Hawaii: 3:30 AM
San Francisco: 5:30 AM
New York: 8:30 AM

Beijing: 8:30 AM
Rio de Janeiro: 10:30 AM
London: 1:30 PM
Berlin: 2:30 PM
Johannesburg: 3:30 PM
Moscow: 4:30 PM
Tokyo: 10:30 PM
Sydney: 12:30 AM (March 13th)

The pre-orders will be available through Apple.com, and are expected to ship in the United States next month — April 3rd to be precise.

The Unofficial Apple Weblog learned about the pre-order time after it asked Apple for the information in an e-mail.

Let’s assume you’re the sort of person who wants an iPad; if so, you can still wait for the launch date and pick up an iPad at your local Apple store (or at Best Buy a little bit after launch). However, there’s a possibility that it will sell out and you’ll be left hanging. If this scenario worries you, you’ll want to place your order online to be sure you get one before your friends and colleagues. You know, if you’re into that kind of one-upmanship.

But if you’re the sort of person who thinks the device is more hype than substance, you can go ahead and sleep in tomorrow.

Are you going to be up bright and early for the iPad pre-order? Let us know in the comments.

Facebook has asked the Government for access to data from the sex offenders’ list so it can make sure that no registered sex offenders are on the site.

The safety of young people on the social network has been under the spotlight this week following the jailing of known sex offender Peter Chapman, who used Facebook to meet a 17-year-old girl before raping and murdering her.

Facebook is urging the Government to create a way for information on registered sex offenders to be securely shared with public chat sites and social networks, so they can remove them.

A Facebook spokeswoman said, “If we can get this data from authorities we commit to removing registered sex offfenders from Facebook within days.”

The Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre this week called for all social networks to adopt its online abuse reporting button. Some major social networks such as Facebook and MySpace are yet to implement the button on their site.

Skype for Symbian will run on any Nokia smartphone using Symbian ^1, the latest version of the Symbian platform. Skype also says it will soon introduce this client to Symbian mobile devices from other manufacturers, including Sony Ericsson.

“Symbian enables us to bring smartphones to more and more people and ensures scale for our solutions and compelling services, such as Skype. We’re seeing around 1.5 million downloads a day on Ovi Store now and believe that the Skype client for Nokia smartphones will have wide appeal to Symbian users,” said Jo Harlow, Senior Vice President for Smartphones, Nokia.

“Skype, the king of Internet communications, running on Symbian, the world’s dominant smartphone platform, makes for an explosive combination,” said Larry Berkin, Head of Global Alliances and GM USA, Symbian Foundation. “With Symbian’s global reach, Skype is that much closer to becoming the ubiquitous real-time communications platform for hundreds of millions of Symbian-based mobile users.”

Russ Shaw, General Manager, Mobile at Skype said, “With Skype for Nokia smartphones, more than 200 million smartphone users worldwide** will be able to take the Skype features they love with them on the move. Alongside Skype’s relationships with operators and handset manufacturers worldwide, making Skype available direct to consumers will help millions of users keep in contact with the people that are important to them without worrying about the cost, distance or whether they are away from a computer.”

The initial Skype for Symbian application is compatible with the following Nokia touchscreen models: Nokia N97, Nokia N97 mini, Nokia X6, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and Nokia 5530 and the following non-touch devices: Nokia E72, Nokia E71, Nokia E90, Nokia E63, Nokia E66, Nokia E51, Nokia N96, Nokia N95, Nokia N95 8Gb, Nokia N85, Nokia N82, Nokia N81, Nokia N81 8 Gb, Nokia N79, Nokia N78, Nokia 6220 classic, Nokia 6210 Navigator, Nokia 5320.

Apple Inc sued Taiwan’s HTC Corp, which makes touchscreen smartphones using Google software, accusing it of infringing 20 hardware and software patents related to the iPhone.

Even though the suit did not name Google Inc as a defendant, Apple’s move was viewed by many analysts as proxy for an attack on the Internet company, whose Nexus One smartphone is manufactured by HTC.

“I think this is kind of an indirect lawsuit against Google,” said Kaufman Bros analyst Shaw Wu.

Apple’s suit was filed with both the U.S. International Trade Commission and the U.S. District Court in Delaware on Tuesday, and seeks to prohibit HTC from selling, marketing or distributing infringing products in the United States.

The complaint filed with the ITC cited Google’s Nexus One, which was launched in January, and other HTC phones such as the Hero, Dream and myTouch — which run on Google’s Android mobile operating system — as infringing products.

In a statement, a Google spokeswoman said: “We are not a party to this lawsuit. However, we stand behind our Android operating system and the partners who have helped us to develop it.”

HTC said in a statement that it was looking at the filings.

“HTC values patent rights and their enforcement but is also committed to defending its own technology innovations,” spokesman Keith Nowak said.

In a statement in Taipei on Wednesday, HTC added that it had not had the opportunity to investigate the suit.

“Until we have had this opportunity, we are unable to comment on the validity of the claims being made against HTC.”

In a separate statement to the Taiwan stock exchange, HTC said it will not see any impact on its financial outlook for the first quarter from the lawsuit.

By 0250 GMT, HTC shares lost 1.4 percent in Taipei in a broader market up 0.4 percent. The stock had fallen as much as 3 percent in early trade.

“The news is having some impact on HTC’s shares but lawsuits are quite common among tech firms and I would say it is just a threat from Apple this time,” said John Chiu, a fund manager at Taiwan’s Fuh Hwa Securities Investment Trust.

“However, HTC is not a good buy in the longer term since its margins will be coming under pressure when competition intensifies.”

FIERCE COMPETITION

Apple’s move comes amid fierce competition in the smartphone market, as new players angle for a piece of the fast-growing segment.

Mark Simpson, a patent attorney with law firm Saul Ewing in Philadelphia, said HTC made for an easier target than Google.

“It’s probably simpler for them to go after the company making the infringing goods, which is HTC. It’s easier to prove at this point,” he said.

MKM Partners analyst Tero Kuittinen agreed.

“HTC is an optimal target for Apple — it’s a relatively small vendor with a weak brand. It may be easier to push around than Samsung (which also makes Android smartphones). One question here is whether Apple can intimidate operators to back away from new HTC products by flashing the possibility of litigation trouble.”

Apple said HTC “knowingly induce(s) users of accused HTC Android products” to infringe on a number of Apple’s patents, some dating back to the mid-1990s. They cover user interface processes and other software and hardware components.

“We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours,” Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs said in a news release.

An Apple spokesman declined to comment beyond the complaints.

The iPhone held a 14.4 percent smartphone market share in 2009, according to research group Gartner.

Phones running Android comprised only 3.9 percent of the market, but were growing fast. Apple lost some share to Android phones in the fourth quarter.

“This move could be a sign Apple is getting rattled by Google’s recent momentum in the mobile space — notably the avalanche of Android products unveiled at Mobile World Congress,” said Ben Wood from CCS Insight.

Apple’s lawsuit is the latest scrape over ownership of the underlying technology for smartphones — handsets that play video and music, take pictures and send e-mail.

Eastman Kodak Co in January filed a complaint with the ITC, saying Apple’s iPhone and Research in Motion Ltd’s BlackBerry camera phones infringe the photography company’s patents.

Nokia, the world’s top mobile phone maker, has also sued Apple over patents. Apple has countersued.

That dispute, potentially involving hundreds of millions of dollars in annual royalties, reflects the shifting balance of power in the mobile industry as cellphones morph into handheld computers that can play video games and surf the Web.

In its ITC filing against HTC, Apple noted that some of the patents at issue are at the center of its legal fight with Nokia.

67% of the world’s population represents around 4.6B people, up from only 1B in 2002, indicating staggering continued growth. In developing nations, however, the uptake is even more substantial with 57% of the total population in these nations being mobile subscribers, even though other technologies are scarce.

To compile the report, the UN tallied mobile phone, land-line telephone and internet usage in 159 countries, which ranged from the most advanced European nations to the least developed nations in sub-Saharan Africa. The report also found that Internet use has grown, but at a much slower pace. It’s no secret that mobile devices are replacing computers in many parts of the world, and that a large majority of Web usage is attributed to mobile.

The potential for mobile marketing is obvious, especially in developing nations, with cellular penetration (CP) more than doubling in developing nations such as Africa and India since 2005. The CP in emerging markets exceeded 50% for the first time in 2009, reaching an estimated 57% by the end of the year, the report claims.

Providers and carriers are already taking note, as earlier this month, Vodafone revealed it will target consumers in India and across Africa with two new, ultra-low cost handsets which will support mobile banking and other services. Without immense competition as felt in developed nations such as the US and European countries, the possibilities are endless.

A story at the Wall Street Journal’s AllThingsD says that “Ads will be tied to Twitter searches, in the same way that Google’s original ads were. So a search for, say, “laptop,” may generate an ad for Dell. The ads will only show up in search results, which means users who don’t search for something won’t see them in their regular Twitterstreams.

“The ads will use the Twitter format – 140 or fewer characters – and will be distributed via the third-party software and services that use Twitter’s API. The services will have the option of displaying the ads, and Twitter will share revenue with those that do.

“Twitter will work with ad agencies and buyers to seed the program, but plans on moving to a self-serve model like Google’s, down the road.”

That will be a dramatic change from the present advertising model, where small text adverts appear on the top right of Twitter users’ home page. It is not known how much those garner in revenue – but given the low public profile of many of the advertisers there, it’s unlikely to be as much as the search deals that Twitter signed on the same day last October with Google and Microsoft’s Bing.

It is not clear how soon the new service would launch, though AllThingsD suggests it could happen “in the first half of the year”.

Questions have been raised repeatedly about how Twitter, which is estimated to have around 75m users, can fund its long-term existence and move to profitability.

As Twitter appears to have rejected charging for use either of the service or of its API, that seems only to leave advertising – though there is no clear information about the model behind it.

A number of third-party applications which provide access to Twitter via its API already provide ads in the “timeline” of messages as an alternative means of paying for the cost of the product.

Some of the excitement was driven by tweets by Alex Payne, one of Twitter’s engineers. On Saturday he tweeted “If you had some of the nifty site features that we Twitter employees have, you might not want to use a desktop client. (You will soon.)”

This was quickly picked up by the technology blog Techcrunch – leading Payne to begin refuting his tweet, and the Techcrunch post, in the same medium as before. “I don’t mean that developers won’t be able to compete with the site. We still release most everything API-first, of course,” he explained within the hour. And then, later: “Uh, everything I like that’s on the employees-only beta site is actually *built* on public API methods we’ve already given developers.” And next, in exasperation: “I just mean that our web client team is building cool stuff. It’s going to inspire desktop app developers. Same data, new perspectives.” And a puzzled complaint: “I am still baffled as to why anyone pays that level of attention to what I have to say.”

But given the absence of hard information from Twitter about how it plans to make a profit from its service, it’s likely that people will continue trying to mine every piece of information that escapes from the company – whether actually indicative or not – to try to figure it out.

Customers can now require their phone firm to cut them off when their bill reaches a certain level after accessing the internet in other European nations.

If users do not put in place a limit by 1 July, it will automatically be set at 50 euros ($65; £45).

The phone firms will have to warn users when their bill hits 80% of the limit.

Accessing the internet via your mobile phone while abroad is called “data roaming”.

European Commissioner for Digital Agenda, Neelie Kroes, said: “Protection against data roaming bill shocks is a useful step towards building customers’ confidence to use mobile networks to surf the internet when travelling around Europe.

“Such confidence is essential if people and businesses are to use the internet to its full potential.”

The Commission added that if service providers did not honour people’s set spending limits, national regulators would deal with complaints and impose any necessary sanctions.

Commission spokesman Jonathan Todd said the move was likely to reduce the cost of data roaming across Europe.
“This measure is likely to bring down the cost of data roaming, because if people stick to their own cash limits and find they don’t get much access to the internet for their money, the tendency will be to bring down prices so you get more surfing for your money,” he said.

College-age users of Facebook in the United States and a similar social networking site in Germany typically present accurate versions of their personalities in online profiles, says psychologist Mitja Back of Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. People use online social networking sites to express who they really are rather than idealized versions of themselves, Back and his colleagues conclude in an upcoming Psychological Science.

“Online social networks are so popular and so likely to reveal people’s actual personalities because they allow for social interactions that feel real in many ways,” Back says.

Back’s team administered personality inventories that evaluated 133 U.S. Facebook users and 103 Germans who used a comparable social-networking site. Inventories focused on the extent to which volunteers endorsed ratings of extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional instability and openness to new experiences.

The subjects — who ranged in age from 17 to 22 — took the inventory twice, first with instructions to describe their actual personalities and then to portray idealized versions of themselves.

Then, undergraduate research assistants — nine in the United States and 10 in Germany — rated volunteers’ personalities after looking at their online profiles. Those ratings matched volunteers’ actual personality descriptions better than their idealized ones, especially for extraversion and openness.

Facebook is so true to life, Back claims, that encountering a person there for the first time generally results in a more accurate personality appraisal than meeting face to face, going by the results of previous studies.

Adriana Manago, a psychology graduate student at UCLA, calls the new findings “compelling” but incomplete. College students on Facebook and other online social networks often augment what they regard as their best personal qualities, Manago holds. In her view, these characteristics aren’t plumbed by broad personality measures like the ones measured in Back’s study. And students’ actual personality descriptions may have included enhancements of their real characteristics, thus inflating the correlation between observers’ ratings and students’ real personalities, Manago notes.

“Online profiles showcase an enhanced reflection of who the user really is,” Manago proposes. In a 2008 study, she and her colleagues found that 23 college students sometimes used another online social networking site, MySpace, to enhance their images, say by Photoshopping acne out of a picture or posting a video of themselves driving a sports car at high speeds.

Still, the new findings make sense, remarks psychologist Sandra Calvert of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. She emphasizes that social-networking sites have fostered a new type of communication among teens and young adults, in which one person can create personal content that gets broadcast to a multitude of friends.

In a 2009 study of Facebook use among 92 college students, Calvert’s team found that young women reported a whopping average of 401 online friends, while young men reported an average of 269.

Reuters reports on other interesting results from the survey, including that 73% think it’s not OK to check Facebook at work, but 66% say checking personal e-mail is fine. Tweeting while at work is considered irresponsible for 72% of respondents, and watching online videos is wrong for 79%.

Other findings from the study include a fairly even split on whether companies are ethically in the clear when using social media profiles to assess job candidates: 52% think it’s appropriate with 48% dissenting. In the relationships department, a full 60% think it’s perfectly fine to unfriend an ex after a breakup. And despite the complexity of most of the social responsibility responses, one particular practice draws the ire of a majority 75% of respondents, who feel that it’s “egotistical and a waste of time” to build a Facebook profile for a pet.

The biggest caveat with these study results is the sample size: the project only polled 1,000 people. Nevertheless, it uncovers some interesting issues at the intersection of social media and the workplace that will likely become more, not less, thorny in the future.

What do you think: Is it OK to friend your boss or your employees on Facebook? In what contexts does it become more or less appropriate to do so?

The only problem with the new addition is that Facebook is only granting Google access to updates from its 3 million Pages, which are generally for celebrities, politicians, brands, and local businesses — not your average Facebook user. That information could occasionally be useful, but the power of real-time search comes from having a large number of contributors. Facebook has a huge amount of data from its 400 million active users, but it isn’t sharing most of that with Google. Instead, it’s only granting full acess to user updates to Bing (though that isn’t live yet). Bing will still only be getting status updates that are shared with “Everyone“, but with its recent privacy overhaul in December, Facebook ensured that it would have far more of those than it used to.

Unlike Twitter, which is reportedly making money off of its search deals with Bing and Google, Facebook isn’t charging the search engines for its data. According to Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land, Facebook is giving away the status updates because they may drive more people back to the social network.

Here’s a sample of some of the updates you can get from Facebook Page updates: