Apple's iPhone 5 Goes on Sale: Hot Trends

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Popular searches on the Internet include Apple(AAPL) as the iPhone 5 is officially released to stores on Friday.

Apple retail stores began selling the iPhone 5 at 8 a.m. local time in the United States, Canada, the U.K., France, Germany, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan. Customers in various locations lined up hours before store openings in order to get their hands on the latest version of the the smartphone.

The iPhone 5 was announced on Sept. 12. Apple took 2 million pre-orders for the phone in the first 24 hours they were available, double the amount Apple took for the iPhone 4S. Customers who pre-ordered their phones now may have to wait weeks for the phones to ship.

The iPhone 5 is thinner, lighter and faster than the iPhone 4S, with a 4-inch screen compared to the 3.5-inch screen on the 4S. For the first time, the iPhone 5 features 4G LTE wireless connections.

BlackBerry is another popular search. BlackBerry maker Research In Motion(RIMM) said it has resolved a service outage affecting customers in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

The outage affected BlackBerry customers on the same day that Apple's iPhone 5 became available.

RIM said it fixed the outage after a few hours. The company apologized to customers for the inconvenience.

Last October, tens of millions of BlackBerry users were left without email, instant messaging and browsing when a system-wide service failure occurred. Some users experienced the outage for as much as three days.

Bernard Madoff is trending as the Ponzi schemer's victims will soon receive payouts to help cover their losses.

The victims will receive checks ranging from $1,784 to $526.9 million. A total of $2.48 billion is being sent to 1,230 former clients of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities. The checks were sent out on Wednesday.

According to Irving Picard, the trustee liquidating Madoff's firm, the latest round of payouts more than triples the total to $3.63 billion. Picard said 44% of Madoff's victims with valid claims will be fully repaid.

Madoff was arrested in December 2008. He pleaded guilty to running the Ponzi scheme and is currently serving a 150-year prison sentence.