More than 48 million iPad’s are expected to be shipped in 2012 and experts are calling that number “conservative”.  Some are commenting that with the proposed specs for the Apple iPad 3, the number should be estimated at more than 100 million.  Apple has a very good community following, slick user interface on their products and can distribute large amounts of products like it’s nobody’s business.

These sales numbers are about to put Apple at the top of the PC market in 2012.  With the possibility of a quad-core iPad 3 with a new HD display and 4G LTE support, you can bet that will help the sales climb throughout the year.  Those that do not have an iPad, because of price, will be able to pick up the iPad 2 at a reduced cost as the iPad 3 is launched in March.

Consumers are really enjoying the Android operating system and all of the products that it powers.  With the recent release of the Ice Cream Sandwich update for the software, consumers are racing to update their smartphones and tablets to get a good look at the new operating system.  Android powered devices still out number iOS products, but since the first of this year, Apple has been closing the gap as Android’s market share starts to fall.  Android powered tablets are coming out of the woodwork, but that does not mean they are all worth buying.

Higher end tablets like the ASUS Eee Pad, Acer Iconia, Samsung Galaxy Tab and the Toshiba Thrive might be the best options on the market and might be good enough to pull market share from the iPad, for now.

As the launch date for the new iPad 3 gets closer, what direction are you going to go if you don’t already have a tablet?

See, what Amazon.com does is they use the Kindle Fire as a “loss leader” to get you into their ecosystem of streaming and subscription based content.  Amazon figures taking a loss of just under $3 is worth getting another subscriber to their content.  Well, the content and the Amazon Prime memberships, which cost a user $79 for a year of free two-day shipping and other perks.  The plan that Amazon uses to price the Kindle Fire under cost is similar to the way a wireless company offers a smartphone at a discount, with a two-year contract.

So, now you know why the Amazon Kindle Fire lost the company over $250,000 on launch day, that number being on the actual sales of the product, nothing added on after the sale.  Do you know what part was the most expensive?  Maybe you could leave a comment with your answer.

A stream only subscription is only $7.99 a month and if you can essentially take the subscription anywhere with your Android phone, it’s well worth it. As of right now, the app that was launched is only compatible with a few phones and those include; HTC Incredible, HTC Nexus One, HTC G2, Samsung Nexus S and the HTC EVO 4G, all of which should be running 2.2 or higher.

You should not expect to have access to Netflix’s entire catalog with this app though. Even though the selection is fairly large, you will not find any award winners or new releases with the app, at least not right now.

In order to get the app all situated on your phone, all you need to do is download it from the Android Market, plug in your Netflix username and password and you are done. From there you can see the interface and the options you have available to you, Home, Search, Genres, and Queue. The popular “title you might be interested in” feature is right there on the home screen and suggests titles based on other titles you have added to your queue, or watched recently. The app will also coincide with what ratings you have on the Netflix.com website.

The search function is nice and actually will suggest titles as you type in the letters, so that saves time in finding what you are looking for. If you spell a movie title incorrectly, you are still shown the titles of movies that are close to what you typed.

Having a reliable Wi-Fi connection is important for the app to stream properly. The audio will play perfectly and the picture will be high quality. As soon as your connection drops, you will see the quality of sound and video reduced right away, much like you get if you were streaming Netflix on your television.

If you experience a crash while watching Netflix, it will capture the point at which you were watching and allow you to resume right there as soon as you can get the app going again. As popularity rises, so will the features and size of the catalog that is available through the Android app.

News websites, videos and other types of attempts to get you to click a link that sends you to a malware laden website are popping up on Facebook at an alarming rate. One friend check’s it out and then their friends check it out and it goes from there, spreading the virus like wildfire. Facebook will now display a warning message any time you click a link that might be sending you off the site into a site that is not safe.

Each day something new pops up and it tends to follow a breaking news story or some kind of celebrity news. People click on these because they believe they are going to read about the news, but end up creating a problem they cannot solve before it’s too late. Some people might not realize that the attacks that happen have more to do with what browser you are using. Internet Explorer 9 has a couple of things in place to help block this activity. Facebook is currently working with other browser companies to help make using Facebook safer in any browser setting.

To combat “clickjacking”, Facebook will not ask you to confirm your “like” before it is posted to your profile for your friends to see. This will make sure that you are aware you are sending information to your news feed before you go ahead and do it.

Facebook is also offering up a two step authentication for your login page. The “Login Approvals” will alert a user to enter a code that Facebook will send via text message to a mobile phone, before they can complete the login process. Facebook is also teaming up with Web of Trust service. This free service gives user a little more information about sites they might be clicking to before they get that far. Notes about why a site might be dangerous will be posted, which gives the user time to go back one page or ignore the note and move on. Web of Trust has over 31 million ratings for sites across the internet.

With the arrival of the iPad 2 and other tablets like the XOOM, speed just might be one thing a non-brand loyal customer would look at before buying.  The Motorola XOOM isn’t exactly the same as the iPad, out with it’s version 2, but when the price is the same, what sets these tablets apart?

Did you see the video test of page-loading times between the iPad 2 and the XOOM, posted online by CNET?  With the pages loading very, very fast it was a close call, but the XOOM took home the blue ribbon in that category.  But will that keep people from buying the second generation Apple Tablet?  Not likely, in fact, most in the industry would believe that the XOOM won’t be able to keep up with the Apple products that are holding on to a large part of the tablet market share.

Don’t get me wrong, the iPad 2 was faster than other tablets, it just couldn’t beat out hte XOOM in web page loading speed.  That doesn’t really say a whole lot, since each one has their own benefits.  The poll on the CNET site asks if users are surprised by the results and 75% said “no”, at the time of this post.  Maybe some people think that because a product came from Apple that it must just be the best.

What do you think?

Many people flocked to Twitter to sign-up and see what the “hub-bub” was all about, without really ever knowing how to even use the site.  Much like a Facebook status update, a “tweet” is a short, description of what you have on your mind.  Or maybe it’s what you just ate for lunch, a link to a review of a new product or maybe you just wanted to let your “followers” know how your cat was doing today.  It can be whatever you want as long the tweet is 140 characters or less.

What has Twitter been up to over the last 5 years?  Not only has the site become one of the best places to find up-to-date breaking news, headlines, sports scores, and more, Twitter has also helped when other forms of communication have failed.  Is your father a follower of you?  You can contact him via Twitter if you are unable to call for instance.  Granted, your father might not be into Twitter as much as you are, but at least he can’t say you didn’t try to communicate.

One thing Twitter has still been trying to figure out ways to make money.  Don’t be confused, Twitter has plenty of funding from investors, but there has been little return on that money.  Do you think Twitter could survive without making money in the long term?

Nonetheless, Twitter has been a large part of our lives for the last 5 years.  More and more businesses use it as a way to connect with their customers and many devices are used in connection with Twitter, thus getting more connecting out of each user.

There are plenty of celebs and pro athletes on the Twitter wagon as well.  You can search for tweets from 50 Cent, Bob Vila, David Spade, Ice-T and John Cena just to name a few.  Pro athletes make news when they tweet and some of them include, Dwight Howard, Steve Nash, Eli Manning or even Shaun White.

Don’t forget, you can follow this blog on Twitter too.

At 8GB of storage and about 67/MBs, the Express Duo is pretty fast for an expensive flash drive.  If you are all about large file transfers for work, or play, there isn’t any reason you won’t want  a couple of these around.  The 16GB version is also available for about $30.

What is the best price?

Well, the Super Talent products are about $15 less than other 16GB versions found at large electronics websites.  You are saving with ease and a product like this makes it more obvious that price comparison shopping is where it’s at.  Load up on these bad boys and enjoy speedy file transfers and plenty of space for backup if needed.

I am a Dell guy, I am not going to lie. Every since I have been purchasing Dell computers, I have had little issues and I like that I can customize every aspect of the purchase. That takes care of the brand, but what about the specs? I, personally, like to have a reasonably larger screen because I am always doing more than one thing at a time, even on a laptop. If I am able to open up a couple of windows, or programs, and see everything at a glance, that is perfect for me.

I also know that to have many processes running at one time, you need a RAM boost. I like to hit up the 2GB range minimum and then always make sure that I am able to upgrade to at least double that for the future. Hard drive size really isn’t that important for my laptop as I save all my important files on a desktop and then I just up the GB’s until the cows come home. That way, as long as I have enough space on my laptop to get programs running and save minor items, 100GB or so is plenty.

That is pretty much all I look at. There are random other things like graphics cards, processors or motherboards that I could fit into my customization, but those things aren’t as important to me as they are in my main computer. So for that, I just skip and go with what is recommended by Dell.

Do you shop for your laptop by brand, hit up the best prices, or search out a complete customization?  Maybe you do all of the above and that’s what you like!