Samsung Galaxy Note II official with 5.5-inch screen and Android Jelly Bean (video preview)  —  After dominating IFA 2011 with its Galaxy Note introduction, Samsung is hoping to repeat the feat today with the Galaxy Note II.  Now thinner and lighter, the new Note device comes with a redesigned S Pen stylus …

How Reddit Got Obama: “There Are Quite a Few Redditors at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.”  —  Question No. 1: Yup, that's really Barack Obama, taking questions over at a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything).  —  Question No. 2: It was really no big deal, says Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, via email:

Mark your Microsoft calendars: Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 launch dates revealed  —  Summary: Expect September to be a month of Windows Phone 8 handset reveals, and late October to be the official launch of the coming devices.  —  We Microsoft watchers already knew October was going to be a crazy month …

Apple will now give you up to $345 for your old iPhone 4S  —  If reports are true, Apple is days away from announcing its next-generation iPhone, the long-awaited follow-up to its fast-selling iPhone 4S.  If you're already shuddering at the thought of paying out for the new device …

Exclusive: Why Yelp stock spiked  —  The insiders didn't sell.  —  FORTUNE — This was supposed to be the day that Yelp (YELP) shares took a dive, as early investors were unshackled from lockup provisions attached to the local business review site's March IPO.  So why on earth is the stock up nearly 19% as of this writing?

Google Said To Hire Barclays To Sell Motorola's Home Business  —  Google Inc. (GOOG) wants to sell the unit within Motorola Mobility that provides set-top boxes and other equipment to cable providers and has hired Barclays Plc (BARC) to seek buyers, according to two people familiar with the situation.

Sony unveils VAIO Duo 11 slide-out tablet, Tap 20 portable touchscreen all-in-one  —  Sony just threw itself fully into the touchscreen Windows 8 arena — it's introducing the VAIO Duo 11 slider tablet and the Tap 20 combination desktop and tablet design at its IFA 2012 press conference.

Apps Dominate Mobile Time Spent Accessing Travel in U.S.  —  As the summer travel season comes to a close, Nielsen looked at the usage of travel-related mobile apps and websites during June 2012.  Findings showed that U.S. Android and iOS users spent 95 percent of their time accessing travel information …

Lift Launches Incredibly Simple Personal Motivation App  —  If you had to break down motivation to its simplest bits, what would they be?  —  According to the new iPhone app Lift, they are: Setting goals, recording activity, getting support and seeing progress.  —  That's all Lift users can do.

If Content Is King, Multiscreen Is The Queen, Says New Google Study  —  New research out from Google, working with market analysts Ipsos and Sterling Brands, puts some hard numbers behind the often-noticed trend of how people in the U.S. are using a combination of phones, tablets, computer and TVs to consume digital content.

Exclusive: Amazon NY signs deal to sell its ebooks through other retailers  —  Amazon's New York-based book publishing imprint, which is headed by publishing industry vet Larry Kirshbaum, has signed a deal with Ingram to distribute its ebooks to other retailers, paidContent has learned.

Google Now updated with movie showtime suggestions, emergency alerts, and more  —  One of the headline features of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean is Google Now, the company's riff on the automated mobile assistant — and today Google has released an update that adds some new features to the mix.

Pandora's Q2 2013: $101.3M In Revenue, 54.9M Active Users, And A Net Loss Of $5.4M  —  Internet music service Pandora just announced its financial results for the second quarter of its fiscal 2013.  The company posted total revenue of $101.3 million, which was up 51 percent year-over-year.

Romney 2012 is first political campaign to buy Twitter trending topic  —  Hot on the heels of President Obama's Reddit AMA, The Wall Street Journal has reported that the Romney campaign will leverage a little bit of the internet, too: it has bought a national trending topic on Twitter for Thursday night.

HP unveils Envy x2 laptop / tablet hybrid: 11-inch IPS screen, NFC and pen support, arriving later this year  —  You didn't think the world's top PC maker was going to sit out the laptop / tablet hybrid trend, now did you?  HP, one of the last OEMs to share its Windows 8 plans …

Toshiba unveils U925t Ultrabook with slide-out touchscreen, keeps the price a secret for now  —  If Computex was a coming out party for Windows 8 Ultrabooks, Toshiba was one of the wallflowers: though the company teased some concept devices, it only let journalists photograph them from certain angles, and with their screens turned off.

Three billion flips later, Flipboard turns to video  —  Tablet content aggregators like Flipboard and Zite have found favor by re-imagining modern web text as linear pages of ye olde magazines.  But can the same paradigm work for other online content?  —  Flipboard on Wednesday launched …