Valve's first real big push into gamers' lounge rooms is with "Big Picture" mode, which makes Steam much more TV and controller friendly. Valve are known to not really agree, or like the state of PC hardware and console technology, where they've even been rumored to be working on their own console, Steam Box.

Big Picture is looking to compete on the TV with consoles, with Valve's attempt to make their Steam UI look great on the big screen. Big Picture is designed for your PC to be connected to your TV, you can still use the new mode with your keyboard and mouse. At the moment, Big Picture mode is only available on the PC version of Steam, with the Mac-based version coming soon. In order to enable Big Picture mode, you'll have to go into Settings:

Opt-in to the beta, and update your client:

Alibaba Group is China's largest e-commerce firm, which is looking to have a massive year for 2012. The group expects to sell more merchandise than competitors Amazon and eBay, combined. This is according to Alibaba's chief strategy officer, Zeng Ming.

The group is aiming for around 3 trillion yuan ($473 billion) in annual transaction value from their Taobao e-commerce units in the next 5 to 7 years, says Ming. Jack Ma, Alibaba's founder, said that in 2011, Taobao's transaction value for 2012 would reach 1 trillion yuan. Alibaba have not revealed what percentage of online sales come from Taobao, but it seems to be the number one source of the company's profit engine.

Zeng talks of Amazon and eBay, America's top online retailer and auction site, respectively:

HP unveiled four new all-in-one PCs on Monday, starting with the SpectreOne. The SpectreOne is jut 11.5mm thin, making it HP's thinnest all-in-one PC yet. Sporting a 23.6-inch flush-glass Full HD display with a curved back, the SpectreOne looks swish.

Together with its wireless trackpad with multi-touch technology, with the ability of easily scrolling, swiping and tapping through Windows 8's tile-based OS, it is very, very Apple iMac-like. The SpectreOne is filled with an NVIDIA GPU, optional SSD and optional ExpressCache, two USB 2.0 ports and two USB 3.0 ports.

It also, surprisingly, sports NFC technology, where you can transfer pictures, videos and other goodies to the PC just by tapping a smartphone or NFC tag to its base. HP has also said that the SpectreOne sports "the latest Intel processors", but has left out any specifics. HP's SpectreOne desktop will be made available across the US in November, with a starting price of $1,299.

The FAA has cleared iPads for takeoff, at least for use in the cockpit. The iPad will be used by pilots as part of their "electronic flight kit" and will replace paper manuals which currently weigh in at 35 pounds. Apple's tablet is the only one approved for use as the electronic flight kit and has now been approved for use in "all phases of flight."

The reduction in weight, which ends up being pretty sizable due to no longer carrying 35-pound flight manuals, will save American Airlines an estimated $1.2 million in fuel costs annually. That figure is based upon current fuel costs, which are only set to go up.

This is a very exciting and important milestone for all of us at American Airlines as we work to modernize our processes and best meet the needs of our people," said Captain John Hale, American's Vice President of Flight. "With this approval from the FAA, we will be able to use iPad to fully realize the benefits of our Electronic Flight Bag program, including improving the work environment for our pilots, reducing our dependency on paper products and increasing fuel efficiency on our planes. We are equipping our people with the best resources and this will allow our pilots to fly more efficiently."

A member of Anonymous has claimed responsibility for the hacking of GoDaddy today, which has affected sites across the web. GoDaddy's site has been down today, along with sites hosted with the service. Other sites that use GoDaddy for DNS or other services have also been affected, though not all are down for everyone.

GoDaddy has acknowledged the problem with a Tweet:

Status Alert: Hey, all. We're aware of the trouble people are having with our site. We're working on it.

On the eve of Intel Developers Forum San Francisco, we received word from a SSD manufacture that Toshiba just slashed the price of Toggle Mode NAND Flash by 20 to 25%.

If you recall, just a few months ago Toshiba announced a 30% reduction in manufacturing. Toshiba expected other NAND flash manufacturers to follow suit to increase the cost of flash. Micron took the opportunity to gain market share and either held flash production or increased output. We've seen Micron gain some market share because of it. Companies are even making special Micron flash versions of existing products, like the new OCZ Vertex 4 512GB M (M for Micron) SSD.

With the massive price drop, we can only assume that Toshiba is backing off their reduced output strategy. This is good news for consumers looking for even lower priced SSDs. How good is this for consumers? Well, this is a quote from one of my inside sources:

Remember those 1,000,000+ Apple UDIDs that were leaked last week? Well, it turns out that they probably didn't come from an FBI laptop after all. The CEO of Blue Toad, a small, Florida-based publishing company has issued an apology as the data was taken from their servers about two weeks ago.

The data originated from the company's servers, though this doesn't completely rule out that the data made its way to the FBI. It does, however, contradict the story that went along with the leak as the data was taken just two weeks ago, not back in March as claimed. Blue Toad was alerted to the likelihood of it being their data by security researcher David Schuetz.

Schuetz noticed that several of the device names included in the leak made reference, or contained, "Blue Toad." The numerous references seemed to indicate development devices, so he contacted the company. They ran a comparison between the leaked data and their database and found a 98 percent match.

Fans of Instagram and Windows Phone rejoice, the app will be coming to the new Windows Phone 8 platform. According to The Verge's sources, Instagram will be made available on Windows Phone 8. A slip-up in a promotional video tipped them off, though the video could possibly be showing a Vimeo live tile.

The Verge then went and independently verified that Instagram is indeed coming to the platform. As you can see in the video above, at 0:52, the tile on the right, second from the top appears to be Instagram likes and comments. An image is provided below for your viewing pleasure.

Now, you no longer have to make a decision on buying a phone based on needing Instagram as it should make its way onto Windows Phone 8 before the end of 2012. Now you can use Nokia's PureView camera to take even better grainy 600x600 sunset or meal pictures. Won't all your friends be impressed?

The patent war between Apple, and what seems like every other company on Earth doesn't look to stop any time soon. A Chinese company, GooPhone, has already patented the design of the new iPhone, in China.

The new GooPhone i5, yes that's its name, was patented and released before the new iPhone was even announced (and it hasn't even really been announced yet, not until September 12). This gives the Chinese company a legal advantage over the real iPhone maker.

GooPhone i5 runs Google's Android 4.1 OS, and of course its internal goodies would be far different to that of the new iPhone's. The GooPhone i5 sports a 4-inch screen, smaller dock connector, and relocated headphone jack - all rumored to be changes included with the unreleased iPhone.

Riding on the wave of success of their super successful Galaxy S III, Samsung are poised to record a record Q3 profit of $6.2 billion. The Yonhap reports that according to analysts, Samsung could see an operating profit of $6.2 billion, up from $5.9 billion in Q2.

It wasn't too long ago that Samsung had announced they sold 20 million Galaxy S III handsets in just 100 days, as well as announcing and releasing the Galaxy Note II and the Galaxy Note 10.1.

Quarterly sales are estimated to have expanded by 24.5% to reach $45.5 billion or so, which sports a 78% year-over-year increase.