

That speculation on its own is shaky, to be sure, but then TmoNews got a hold of some screenshots that are reportedly taken from a T-Mobile variant of the Galaxy Note. The shots show Android 4.0, the same build number as AT&T’s Galaxy Note, running on the same model number as listed above, SGH-T879.

And to make matters a tad more solid for you, GigaOm noticed that one of the screenshots displays an icon for T-Mobile’s Name ID service. Of course, we don’t know anything for sure until T-Mobile hits us with a press release, but I’m feeling confident that this is for real.

The device will likely employ T-Mobile’s 21Mbps or 42Mbps HSPA+ network, which means it won’t have LTE proper but should still be speedy enough for you big-handed data fiends.

The standard price tag on mobile apps isn’t terribly high, but if your threshold is 99¢ you might find yourself scoffing at paying any more than that on an app no matter how well-received it is. Whether you’re sick of paying full price or you just want a good deal, it’s not hard to always score the best deals on apps provided you have a little patience. More »

You’ve met the Swivl before.

Back in November, Satarii debuted the Swivl (formerly known as the Star), and we went hands-on with the substitute camera-man around Christmas.

Good times.

But today is judgement day. Actually, today is Easter, but let’s just roll with it.

Matt and I sat down in the studio to discuss whether this camera dock is worth it’s $179 price tag? Granted, it has a pretty sweet trick up its sleeve — it will “Swivl” to follow you around the room like a human camera man would — but $179 is a lot for an accessory.

Still, Matt and I see potential in quite a few different situations, and in the world of hardware startups that’s a really solid beginning.

Parallels Desktop is our favorite virtualization software for Mac even at its full $80 price tag, but today you can get it for as little as $28 through the Parallels Spring Break promotion. While it can handle Linux, Parallels shines in integrating a virtual Windows environment or individual Windows programs with Mac OS X. It’s simple to set up, and once it’s running you can share files between the two systems and use your familiar Mac gestures and shortcuts in Windows programs. More »

Among the many opportunities presented by online retail, we’ve seen a wave of innovations aiming to hand more control of the process over to customers themselves. Body Shop Bids recently demonstrated the concept with its platform enabling car owners to solicit bids for repairs before choosing where to take their vehicle. In China, Handsup.cn now aims to hand power over to the consumer by asking them to recommend products they want to buy, as well as the price tag.

Online stores usually have a limited number of items on sale, curated by the merchant, but the concept behind Handsup.cn is to invite users to vote on the products they would like to see on its virtual shelves. Hoping to create an “infinite” range of available merchandise, the site also allows consumers to suggest how much they would like to pay, which is taken into consideration before each item goes on sale. A greater number of voters for a particular product increases the likelihood of the price being lower.

Launched in December last year, Handsup.cn perhaps goes further than any other online store that we’ve seen by handing over stock decisions and pricing guidance to its customers. This is a model to look out for, and try out, around the world!

Website: www.handsup.cn
Contact: contact@handsup.cn

Spotted by: Smith Alan

Windows has about a billion screen capture tools (give or take), but we dig PicPick’s huge list of options, built-in photo editor, ability to upload photos to FTP, and its $0 price tag. More »