Apple owners eyeing iPad but leery of buying

Survey: Apple owners eyeing iPad but leery of buying
by Lance Whitney
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.Share6 Apple hasn't had any trouble getting attention for its forthcoming iPad among Apple loyalists, but convincing Mac, iPhone, and iPod users to actually buy another device poses a challenge, according to the NPD Group.

Interest in the iPad, which hits store shelves Saturday, was 40 percent higher among existing Apple owners than among non-Apple users, said NPD's survey report "Apple iPad: Consumers' Perceptions and Attitudes."


(Credit: Apple)
NPD found that 82 percent of current Apple users are aware of the iPad. Among people with incomes $100,000 of higher, 80 percent said they're familiar with the iPad. And among consumers between 18 and 34 years of age, 78 percent know about the new tablet.

Those results, however, only gauged awareness of the Apple iPad. How many consumers may actually order one? Only 18 percent of all those surveyed said they're extremely or very interested in owning an iPad. That compares with 27 percent of those 18 to 34 years of age, and 24 percent of Apple owners.

Separately, however, some sources have reported that preorders by eager customers have already reached the hundreds of thousands.

A major reason some Apple users may buy an iPad is simply because it's from Apple. Among existing Apple owners surveyed by NPD, 37 percent said they're interested in the iPad because they like the Apple brand. Those in the 18-to-34 age range said they're most excited by the multitouch screen and would primarily use the tablet to play music and surf the Web.

The iPad's $499 entry price is lower than some had been expecting, but it's still seen as too high by many of those surveyed by NPD. Among the 18- to 34-year-olds questioned, 57 percent tagged price as the main reason they're not ready to open their wallets for the iPad. Even 43 percent of Apple owners think the price is too high.

Many of those surveyed may also hold off on an iPad because they see it more as a notebook or Netbook replacement than a unique device in its own right. Among 18- to 34-year-olds, 51 percent said they'd rather use a notebook or Netbook, while 44 percent of Apple owners echoed that sentiment.

"Considering what people are planning to use the iPad for, it's not hard to understand why people who have these capabilities on other devices, such as the iPod Touch or a notebook/netbook, may not want to spend $500 or more on a similar device," said Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis at NPD, in a statement. "This points to the need for Apple to close the content deals that focus the iPad on what is likely to be its best long-range value proposition around high quality media consumption."

Even people most interested in the iPad may not scoop one up right away. Among all those surveyed, only 9 percent said they were extremely or likely to buy the device in the next six months. That was the same percentage for Apple owners, while just 10 percent of those aged 18 to 34 said the same.

Among all consumers, 66 percent said they were not very likely or not likely at all to buy an iPad in the next six months. That percentage held true for those 18 to 34 years of age, while 60 percent of Apple owners felt the same.

NPD compiled its report based on a survey of around 2,000 consumers 18 years or older conducted from February 24 through March 3.

original article.

30 healthy picks

Not really a related topic. but i thought it was pretty interesting especially since I'm trying to eat a little more healthier these days.. especially since its getting hotter and we will be spending a lot of time at the beach this summer.

30 healthy picks
Great snacks with less than 200 calories
By Wendy Giman
From the November 2006 Issue
More from this story
A guide to slim snacking
Beat office candy cravings
10-calorie snacks
Eat and stay satiatied
Upgrade your diet
Eat to beat fat genes
Healthy TV snacks
Your snacks by the numbers
Healthy vending machine snacks
Avoid beverage diet sabotage
Eat your breakfast and drop pounds
How healthy are energy drinks?
Chose diet-friendly snacks
How smart is your favorite snack?

Craving salty?
•5 olives (any kind) (45 calories)
•1 small Martin's pretzel (50 calories)
•2 oz Applegate Honey and Maple Turkey Breast wrapped around 2 bread-and-butter pickles (80 calories)
•1/4 cup hummus, 3 carrot sticks (80 calories)
•1 Laughing Cow Light Swiss Original wedge, 3 pieces Kavli Crispy Thin (85 calories)
•One 1-oz package tuna jerky (90 calories)
•1 oz buffalo mozzarella, 1/2 cup cherry or grape tomatoes (94 calories)
•1 bag Baked! Cheetos 100 Calorie Mini Bites (100 calories)
•15 Eden's Nori Maki Crackers rice crackers (110 calories)
•1 cup unshelled edamame (120 calories)
•50 Eden's Vegetable Chips (130 calories)
•One 1-oz package of Planters NUT-trition almonds (130 calories)
•1/4 cup Trader Joe's Chili con Queso, 18 baked tortilla chips (140 calories)
•1/2 cup pumpkin seeds in shell (143 calories)
•2 pieces (30 grams) prosciutto, 4 dried figs (154 calories)
•1 Subway Turkey Breast Wrap (190 calories)


Craving sweet?
•1 package Original Apple Nature Valley Fruit Crisps (50 calories)
•1 packet O'Coco's Mocha cookies (90 calories)
•1 Jelly Belly 100-calorie pack (100 calories)
•One 100-calorie pack Trader Joe's Chocolate Graham Toucan Cookies (100 calories)
•One 100-calorie Balance Bar (100 calories)
•1 Starbucks Mocha Frappuccino bar (120 calories)
•1 package Back to Nature Honey Graham Sticks (120 calories)
•1/2 banana rolled in 1 tbsp frozen semisweet chocolate chips (123 calories)
•2 tbsp Better 'n Peanut Butter, 4 stalks celery (124 calories)
•1 bag Orville Redenbacher's Smart Pop Butter Mini Bags topped with a spritz of butter spray and 1 tsp sugar (126 calories)
•24 Annie's Chocolate Chip Bunny Graham cookies (140 calories)
•Half of a 1.08-oz container of M&M's Minis mixed with 1/3 cup lowfat granola (145 calories)
•1 McDonald's Fruit 'n Yogurt Parfait (160 calories)
•1 container Fage Greek Total 2% fat yogurt, 2 tsp honey (173 calories)

original article.

Best Companies for Job Growth

Not really on the topic but still i thought it was pretty neat because well i want a new job and i know ive been looking and I'm sure I'm not the only one who has been. so yeah it would be great anyways here's the article.
Best Companies like the Scooter Store and DreamWorks notched some impressive job growth last year and are showing no signs of slowing down.

1. Scooter Store
The Scooter Store

Job growth: 51%
U.S. employees: 2,173
2010 Best Companies rank: 38

Not to be confused with those zippy little rides for kids, the Scooter Store specializes in medical power chairs for seniors -- and is no fad. The company notched some impressive job growth last year thanks to the aging baby boomer population and a strategic marketing shift.

Instead of relying on television advertisements, the Scooter Store bulked up its sales force to court doctors and assisted living facilities directly, with much success. New positions have also opened up for those who provide delivery, service and administrative support across the country.

Although Executive Vice President Mike Pfister doesn't anticipate the same level of growth that the company experienced last year, he estimates it will remain in the double digits. "We try to provide an alternative for going to a nursing home," he said, and "people believe in our ideology."



2. Brocade Communications Systems
Brocade Communications

Job growth: 39%
U.S. employees: 2,873
2010 Best Companies rank: 61

After the acquisition of Foundry Networks at the end of 2008, the Silicon Valley equipment supplier focused its energy on hardware and software development, which meant adding more technical jobs, mostly overseas.

This year, the company is focusing its hiring primarily on sales and customer support positions worldwide. "We'll probably grow about 20% to 30%," estimates Lisa McGill, vice president of human resources. Many new opportunities will be concentrated at the company's offices in Plymouth Minnesota and Broomfield Colorado as well as the research and development center in Bangalore, India.



3. Scottrade
Scottrade
Job growth: 22%
U.S. employees: 2,409
2010 Best Companies rank: 27

Last year the online investing firm opened 58 branch offices across the country and has plans to open a little more than 60 in the year ahead, which means more staff in the offices and at the company's corporate headquarters in St Louis.

Plans are also in the works for a new business operations center in Denver, which will fuel more job growth going forward. "We currently have 230 job openings, not including the Denver openings which have not been posted yet," according to Kelly Doria, a spokeswoman for the company.

Available positions are mostly concentrated in information technology, including developers, network engineers, infrastructure specialists and computer operations specialists but there are also openings for managers and stock brokers at the new office sites.



4. Salesforce.com
Salesforce.com

Job growth: 21%
U.S. employees: 2,361
2010 Best Companies rank: 43

Salesforce.com, which makes software to help companies manage customer relations, has thrived thanks to two hot sellers: Sales Cloud and Service Cloud. The latter, geared for call centers, is the company's core product and its fastest growing. A key selling point is that Salesforce's software integrates with Twitter and other social media channels, "taking the old service model and bringing it into the 21st century," said a company spokesman.

CEO Marc Benioff says the company is hiring more sales people worldwide to meet increased demand and is expecting growth to continue in the year ahead because of overall improvement in the information technology environment.



5. Chesapeake Energy
Chesapeake Energy

Job growth: 20%
U.S. employees: 7,720
2010 Best Companies rank: 34

Increased activity at one of the company's most promising projects, the Marcellus Shale, has uncovered new job opportunities for engineers, superintendants, foremen and field laborers as well as supporting positions in human resources, accounting and information technology. Currently there are over 420 positions still open companywide, which means hiring is showing no signs of slowing.

"We expect job growth to exceed last year," said Kip Welch, the director of recruiting. "We could as much as double the job growth from last year if we continue hiring people at the rate we are today," he added.



6. Scripps Health
Job growth: 15%
U.S. employees: 11,444
2010 Best Companies rank: 40

The San Diego-based hospital system has been growing its workforce consistently over the last few years as the industry overall has flourished along with Scripps itself, thanks to cutting edge programs like robotics surgery and human genetics research.

Scripps currently has about 400 positions open for registered nurses, imaging techs, laboratory and pharmacy staff as well as clerical and support staff. As a large corporation with expanding businesses, Scripps is also recruiting managers and professionals in accounting, finance, information technology, human resources, compliance, biomedical and quality assurance.


original article.

3d tv.

Morning all!
going to keep it sweet and short.. i think that's the saying haha well anyways i hate really long articles and i know i have posted some in the past but this one is super shirt and about a 3d television.. I'm guessing for all the 3d movies that have been made recently. haha enjoy.

Reuters) - Panasonic Corp will launch its 3D televisions in the United States on Wednesday, and work with top U.S. electronics retailer Best Buy Co to promote the products, the Japanese electronics maker said.

Entertainment

The maker of Viera flat-panel TVs said it expects a 50-inch model to retail for $2,500, and aims to sell 500,000 3D TVs in the United States in the first year of their launch, half its annual global sales target.

Under the joint promotion, Best Buy will set up special sections at its retail outlets, where prospective customers can try out Panasonic's 3D TVs.

Panasonic, the world's No.4 flat TV maker behind Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, LG Electronics Inc and Sony Corp, holds high hopes for 3D TVs as it aims to turn its TV business profitable in the year starting April.

The sci-fi blockbuster "Avatar" and other recent titles have sparked massive interest in 3D movies, raising TV makers' hopes for a strong debut of 3D models.

Shares in Panasonic closed up 2.8 percent at 1,307 yen on Monday, outperforming the Tokyo stock market's electrical machinery index, which gained 2.1 percent.

original article.

Greener Gadgets You’ll Love

Green Green green.. we have all gone or at least attempted to go green. and let me tell you. trying to find articles on this topic is getting harder and harder so if there are any suggestions on there on maybe certain products that would be greaat! hope everyone had a good weekend.. if not well then try again next weekend haha :D


The Greener Gadgets event in New York City was a stark contrast to its Las Vegas counterpart, the Consumer Electronics Show. The venue was vastly smaller, the visual appeal was significantly absent, and the huge techie crowd was lacking (but we’ll blame that on the snowstorm).

But there was one compelling dissimilarity about Greener Gadgets, and it was perhaps the reason we made the cross-country trip: undiscovered ingenuity.

While there were no elaborate booths with devices for us to test, Twitpic and geek out about, the ideas were concrete through illustration and avid speakers, making us even more excited about how the future will better merge both technology and sustainability.

As keynote speaker Yves Béhar poignantly put it, “If a design is not ethical, it cannot be beautiful. If it cannot be beautiful, it probably shouldn’t be at all.”


Fuseproject founder Yves Behar presents his idea of a super-simple, "hackable" car that can be utilized in developing countries. Photo: Inhabitat
The Hackable Car
Béhar is the founder of Fuseproject and designer of several other greener gadgets. He opened the show with a theme that we would later see throughout the program: Green should be available to the wider world.

Using the One Laptop Per Child project as an example, Béhar said greener design can be both simple and crave-worthy.

“When Nicholas Negroponte contacted me about the One Laptop Per Child Project, I was so over designing laptops. They are all the same, there is no innovation [...] But Nicholas really wanted to do something different and groundbreaking, and he really became an ambassador for design.”

“We learned a lot of things, and the rest of the world learned a lot of things through this process. For instance, we learned that a laptop could be made light and cheap and that people would find that desirable.”

Springboarding off that idea, Béhar presented his dirt-simple electric vehicle design that would make sense in a developing country. It’s tough, versatile and “hackable,” meaning that you can build your own functions on top of its basic frame.

The car is completely symmetrical – the front and back component pieces are interchangeable, and the roof is covered in photovoltaics. While the setup is basic, the portions can be changed to suit a wide array of needs ranging from a car to a truck, van, taxi, delivery vehicle or ambulance.

The design is still in its initial phase, but we think it definitely has potential as “electric” continues to become a buzzword for the automobile industry.

Ecovative Design
We remember Ecovative founders Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre when their EcoCradle design was simply an ambitious idea from insanely gifted students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. But the two entrepreneurs are making their design idea an actual product.

An alternative to hard-to-recycle polystyrene foam packaging, EcoCradle is made from agricultural byproducts such as seed husks, which would normally be landfilled. Once the seed husks are wet, they are combined with mushroom roots, which act as a binding agent.

Part of Greener Gadgets Sustainable Showoff event, Bayer explained that the compostable fibers can literally be put in your garden to improve your topsoil. It is the ideal shipping and packaging material for products weighing more than 15 pounds.

And manufacturers will not incur an added expense to make the switch. Bayer said the price is comparable to its widely used polystyrene foam counterpart. You’ll be able to purchase furniture and consumer electronics packaged in EcoCradle starting this spring.

Read more
Ecovative Design: Making Magic Out of Mushrooms

ANDREA absorbs toxic gases, such as formaldehyde, from home and office environments by enhancing the absorptive properties of living plants. Photo: Amanda Wills, Earth911.com The ANDREA Air Filter
Who doesn’t love a good houseplant for the office? (They’re all over Earth911’s space.) We’ve heard of the air quality improvements of keeping plants indoors, but the process has never been timely one when compared to commercial air purifiers.

But a new design called ANDREA actually accelerates this. In fact, its general gas removal rate is, according to the RTP Labs data, more than 1,000 times faster than plants alone.

Invented by French designer Mathieu Lehanneur along with Harvard professor David Edward, ANDREA transforms household plants into air cleaners which effectively rid indoor air of toxins and pollutants to purify any room in the home or office.

ANDREA’s fan system pulls dirty air through the holes in the top of the plastic casing, swirls the air around the leaves of the plant, sucks it through the soil, roots and water, releasing cleaner air through its vent.

It will cost you about $200, but the ANDREA is 44 times more efficient than a standard HEPA or carbon filter and works with any household plant. The ANDREA is now available in the U.S. and can be purchased on Amazon.

AUG/Living Goods Program
How would our purchasing habits change if we could actually see a product’s complete lifecycle in-store, on demand?

The winner of the Greener Gadgets Design Competition, the AUG/Living Goods Program is a concept that encourages the localization of Living goods (produce, meats and dairy) through the use of a barcoded “Producers” directory.

The mobile application scans products’ barcodes and generates information for the consumer by using a geo-location system that tracks the product’s origin and how many miles it traveled to be placed on store shelves. According to the designers, the app’s benefit is three-fold, a positive impact on the farmer, the grocer and the consumer.

The judges loved this design because it is practical and mobile, two things that other designs lacked this year. This project is still in development and is not yet available to the public. It also doesn’t specify if the app will be made for just the iPhone or if it will also include multiple formats for other cell phones with Internet access.

While judge Sarah Rich pointed out that this design is very similar to the GoodGuide app for the iPhone, the audience loved it, as evidenced by the massive applause it received


original article.