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Sonic Wallets scream, moo, hurl insults when opened

Wallets usually aren't the most exciting accessories. They hold your money and cards in place and pretty much stay quietly out of sight. If you have a Sonic Wallet, however, your wallet will be making a racket every time you open it.

Sonic Wallets come in eight flavors: American flag, baseball, Buddha, drum machine, Jesus, moolah, The Scream, and Shakespearean insults. A small sound device in the Tyvek wallet is triggered on opening. The American flag wallet plays "Stars and Stripes Forever" and "The Star Spangled Banner." The Jesus wallet gives you the sounds of harps and angelic choruses.… Read more

The 404 1,205: Where we paint by numbers (podcast)

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- Hacker exposes George Bush's family photos, portraits.

Wait, so PS4 won't have better graphics?

- J.J. Abrams may direct a Portal and/or Half-Life movie!

- Snow panic has driven Weather.com completely insane.

- Patent troll says he owns "podcasting," sues Adam Corolla, HowStuffWorks.… Read more

Bing falls to 5th global search engine, surpassed by Yandex

Yandex is probably the biggest search engine few people have ever heard of.

The Russian search engine has surpassed Microsoft's Bing in the world's top search engine rankings, according to Search Engine Watch, which got its data from ComScore.

Coming in first place is Google with 114.7 billion search queries and 65.2 percent of the market share. China's Baidu ranked second with 14.5 billion queries and 8.2 percent share. Third was Yahoo with 8.6 billion queries and 4.9 percent share. And, fourth was Yandex with 4.8 billion queries and 2.… Read more

Like mobile model, a new Ouya every year

Thursday's CNET Update is brought to you by the letter "U" and the number 261,543:

Stories from today's tech news roundup:

- Get ready for another smartphone choice this Fall. Ubuntu OS hitting stores in October.

- The Ouya game console is following the ways of mobile and launching a new model every year.

- Microsoft pushes Outlook.com, warns users to not get "Scroogled" with Gmail.

- Hundreds of thousands of people wait their turn to access the new iPhone Mailbox app.

Watch CNET Update in the video above, and subscribe to … Read more

Apple reigns as chief U.S. smartphone maker

As Apple appears to be winning the U.S. smartphone race, Google still has a strong hold as the top mobile platform.

New data by ComScore shows that Apple got the rank of "top smartphone manufacturer" by raking in 36.3 percent of the market share, while Google Android was the No. 1 platform with 53.4 percent share. ComScore tallied this data by surveying more than 30,000 U.S. mobile subscribers between September and December 2012.

To date, 125.9 million people in the U.S. now own a smartphone, which is 54 percent of the … Read more

Apple's AppStore.com makes stealth Super Bowl debut

Apple may not have its own Super Bowl ad today, but the company quietly launched a new product effort during someone else's ad spot.

At the end of the commercial for the upcoming "Star Trek: Into Darkness" film, Paramount flashed a quick promotion for its iOS app, complete with an AppStore.com link that takes people right to it. In function it's identical to what Apple already uses through its iTunes links, but this one's designed so that people can quickly type it into a mobile device or remember it for later.

Whatever's after … Read more

Cars.com's Super Bowl ad teaser: The call of the bizarre

This had almost passed me by.

Things do sometimes.

And then, searching for something fascinating on the Web, I bumped into this highly peculiar teaser for Cars.com's Super Bowl ad.

It reeks of pain, passion and dramatic twists of fate. Which is rare for a focus group.

It reeks of unbridled passion and a love triangle that has gone terribly wrong.

As if love triangles ever go terribly right.

The teaser promises that during today's big and possibly unpulsating game, Cars.com will bring the drama.

What might happen? Will there be all-out scratch-your-eyes-out war? Will there … Read more

Crave giveaway: $200 shopping spree at KlearGear.com

Feeling geeky? This week's giveaway lets you wear your geekiness on your sleeve, head, desk, or wherever else you can put it.

We're giving away a $200 gift certificate from KlearGear.com, purveyor of geek goods galore.

The gadget manufacturer and retailer sells more than a thousand items -- everything from an iBrick case that gives your iPhone that '80s je ne sais quoi to a mini solar-powered toy car and a USB brain massager that's supposed to gently relieve stress without costing you any neurons.

There's plenty of geek garb to choose from too, like circuit board cufflinks and T-shirts bearing such messages as "Byte Me," "Overclocked," "404 Not Found," and "Pwning the World, One Noob at a Time." … Read more

Crave Ep. 106: DIY laser cannons

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This week on Crave, we take a look at the deadly do-it-yourself Iron Man Laser Gauntlet and monkey around with Apps for Apes. After playing with monkeys all day, maybe we should consider washing our hands with ManHands manly scented soaps. Our favorite one: Urinal Mint.

iPhone wins 51 percent of U.S. smartphone sales, says report

Apple's iOS continues to outshine Android, at least in the United States, according to data released today by Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.

For the final quarter of 2012, the iPhone won 51.2 percent of all U.S. smartphone sales. In second place, Android soaked up around 44.8 percent of U.S. sales, leaving Microsoft's Windows Phone with 2.6 percent.

Apple's flagship platform also scored well in Japan, proving tops among two-thirds of Japanese smartphone buyers.

"Apple's continual improvement is thanks to both the iPhone 5 and older models attracting various customer groups, from … Read more