The Richfield, Minn., company reported another quarterly loss driven by weaker sales in its European business, which it recently shed. The company last month sold the rest of its stake in Best Buy Europe back to Carphone Warehouse Group PLC for about $775 million to help shore up its profitability.

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The electronics retailer is selling its 50 percent interest in Carphone Warehouse Group PLC’s Europe business back to Carphone Warehouse in a mostly cash deal valued at about $775 million.

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The blue-and-yellow logo shines atop a large building in a sprawling strip mall, next to a Guitar Center and not far from a Costco, a Chipotle and a Steak ’n Shake.

Inside, though, it is home to one of the first Samsung shops to be located inside a Best Buy. Samsung’s 450-square-foot shop occupies less than 1 percent of the Best Buy’s overall area, but its central spot means that anyone looking to buy an iPad or Mac has to walk by the giant display of Samsung laptops, phones and tablets.

That makes life pretty good for Brian Hagglund, the consultant Samsung hired to oversee operations at the store. Hagglund, who has worked as a representative for other electronics companies in the past, said he is often able to sell would-be iPad buyers on the benefits of Samsung’s pen-equipped Galaxy Note tablet.

“That’s one of our biggest opportunities,” he said, noting he has a pretty easy sell if he gets just five minutes to show off the Samsung tablet.

The Lewisville location is one of six stores where Best Buy has been testing the store-within-a-store concept ahead of Thursday’s formal announcement.

So far, Saturdays are the busiest times, for potential buyers as well as those coming in to fix a problem or ask a question. (How to take a screenshot is the most common query, Hagglund said.)

Hagglund and his part-time helpers can do basic support tasks such as updating a phone’s software or diagnosing hardware issues. They also have a phone they can use to call if they need further help.

That phone has only been needed three times, Hagglund said, oddly enough all on one day filled with particularly challenging issues.

With the Samsung Experience Shops inside Best Buy, the Korean electronics giant is hoping to give its customers a place to see multiple Samsung products in action, get help and build some of the same brand loyalty that Apple, Microsoft and Sony get through their stores without having to make the same investment in real estate.

Samsung has made smaller retail ventures in the past, including a New York City showroom that it closed about a year ago after running it for several years. Retail head Ketrina Dunagan said the Columbus Circle location was popular internally, but did little for customers.

More recently, Samsung had 14 kiosks during the past holiday season where it pitched its Galaxy range of products.

Best Buy officials said the retailer found it had to do surprisingly little shifting to clear the space for Samsung, noting that what appears to be prime real estate was previously home to CDs and DVDs, not exactly the hottest segment of its business.

But it is making a big investment in Samsung, hoping that the fast-growing brand will help bring in more customers at a time when physical retail store sales are struggling.

Best Buy will continue to display Samsung phones, tablets, cameras and PCs in their respective categories, in addition to handing over the space needed for the Samsung shops.

However, this time the company has opted not to follow the same path as its rival. Whereas Apple opened its own chain of stores, Samsung has elected to cozy up closer to an existing retailer, at least for now.

The company is partnering with Best Buy and will open 1,400 Samsung Experience shops within the retailer’s existing stores.

“Seventy percent of consumers live within 10 miles of a Best Buy,” said Ketrina Dunagan, the Samsung VP heading the retail effort. Dunagan said that the Korean electronics giant considered opening its own stores, but quickly decided that partnering with Best Buy was a whole lot more appealing than trying to, say, open 10 stores of its own this year.

Of course, Apple didn’t exactly take an either/or approach, as it also has a store-within-a-store concept in Best Buy, though not as extensive as the new Samsung shops.

Samsung’s effort was cemented at a meeting in December between top leaders of the two companies; officials have spent the last few months laying out a game plan.

About 900 of the Samsung stores will open by May, with many starting this month and the entire rollout expected by the end of June.

Samsung and Best Buy have quietly been testing the concept for the last few weeks at six stores in three metropolitan areas — Dallas, Chicago and Minneapolis, Minn.

The stores feature two to four tables of Samsung tablets, phones, cameras and laptops, along with a help desk and a wall of accessories. The stores-within-a-store will have Best Buy personnel as well as Samsung-hired “experience consultants” trained on the company’s range of products.

Dunagan, though, contrasted Samsung’s approach with Apple’s.

“Our goal is not we remain expert and you remain subservient to us,” she said. “We want [customers to feel] empowered, valued and delighted such that you become the expert, not us.”

Samsung’s range of services will initially be more limited than some of those that have come to be expected from Apple’s stores. Samsung workers will be able to do software upgrades and some triage of hardware issues, but won’t be able to handle out-of-warranty hardware repairs.

At the Best Buy store in the suburban Dallas town of Lewisville, Texas, the Samsung shop occupies about 450 square feet of prime real estate in the front and center of the store.

The store here, like other Samsung shops, has a “concierge desk” staffed by someone trained to offer support for many types of software issues.

Samsung declined to say what it might have in store with other retailers or with the carriers, but noted there are some exclusive elements in the Best Buy deal.

“We are in constant partnership with our other carriers and retailers,” Dunagan said.

In its first full quarter under new Chief Executive Hubert Joly, the Richfield, Minn., retail chain delivered improved free cash flow while gross profit margins fell less than expected despite stepped up efforts to match rivals’ prices.

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With that proposal off the table, it appears Mr. Schulze won’t be able to execute the buyout of the beleaguered electronics retailer that he had proposed last year, the people said. However, it is still possible that Mr. Schulze will come back to Best Buy with another proposal, they said.

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Preorders will ship the week of May 13, and the device will arrive in U.S. Best Buy stores beginning May 19. It will cost $80.

The tiny, three-inch Leap sensor is meant to be placed in front of computer keyboards and, using hyper-precise motion sensor technology, tracks finger gestures and reflects the movements on screen. It currently works with Windows 7 and 8, and Mac OS X 10.7 and 10.8, on desktops and laptops. (For a visual of how it works, check out the video embedded here.)

Last month, the company raised $30 million in funding from existing and new investors, and also announced a partnership with Asus to distribute the Leap with select Asus notebooks and PCs.

Leap Motion today also divulged a series of app titles in development that will work with the sensor, including Cut the Rope, Wreck-It Ralph and Painter Freestyle Beta. The company’s app store has been named “Airspace.”

The company’s opposition to the proposal is a little surprising, since the bill itself would not substantially change the way it conducts business. But eBay is arguing that it could affect the lives of some of its largest marketplace sellers.

“No small business should face new taxes,” said Brian Bieron, eBay’s senior director of global public policy. “There’s no benefit compared to the harm that would be done.”

The Marketplace Fairness Act, reintroduced to the Senate this week, will allow states to collect sales tax online, as long as they have simplified their tax laws.

Hundreds of companies support the proposal, including Amazon, Best Buy, Barnes & Noble, Gap, Home Depot, J.C. Penney, REI, Sears, Target and Walmart. Many brick-and-mortar retailers, in particular, are throwing their weight behind it because they believe that, for years now, Amazon has had an unfair advantage because it did not collect sales tax at the time of purchase.

The two organizations listed as being in opposition are eBay and the Heritage Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, according to materials supplied by the supporters. Other organizations, however, are against the bill.

EBay says it worries about the law’s impact on small businesses in particular. If passed, retailers that have less than $1 million in out-of-state sales in the prior calendar year can apply for exemption.

But Bieron says that number is not nearly high enough and is completely arbitrary. He says that the U.S. Small Business Administration has definitions for what constitutes a small business, and that it has determined that a company that deals in “electronic shopping” is small until it reaches $30 million in revenue — or 30 times the exemption level.

EBay declined to say how many of its sellers would have to start paying taxes if the law was passed. It said that its largest customers are usually also selling on other platforms, so they don’t know how many would be above the limit. “We do know that we have a couple hundred thousand folks who are small businesses and entrepreneurs; they are more than casual sellers,” Bieron said.

The whole point of the law is for states to simplify the tax-collection process, but Bieron argues that the the proposal would still be too onerous for a company with limited resources.

“Our view has always been that a small business exemption should protect a small business,” he said.

In a letter sent to the Senate on Thursday, Paul Misener, Amazon’s VP for global public policy, applauded the bill: “I am writing to thank you for your bill, which will allow states with simplified rules to require sales tax collection by out-of-state sellers who choose to make sales to in-state buyers.”

The Marketplace Fairness Act was introduced to the Senate today, which would enable states to collect sales tax online, as long as they have simplified their tax laws.

In a letter, Paul Misener, Amazon’s VP for global public policy, said, “I am writing to thank you for your bill, which will allow states with simplified rules to require sales tax collection by out-of-state sellers who choose to make sales to in-state buyers.”

Misener never comes out and explicitly says that Amazon supports the bill, but he hints that, with close cooperation, it could be a winner: “Amazon.com has long supported a simplified nationwide approach that is evenhandedly applied and applicable to all but the smallest volume sellers.”

Collecting sales tax can be a nightmare. Not only does it depend on what state or country the customer lives in, but also on where the purchaser is — down to the city block, potentially — if he or she is buying something on the phone. Depending on the state, it could also be determined by the shipping address.

Amazon has been considered a prime example for why tax reform is needed. Since it was founded in 1994, the retailer has taken extraordinary measures to avoid collecting sales taxes nationwide, although more recently its stance on the subject has been softening. It now collects taxes in more than half a dozen states. Most recently, it agreed to start paying sales tax in Pennsylvania, Texas, California and Connecticut.

Brick-and-mortar retailers have contended for years that Amazon had an unfair advantage because it did not collect sales tax at the time of purchase. (Technically, it is the customers’ responsibility to pay the taxes, but that’s not very practical.)

The Marketplace Fairness Act is being introduced by Sen. Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, and two Republicans, Sens. Mike Enzi of Wyoming and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee. Under the law, states will have two options for simplifying their tax-collection process. Retailers that have less than $1 million $500,000 in out-of-state sales the prior calendar year can apply for exemption.

According to the Marketplace Fairness Act homepage, a long list of companies support the proposal, including Amazon, Best Buy, Barnes & Noble., Gap, Home Depot, J.C. Penney, REI, Sears, Target and Walmart. One of the organizations listed in opposition is eBay.

Mr. Schulze has been working since last summer to secure financing to take Best Buy private but hasn’t yet gotten enough support from banks to finance the deal, according to people familiar with those discussions.

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The software giant had planned a big New York launch party Friday night for the Surface Pro, which goes on sale Saturday. Panos Panay, who leads the Surface effort, had planned to preside over an event at a Manhattan Best Buy to mark the debut.

However, the huge East Coast blizzard is forcing Microsoft to call off the event.

“Surface Pro launch activities in NYC have been cancelled due to weather; our best wishes for everyone impacted by the blizzard,” Microsoft said in a statement.

Surface Pro is the Intel-based big brother to the Surface RT tablet that went on sale in October. It adds an Intel chip for more processing power and compatibility with older Windows software. However, the added performance comes with added weight and shorter battery life. (Here’s Walt Mossberg’s review of the device.)

Surface Pro will go on sale on Saturday as scheduled at Best Buy and Staples, and at Microsoft’s own online and brick-and-mortar stores.

We’ll be weighing in on all of these — as well as the Twitter reactions to each, in our second annual Super Bowl liveblog. For a taste of what to expect, here’s a link to last year’s liveblog.

Things should get started just before kickoff. On the football front, its the battle of the Harbaugh brothers, while the tech front will feature rival ads from BlackBerry and Samsung, as well as spots from Best Buy and others.

So pull up a chair, flip on the TV (or view CBS’s live Web stream on a second device) and get ready for some football.

3:20 pm: OK, it’s almost kic-off time. The Sandy Hook Elementary School just backed up Jennifer Hudson in singing “America the Beautiful.”

So, who do you have in the pool? Political numbers expert Nate Silver is going with the 49ers.

3:22 pm: Alicia Keys is — as some on Twitter had surmised — on the keys, playing the piano for a subdued version of the national anthem.

3:28 pm: Heads or tails. It’s a coin toss.

The 49ers will start with the ball, while Hyundai has possession of the next commercial, and Alicia Keys is getting some flack on Twitter for that rendition of the anthem. At least she wasn’t (or maybe she should have been) lip-synching.

3:38 pm: Some technical difficulties here have forced the laptop to the sidelines. Luckily, the iPad has been waiting for this opportunity all season.

3:40 pm: Back on the field, Baltimore is out to the early lead with a touchdown.

3:45 pm: Uh. Oh. GoDaddy.com commercial time. They usually manage to offend.

And they deliver… Lots of kissing in commercials this year.

3:55 pm: Amy Poehler is rocking the Best Buy spot. BTW, marketers, the word “dongle” is always funny.

If you missed it, here’s a link to the spot. We’ve also got the scoop coming up on a mobile-specific follow-up ad that Best Buy plans to run.

In the mobile ad, Poehler again quizzes the Best Buy sales rep, this time asking if they have the latest phones (they do), if they have all the plans (they do), and if they make commissions (they don’t).

Best Buy is touting the fact that it has all the major providers, as well as a new promotion that gives customers $50 in credit if they buy their next phone at the retailer.

4:28 pm: Cable Internet is failing me here, too, by the way. Thank goodness for iPad with LTE.

4:34 pm: As for the mood in the San Francisco Bay Area, Anand Iyer summed it up pretty well on Twitter. “The entire city is deflated.”

I’d expect a serious decrease in Silicon Valley innovation this week if things don’t turn around.

4:36 pm: Some racist ad for VW. Hmm. Maybe they are trying to compete with Go Daddy for the most offensive crown.

4:37 pm: The most offensive moment, followed by the cutest so far. An NFL commercial with Sam Gordon, a 9-year-old girl, running down the field against her presumably all-male Pee Wee peers.

4:43 pm: Meanwhile, if you want a really alternative take on the Super Bowl, check out the Portlandia on Twitter.

4:45 pm: Okay. The starters are back. My laptop and cable modem, that is. Hopefully that will mean faster updates, if not wittier.

4:47 pm: In the strangest commercial yet, Taco Bell has a bunch of older folks running around acting like hipsters.

4:49 pm: Ravens score again. Halftime can’t come soon enough for 49ers fans. Or Beyonce fans.

4:52 pm: Sorry, my wittiness is failing me. Not as much as the 49ers offense is failing them, though. Hopefully both will be better in the second half.

4:56 pm: For another perspective, check out this page from moment.me that sources different perspectives from within the Super Bowl crowd.

4:58 pm: Did the Niners QB just trip over the blue line of scrimmage? I thought that was only on TV.

5:01 pm: One thing that is a bit weird: If you watch the livestream, you see some of the same companies advertising — but generally not the same ads. But all the ads are themselves available online.

5:03 pm: Scientology ad. Guess it’s not just for Atlantic readers anymore.

If you need to replay any of the first half, here they are. The commercials, that is.

5:07 pm: Important analysis. If the 49ers don’t improve, they will lose.

5:09 pm: Time for the Pepsi Beyonce concert, Pepcifully brought to you by Pepsi.

5:11 pm: I can already predict the final score. Beyonce 1, Alicia Keys 0.

That said, it’s nice Keys was able to get time off from her job as BlackBerry Chief Creative Officer to perform at the Super Bowl.

5:16 pm: Here’s how the first quarter ads stacked up, according to Poptip.

5:25 pm: If you like our troops, apparently you have to go buy a Jeep.

5:29 pm: GoPro just had a cute baby commercial. Though, even with a rugged camera, I am still not sure you are supposed to throw your baby.

5:34 pm: The Ravens have come back on the field for the second half.

5:39 pm: It’s lights out for the 49ers. And the Ravens.

Seems like a blackout of some kind.

5:40 pm: And with that, it’s the BlackBerry commercial.

5:41 pm: Power’s still out.

Maybe CBS pulled the plug so they could show more commercials.

5:45 pm: 49ers have finally found a way to contain the Ravens.

5:57 pm: Bloomberg News is reporting that it was a power surge that caused the blackout. It sure didn’t come from the 49ers.

6:00 pm: Score one for PBS.

6:02 pm: Ravens expected to resume playing in seven to 10 minutes. No estimate on when 49ers might start playing.

6:03 pm: CBS briefly showed a clock counting the outage. It was at 27 minutes.

6:08 pm: And in case you are wondering, of course, the Super Bowl lights have their own Twitter account.

6:10 pm: Lights back. 49ers offense not.

6:12 pm: Hmm. Maybe not the best thing to be touting …

6:15 pm: When the lights went out in New Orleans, a lightbulb went on over at Oreo.

6:21 pm: Anti-poverty group One Campaign notes that 500 million people in Africa have never had power.

6:29 pm: BuzzFeed has a nice collection of Super Bowl blackout tweets.

6:33 pm: Power now restored to the 49ers, too, as they cut the Ravens lead to single digits.

6:37 pm: My Super Bowl math: One-minute commercial costs $3.7 million. So a 33-minute power outage equals $122.1 million worth of free advertising for Twitter.

6:40 pm: I thought they would restore power and play would resume. Never thought there would actually be a game.

6:42 pm: This.

From Kevin Mitnick:

6:49 pm: Breaking: Superdome to be renamed Enron Field.

6:56 pm: Meanwhile, Samsung just got some nice free advertising for its Galaxy Camera from Martha Stewart.

7:21 pm: That Sodastream ad aired. Anyone know the full story?

Oh. I guess the original had the Coke and Pepsi logos

7:29 pm: Samsung’s fourth-quarter ad placement, which looked like a bust earlier, turns out to be pretty good.

7:39 pm: Don’t the 49ers still have one blackout remaining?

7:41 pm: And that’s the ball game. I’d say that fans, CBS and advertisers got their money’s worth.

Those who want to take advantage of the deal need to sign up between Feb. 3 and Feb. 9. Then they can buy the phone anytime between Feb. 10 and Dec. 31, and they will get a $50 gift card.

Best Buy did the same thing last year, and plans to begin marketing it on Super Bowl Sunday. It will support the campaign with a TV ad related to a spot it will air during the Super Bowl.

Best Buy said it saw “tremendous results” with the similar campaign it did a year ago, particularly among its Reward Zone customers.

Separately, the store is also running a two-day deal through Saturday, offering the popular Samsung Galaxy S III for $99 with a new two-year contract on AT&T, Sprint or Verizon. That’s $100 off the usual price.

But there are other important retailers, including Best Buy and Apple stores, as well as the Costcos, Walmarts and Targets of the world. The carriers, however, don’t benefit equally from each third-party store that carriers their products.

A survey from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners finds that AT&T, for example, gets 57 percent of iPhone sales at the Apple Stores, compared to 28 percent for Verizon, with the remainder going either to Sprint or unlocked devices that find their way to T-Mobile or another carrier.

Sprint, meanwhile, fares well at Best Buy, where it and Verizon both accounted for 21 percent of sales, according to the survey. Verizon, meanwhile, did best at big-box stores such as Walmart, Target and the warehouse chains.

“AT&T appears to do better than its average at Apple Stores and the Apple website, which makes sense seeing as it has offered iPhone the longest, and iPhone 5 launched in the survey period,” Consumer Intelligence Research Partners’ Michael Levin said in an email interview. “It does a little worse at Amazon. In contrast, Verizon does better at mass/warehouse retailers (Walmart, Target, etc.) and worse at Best Buy and eBay.”

The survey polled customers who activated phones between October and December, so Apple is likely overrepresented, given the iPhone 5 launch. For example, the study found Apple’s stores to be bigger than most carrier stores, including those of Sprint and T-Mobile.

Goldberger will become senior vice president of Target.com and Mobile, and will run all aspects of the retailer’s e-commerce business, including user experience, merchandising and analytics. He starts Feb. 11.

Last week, TechCrunch reported that Andy Page, Gilt’s president, was leaving Gilt. A spokeswoman confirmed that Page was ending his cross-country commute from San Francisco, which he’d been making weekly for the past three years.

The two departures cap a tumultuous year for Gilt, which has restructured its business several times in preparation for an initial public offering. Late last year, Gilt’s co-founder, Kevin Ryan, was replaced by Michelle Peluso, a Citigroup executive and member of Gilt’s board.

Gilt is dealing with the repercussions of its quick expansion into multiple verticals, and has not found a path to profitability in some of the niches. Some of the recent product cutbacks have included groceries and full-priced men’s clothing. It is also currently trying to sell Jetsetter, its travel division.

Gilt does not plan to fill the two new vacancies immediately. Peluso starts as CEO at the end of February, so she’ll be figuring out the right direction for the company, the spokeswoman added.

Goldberger was most recently executive vice president at Gilt, in charge of Home, Taste, Baby & Kids, and Business Development. And while Target will represent a much more corporate environment than Gilt’s startup culture, Goldberger will still face a number of challenges.

In 2011, Target’s online president left the company after the retailer’s website crashed from overwhelming demand for new designer apparel. The management change occurred soon after Target took control of its e-commerce site from Amazon.com. Since then, it has been competing fiercely with the e-commerce giant.

Earlier this month, Target announced plans to match prices from the top online retailers year-round, including Amazon.com, Walmart.com, BestBuy.com and Toysrus.com. It also said that its Target stores will match prices found at Target.com.

Sales at outlets open more than a year fell 1.4 percent, coming in generally better than expected. International comparable-store sales fell, while U.S. results were flat.

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Judge headed up marketing at the electronics retailer for four years, until May, when he resigned to explore new opportunities. At LivingSocial, Judge will be responsible for overseeing online and offline advertising, brand management, social media and communications.

In a release, LivingSocial’s CEO Tim O’Shaughnessy said, “With his experience and strategic insight, Barry will help us reach millions of new consumers and businesses around the world.”

Judge joined Best Buy in 1999 to help the company launch its online presence at bestbuy.com, and then held a number of positions before becoming CMO in 2008.

The timing of Judge’s arrival is a little curious, given that in November the daily deals company slashed 10 percent of its workforce, or about 400 people, in order to try to achieve profitability.

Of course, as the second-largest in the space, LivingSocial could arguably have some branding issues as it battles Groupon’s much stronger presence in the marketplace.

Additionally, the Washington, D.C.-based company is attempting to distance itself from the stigma of the daily deals business by focusing on producing and curating events. Groupon is doing the same, by expanding into the sale of physical goods, and by becoming a technology company that builds tools aimed at local merchants.

Separately, Chad Fowler, LivingSocial’s SVP of technology, announced today on his personal blog that he is leaving the company. He said he’s taking a role as CTO of a technology startup in Berlin, and will remain at LivingSocial until the end of January. Fowler joined LivingSocial through its acquisition of InfoEther almost two years ago.

And it was all my fault.

The fact that Best Buy lost money based on Walmart’s promotion was exposed after it and several other retailers filed complaints against Walmart for false advertising tactics with about a dozen state attorneys general, according to The Wall Street Journal.

In the case of the iPhone 5, Best Buy said it was compelled to match Walmart’s advertised price, even though it “concluded that Walmart didn’t actually have a sufficient number of iPhones available.”

That syncs up with what I reported on Dec. 15 when Walmart’s promotion first went into effect.

On that day, Walmart started offering the iPhone 5 at $127, compared to the original price of $190. It also started selling the iPad for $399, or $100 off. The discounts were only supposed to be available at its supercenters, or about 3,000 stores nationwide.

After calling around to several stores in Washington and California the day the promotion went live, I determined Walmart’s inventory of devices and pricing were wildly inconsistent.

Since it was difficult to find which stores had stock on hand, I recommended going to “one of the many stores that are offering to match the lowest prices this holiday season, including Best Buy and Target.” Over Twitter, at least one person told me that they took the advice and received discounted phones at Best Buy.

Walmart said the false advertising accusations are untrue. According to the WSJ, the company said it shipped double the usual amount of iPhones during the promotion and that the phone was 98 percent in stock at stores that carried the devices.

I hope that means I’m off the hook.

Walmart is slashing the price of a few iPhone and iPad models — including Apple’s flagship iPhone 5 — in 3,000 stores, reports Reuters.

The 16 gigabyte iPhone 5 will cost $127, compared to the original price of $190 (with a two-year contract from Verizon Wireless, Sprint or AT&T). Wal-Mart is also selling the 16GB iPhone 4S for $47 — nearly half off. The 16GB iPad with Wi-Fi will cost $399, or $100 off.

Interestingly, the 30-day promotion has Apple’s blessing. A Walmart spokeswoman told Retuers that the discounts were arranged with Apple. But, after making a few inquiries, the discounts proved difficult to find in a handful of locations in Washington and California.

I was told that the iPhone is only carried at Walmart Supercenters, which, if true, should make the hunt easier, since there are only 3,100 supercenters in the U.S., roughly the equivalent number of stores where Walmart is supposedly offering the discounts. Instead, I found the inventory and prices to be wildly inconsistent.

My advice, if you plan on taking on the challenge, is be patient. It takes awhile to find the correct person in electronics to answer your question on the phone, and hold times can be long. In one case, I was hung up on; in another extreme case, a representative simply told me that the iPhone 5 would cost “a lot.”

After calling the stores close to my home, I found that some only carried phones for Verizon Wireless and sometimes AT&T, but never Sprint. Additionally, inventory was limited to the 16GB iPhone 5, with none carrying the higher-capacity 32GB model.

Finally, after calling two stores in the San Francisco area, I found one Supercenter that was selling the iPhone at a discount. The Walmart in American Canyon, Calif. said the phone from Verizon Wireless would cost $127 with a two-year contract, but the iPad remained at its original price of $499. The Supercenter in Napa continued to charge full price for all the devices.

Here’s one idea: To save time and the headache of calling around, go to one of the many stores that are offering to match the lowest prices this holiday season, including Best Buy and Target, which have both vowed to honor some competitors’ prices. Perhaps you’ll have better luck there.

According to yet another online shopping survey for the holiday shopping season, this one from comScore, people are buying a lot more online than last year.

I know this people-buying-stuff-online thing must come as a shock to those who have been living in a cave for several years now.

For those with an Internet connection, though, sales rose to $1.04 billion on Black Friday, an increase of 26 percent over last year. It is the first time that Web purchasing for the important retailing day was over $1 billion, with 57.3 million consumers visiting online stores.

The entire amount of 2012 online holiday spending from the beginning of November until now, according to comScore, has been $13.7 billion. It is a 16 percent rise, but still a drop in the bucket compared to bricks-and-mortar retailing.

But, according to a statement from a comScore guy, “We continue to see this shopping day become more and more prominent in the e-commerce channel — particularly among those who prefer to avoid crowds at the stores.”

People don’t like being jostled at a mall when they can sit at home and buy more things on a couch. Imagine that!

Amazon was where the most action was among online retailing, followed by Walmart, Best Buy, Target and Apple. Auction site eBay was excluded from this group.

And, if you can bear any more stats, here is a chart from ChannelAdvisor on online sales:

Last month, the struggling retailer had warned that its adjusted earnings would be “significantly below” the prior-year period, but markets were still taken aback, and shares fell 13 percent in Tuesday morning trading, to a new 10-year low. Through Monday’s close the stock had already dropped 49 percent in the past 12 months.

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But the start-up has a broader story that is only now becoming clear. By capturing far more data then just points of light, Lytro’s light-field images can be displayed in a variety of other ways.

Photo credit: Eric Cheng / Lytro

With a software update due Dec. 4, Lytro camera owners will soon have several new ways to manipulate their photos. One, which Lytro has been demoing for a while–and showed at our AsiaD event–is something called perspective shift.

The technique allows one to gain some three-dimensional perspective by subtly shaking a picture back and forth. (The embedded animated GIF with Walt Mossberg from AsiaD gives a sense for the effect.)

The effect must be enabled from Lytro’s Mac or PC software, but from there it is viewable on any device with HTML5 support. On an iPad, the perspective shift can even be viewed by moving the iPad around and using the tablet’s accelerometer to shift perspectives.

Lytro is also adding a series of filters to its software. While many image programs, from Photoshop to Instagram, can apply filters, Lytro’s filters can have different effects on the foreground and background and transform when the focus is changed or when the photo is put into perspective shift.

For instance, a mosaic effect keeps the focal point looking normal while the background is transformed into a series of tiles. Crayon (seen in this photo of sunflowers) keeps the focal point in color while making the rest of the photo black and white. Another, Blur+, heightens the blur of the parts of a Lytro picture that are not in focus.

Lytro

Combined, the perspective shift and new filters should help give the public a better sense for what the Lytro camera is capable of, says Eric Cheng, Lytro’s director of photography.

“I think that’s what we are most excited about,” Cheng told AllThingsD. “[We're] showing how much data is captured and how we might use it going forward.”

As with other improvements, Lytro is making the change in software, meaning the new capabilities work not just on new pictures being taken, but also on all Lytro photos already captured.

Adding perspective shift does require the pictures to be reprocessed — a step that can take half a minute per photo. But at that point the photos can have filters applied and be shared back to the Web.

The move comes as the company is gearing up for the holidays. After months of working its way through a backlog of orders, Lytro has caught up to demand (though it won’t say how many cameras it has sold). The company is also broadening availability, which until recently had been limited to sales on its own Web site.

The company is expanding into a few international markets as well as Amazon and the Target and Best Buy Web sites, along with a handful of brick-and-mortar CityTarget stores.

In the mean time, here’s a YouTube video Lytro has done showing the perspective shift feature in action.

Amazon’s new 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD

If you were hoping to be among the first to own the larger Fire HD and haven’t yet placed an order, you’ll need to head down to your local Best Buy bright and early tomorrow morning. According to Amazon, the device is already backordered until December 3 due to popular demand.

The tablet market today is very different from the one that existed at the time of the Fire HD 8.9’s unveiling. In the months since its debut, Apple has rolled out an improved 4th generation iPad along with the iPad mini, and Google debuted the $399 Nexus 10 — a 10-inch version of its Nexus 7 touchscreen tablet. Those are two formidable rivals to Amazon’s larger Fire and will surely make this holiday shopping season a very interesting one for the tablet market.