By LORRAINE LUK

TAIPEI--Apple Inc. is working with component suppliers and its assembler in Asia for the trial production of its next generation iPad from October, people familiar with the situation say, as it looks to stay ahead of the competition in the fast-growing tablet computer market.

The Cupertino, Calif., company has ordered key components such as display panels and chips for a new iPad it is aiming to launch in early 2012, said the people.

The next generation iPad is expected to feature a high resolution display - 2048 by 1536 compared with 1024 by 768 in the iPad 2 - and Apple's suppliers have already shipped small quantities of components for the sampling of the iPad 3. Suppliers said Apple has placed orders for a 9.7-inch screen device.

Apple spokeswoman Carolyn Wu in Beijing declined to comment. 

One component supplier to Apple said the company has already placed orders for parts for about 1.5 million iPad 3s in the fourth quarter."Suppliers will ramp up production and try to improve the yield rate for the new iPad in the fourth quarter before its official launch in early 2012," said a person at the supplier.

Apple, like many other big personal-computer and consumer-electronics brands, doesn't actually make most of its products. It hires manufacturing specialists - mainly companies from Taiwan that have extensive operations in China - to assemble its gadgets based on Apple's designs. They use parts from other outside suppliers, many of which also are from Taiwan and elsewhere in Asia. The arrangement frees Apple and its fellow vendors from running complicated, labor-intensive production lines, while the ability of Taiwanese companies to slash manufacturing costs helps cut product prices over time.

Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. assembles the iPad. A company spokesman declined to comment.

Apple reported blowout earnings for its fiscal third quarter ended June 25 in part due to the popularity of its iPad. The company sold 9.3 million units in the quarter, nearly triple what it sold a year earlier. Together with the robust sales of the iPhone smartphone and other electronics devices, Apple's net profit for the period more than doubled to $7.31 billion from $3.25 billion a year earlier.

Still, the next-generation iPad would be coming at a time when there's more competition in the market. Companies from Samsung Electronics Co., Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc., ZTE Corp. and Toshiba Corp. have launched similar devices using Google Inc.'s Android software. Apple is also embroiled in several lawsuits spanning various countries with Samsung Electronics over alleged patent infringement.

According to Men's Health rankings, Plano and San Jose are addicted to tablets, while Toledo is probably still running Windows 2000

Where do early adopters of consumer tech congregate in the U.S.? Not where you might expect, according to a survey appearing in the September issue of Men’s Health, which hits newsstands Tuesday.

Plano, Texas, beat out both San Jose (2) and San Francisco (3) as the most tablet- (or at least iPad-) friendly city in the U.S. And despite its high concentration of both Apple and Best Buy stores, New York City landed in the middle of the pack at 42.

Toledo, Ohio, ranked dead last.

To determine the rankings, editors looked at tablet use based on ad impressions from mobile ad network Chitika, the number of Apple and Best Buy stores per capita, and the percentage of households that own tablets, notebooks or laptops according to Mediamark Research.

Why did Plano end up on top? Texas’s ninth-largest city happens to be home to a number of corporate headquarters of prominent technology companies, including Dell Services, Ericsson, HP Enterprise Services, Siemens PLM Sotware and Alliance Data, David Zinczenko, Rodale EVP and editor in chief of Men’s Health, points out. (J.C. Penney, Dr. Pepper Snapple Group, Frito-Lay and Pizza Hut are also headquartered in Plano.)

But iPad adoption isn’t just concentrated in high-tech centers; it also appears to be correlated to education levels, Zinczenko suggests. After all, California has the largest state university system, and many other college towns appear toward the top of the list as well.

“Let’s look at who was in line when the iPad 2 went on sale: affluent, well-educated people who had $800 bucks to throw around in the middle of a deep recession,” he says. “It’s not that [college-educated people are] smarter than the people in Toledo, it’s just that they were fortunate enough to have the dough to attend college. As their educations progressed, their choice of leisure interests migrated toward words, narratives and research-driven pastimes,” all of which the iPad accommodates, he argues.

“But if my car broke down, I’d prefer for it to break down in Toledo; I’d probably be able to find somebody to help me get it started, or help me push it to the service station,” he jokes.

Most Tech-Friendly

1. Plano, TX
2. San Jose, CA
3. San Francisco, CA
4. Boise, ID
5. Austin, TX
6. Oakland, CA
7. San Diego, CA
8. Durham, NC
9. Chesapeake, VA
10. Colorado Springs, CO

35. San Antonio C+

Least Tech-Friendly

91. Laredo, TX
92. Norfolk, VA
93. Milwaukee, WI
94. Cheyenne, WY
95. Stockton, CA
96. Cincinnati, OH
97. Baltimore, MD
98. Detroit, MI
99. Fort Wayne, IN
100. Toledo, OH

For the complete list, see here.

Great news!!  I personally don't like to carry a wallet. NFC technology will help enable this along with QR codes (ie Starbucks app).  

Now if we can just get rid of pennies, barking dogs and Laker fans... :)

PayPal has just hit a new milestone: The payments platform has more than 100 million active accounts.

The news, announced by PayPal President Scott Thompson, also comes with a bold prediction: By 2015, the wallet will become a thing of the past.

“As the trend toward digital currency continues to gain momentum, we are focused on delivering solutions that are not just new and different, but better than what is currently the norm today,” Thompson said in a blog post.

“We believe that by 2015 digital currency will be accepted everywhere in the U.S. -– from your local corner store to Walmart. We will no longer need to carry a wallet.”

To back his assertion, PayPal is launching a new campaign that will challenge five Bay area residents to only use digital currency to pay for all of their purchases — no cash allowed. It’s an intriguing campaign that could become a good marketing tool for the company.

PayPal has been on a tear in recent years, generating more and more of eBay’s total net revenues and profits. The company is expected to facilitate more than $3 billion in mobile transactions this year alone.

The payments company faces some powerful challengers, though. Google recently unveiled its mobile payment solution, Google Wallet, to the world. PayPal has sued the search giant, accusing two of PayPal’s former executives (now with Google) of stealing and sharing trade secrets.

In its 40-year tenure as a form of communication, email has run its course from the domain of über nerdy computer scientists to one of the most common ways to keep in touch, both personally and professionally.

Although email as a mode of communication was around for ten years before the term “email” was actually coined, we now count on it in our daily lives. In fact, the use of email has become so pervasive that the Oxford English Dictionary recently added a slew of email acronyms to its official canon.

And finally, just this year, the AP Stylebook, a.k.a. the holy book of all (or most) journalists, amended the spelling of e-mail to email, allowing articles such as this one to save bigtime on hyphens.

Let me be honest with you... I hate wires!  HDMI cables hang from the back of my tv, ethernet cables connected to my router, plugs, speakers and on and on!  Even though I live in a "wireless" home there are wires everywhere.  So go Apple!

via @mashable

Apple is reportedly working on a way to sync iPods with iTunes wirelessly. It’s just another step in Apple’s steady march toward making wires and cords a thing of the past.

Steve Jobs is apparently pushing hard to make the next generation iPods capable of this type of wireless sync, according to Cult of Mac‘s sources. iPods with wireless sync would make the USB cable obsolete. Instead of importing music, movies and apps through Apple’s iconic 30-pin connector, it would automatically sync whenever a user was connected to his or her Wi-Fi network.

There are more than a few problems standing in Apple’s way, though. Big questions still loom about the reliability and signal strength of wireless syncing, and apparently it can be a drain on battery life. To address those issues, the world’s most valuable tech company has been allegedly testing iPods with carbon fiber cases, rather than the aluminum used in most of the company’s iPods.

Adding fuel to the fire, Apple has also recently hired Kevin Kenney, a senior composites engineer with expertise in carbon fiber. Apparently he has worked with Apple in the past and has even been named in some of Apple’s patents.

One caveat to the carbon fiber rumors, though: the stuff is conductive and presents its own set of problems to transmitting wireless signals. Of course, nobody really knows what type of designs Apple may or may not be testing with the next-generation iPod, because nobody knows what Apple has up its sleeve.

AirPlay and the War Against Wires

It’s no secret that Apple wants to decrease its reliance on wires, especially as it tries to shape a post-PC world. You can bet Steve Jobs doesn’t like that the iPhone and iPad still have to plug into a Mac or PC to function.

To create its world without wires, Apple has been working hard on improving the performance of AirPlay, a feature that lets users stream their music to different stereo systems. The AirPort Express and the new Apple TV both serve as hubs for streaming iTunes to multiple stereos. Apple’s “Remote” app turns the iPhone or iPod touch into a remote control for music streaming.

AirPlay is impressive technology, especially if someone takes the time to really set it up properly. I have a group of friends that have wired their four-story home so that they can control any stereo in the house with their iPhones. It’s simply the future.

While we question some of aspects of Cult of Mac‘s report (carbon fiber is a lot more expensive than aluminum), we definitely believe Apple is working on a wireless sync solution for iTunes and iOS. Wi-Fi Sync could even make its debut in June, when Apple is set to reveal the future of iOS and Mac OS at WWDC.

In any case, we think Wi-Fi Sync is a feature that will come sooner rather than later. And it won’t be the end; Apple will keep on finding ways to make its devices more mobile and less reliant on wires or cords. It’s also important to note that some of its competitors (Microsoft and HP’s webOS in particular) have developed some innovative forms of wireless sync already.

A World Without Wires

Our society is slowly disconnecting from the countless wires that have tied us down for years. The increasing popularity of laptops and the rise of smartphones have made mobile computing easy and efficient. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth have made it possible for us to surf the web and answer our phones from almost anywhere. We can even charge our devices via wireless.

We’re still a long ways off from a world without wires, though. At the end of the day, we still have to plug our laptops and tablets into the wall. We still need cords to power our microwaves and our TVs. We have cords for our USB devices, our headphones and even our Wi-Fi routers. Wires run through our homes and under our streets to power our way of life.

Our society is addicted to wires, and it’s a problem that Apple, Microsoft and others clearly want to solve. It starts with AirPlay and wireless syncing, but until someone can solve the power problem, our reliance on cords plugged into electrical outlets will continue.

New technology is on its way, though. Inductive charging (the technology that makes products like the Powermat possible) is slowly making its way into more homes, and there have been recent advances inresonant inductive coupling, a technology that utilizes oscillating magnetic fields to transfer electricity without a cord.

Don’t be surprised if your future Macbook Air doesn’t come with a power cord. It’s going to happen.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, alengo

I grew up around computers.  My dad is an electrical engineer and I can still remember going to work with him on the weekends and staring at the giant computers!  We even had a Commodore Pet as one of the very first "desktop" computers.  (You had to have a really strong desk to support that baby!)

One of my earliest computer memories is when my dad bought me this "Electronic Computer Brain"!  I saw this in the Huffington Post article (below) and laughed out loud!  I remember getting this and assembling it when I was probably 6 or 7.  There were short straws that would attach to the front to "program" it.  It could do simple math problems and as the ad points out, could tell your fortune!  Unfortunately it didn't tell me to buy Microsoft stock in 1985, but for $4.99 it was a bargain!

"What the heck is electronic mail?" isn't something you typically hear today. Even moms and grandmas are on Facebook, and if you hand any of today's kids a smart phone they'll be downloading episodes of "Yo Gabba Gabba" before you can say "don't drop that."

Still, it wasn't too long ago that consumers were fascinated by the possibilities of computers, and these vintage ads prove that in a hilarious way. From those which show our former naivete of all things digital, to ads for hard drives that pale in comparison to an iPhone and cost exponentially more, we guarantee you'll get a kick out of these outdated tech-vertisements. Vote for your favorite!

http://www.infographicsshowcase.com/how-much-is-a-petabyte-infographic/