Less than three months after its iPad launch, Apple sold its 3 millionth unit of the table device on Monday, the company announced.

“People are loving iPad as it becomes a part of their daily lives,” Apple  CEO Steve Jobs said in a prepared statement. “We’re working hard to get this magical product into the hands of even more people around the world.”

iPad goes on sale next month in 9 more countries.

[via CNN Money]

If you been trying to figure out what to get Howie Mandel for Christmas, look no further. In addition to looking good and protecting your iPad from scuffs and scratches, the iSkin Duo is embedded with Microban antimicrobial protection which inhibits the growth of odor and stain causing bacteria and fungus. And now unfortunately every time I pick up my iPad I’ll be wondering if there is any odor and stain causing bacteria or fungus growing on it. Thanks, iSkin.

So if you’re wondering why it’s taking sooooooo long for any movement on health care reform or DADT it’s because the entire White House staff is obsessed with Scrabble on their iPad’s. Just kidding. Sort of.

According to the Washington Post everywhere you look in the White House these days you see an iPad. Specifically, almost  everyone in the West Wing office of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has an iPad or an iPad on order. I guess White House security clearance doesn’t get you an iPad any faster than anyone else when there are shortages.

The Post reports “Emanuel just got his, as did senior adviser David Axelrod and deputy press secretary Bill Burton. Both communications director Dan Pfeiffer and press wrangler Ben Finkenbinder have one on order. Economic adviser Larry Summers takes his to staff meetings.”

So of course, the Post wanted to know what apps everyone was using. I mean isn’t that the first thing you ask your friends when you’re talking about your iPads? “Summers has the Bloomberg app for financial information, says adviser Matt Vogel. Also Scrabble. And the first book he downloaded was a free copy of “The Federalist Papers.” Burton, who has been a bit of an iPad evangelist at the White House, has the app for Vanity Fair magazine, Scrabble, a news app and the entire last season of ABC’s “Lost.” Emanuel has “all the newspaper apps,” says a top aide, and has installed the iBooks app so he can read books on the device. Axelrod has only downloaded a couple of apps so far, his assistant, Eric Lesser, said. They include the Major League Baseball app and the National Public Radio one.

There’s no word on whether or not Mr. President himself has adopted an iPad, but we do know in the past his allegiance was to the Blackberry.  But he’s got to be a bit jealous when he sees Joe Biden on his.

Agent Phil Coulson: I’m Agent Phil Coulson with the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.
Virginia ‘Pepper’ Potts: That’s quite a mouthful.
Agent Phil Coulson: I know. We’re working on it.     – Iron Man

Since AT&T hasn’t gotten around to informing you, its “valued” customers, about their security breach I’ll fill you in. Let’s start with the most important question. Should you be concerned? Eh.

If you’ve activated your 3G account you’ve seen this page:

Well up until they tightened up their security AT&T automatically filled in your email address for you as you logged in, and this was the hole that was exploited by a company called Goatse Security (really?) Essentially, AT&T made every subscribers email address public to anyone who knew where to look for them.

It has been reported that 114,000 email addresses were captured but it’s not been reported whether those email addresses have been published or sold elsewhere.  So watching your email boxes for a sudden increase in spam is the only way you’ll know if you might have been affected and those email addresses were indeed harvested for ill intentions.

For more technical details you can skip on over to Gizmodo. In the meantime, I don’t think this incident on it’s own is a concern but what it should mean for our overall confidence in AT&T is a concern. And for that matter any other company we choose to entrust with our private information. Hopefully, this relatively small issue is an eye opener for AT&T and leads to tighter security.

Welcome to another episode of Repurposing: The iPad edition. If you have an old Macintosh or iBook just laying around, taking up space, it’s time to put it to work on behalf of your new iPad.

Exhibit A:  a 1984 Macintosh makes a geek-tastic iPad stand

. . . more after the jump

After just nine days Wired Magazine for the iPad has already sold over 79,000 copies. That’s pretty impressive, and to put it in perspective their newsstand sales average around 80,000 per month. While that number does not include subscription sales, this is still quite a coup for iPad magazines.

It will be interesting to see what will happen in coming months. We might see that sales were high for Wired on the iPad because of the newness and excitement and will drop off in the coming months. Or we might see Wired (and parent company Conde Nast) lower their pricing and continue to improve their offering.

What do you think? Would you rather get Wired on the iPad or print? What about other publications you read? I renewed my MacWorld subscription on my iPad through Zinio rather than the print edition. I really enjoy reading MacWorld and the other magazines I’ve subscribed to on the iPad. I love the interface and I love that all my magazines are with me at all times. But I have to admit I miss a few things about actual print magazines. I can’t dog ear a page to remind me to come back to it. I can’t hand the magazine over to a friend when I’m done with it. I can’t leave a copy on my coffee table for others to look through. If you’ve ever been to my house you know I like to leave a copy of Scientific America out on the coffee table to impress you.

So yesterday’s announcement of the iPhone 4 was amazing. I think we learned a lot what is coming down the road for iPad 2.

I think an exciting thing will be the aluminosilicate glass – glass that’s 20 times stiffer and 30 times harder than plastic. It’s also finger print proof! No more smudges!

Another great feature is the retina display. I think that the display looks great, however, the retina technology is going to make this thing look like liquid. If you looked closely to the letters on this screen, you can almost make out the pixels in the letters. With retina display, each pixel is getting replaced by 4 smaller pixels that can even get higher resolution. Beautiful!

And one more thing we would like to see is the three-axis gyroscope. This will make movement with the iPad 2 in games amazing and accurate.

Read what Gizmodo has to say about iPhone 4 announcement for iPad 2.

The NY Times had a great article yesterday about the effect that our 24/7 access to information through email, phone calls, texts, Twitters and the web via our gadgets is overloading our brains.

“While many people say multitasking makes them more productive, research shows otherwise. Heavy multitaskers actually have more trouble focusing and shutting out irrelevant information, scientists say, and they experience more stress.”

At least I think it was a great article, I started to read it and then an email came in that I had to read, which reminded me I needed to return a phone call and then my dog was being extra cute so I had to take a picture and post it to my Facebook page, then it was time to harvest my We Rule crops, which of course made me hungry so I headed over to Yelp to figure out where to go for lunch and then the guy in the car behind me kept honking because the light was green and . . . what were we talking about?

So the big question going through every iPad owners mind right now is do I need unlimited internet on my iPad or is 2GB enough? If you have not purchased your iPad by midnight on June 6th than you will have the option of either the 200MB data plan for $14.99 a month or the 2GB data plan for $25.00 a month, but for iPad owners who purchased before June 6th you also have the option of unlimited internet for $29.99 a month provided that you lock that in by midnight on June 6th and you must maintain the unlimited plan in order to remain eligible.

Gone is the flexibility that AT&T touted at the iPad’s debut allowing us to go from unlimited, 25oMB or no internet at all month to month at will, with no contracts. So what to do? Do you need unlimited internet or will 2GB suffice? For many iPad users it’s too soon to tell. If you’ve only had your iPad a few days or weeks do you have a full grasp on just how much internet you’ll average per month? Probably not.

2GB is actually quite a bit of data for example I’m a very heavy data user on my iPhone and use approximately 500MB a month and after comparing with my friends I was the heaviest iPhone data user by a lot. So I think the new data plans will be good for many users. That is, until you start watching video.

According to AT&T 2GB of data will get you the following:

Sending/receiving 10,000 one-page text emails and 1,500 one-page emails with an attachment, viewing 4,000 Web pages, uploading/downloading 500 photos to social media sites, and (only) 200 minutes of standard-quality video watching a month

Gizmodo did some real life testing and came up with the following:

YouTube: When we watched a 2-minute YouTube video, 2MB was used; so if 2GB is 2048MB, one could theoretically watch 17 hours of programming on YouTube before using up all your bandwidth for the month. This assumes you do NOTHING else on your iPad that eats up bandwidth.

Netflix: When we watched an episode of Netflix (Arrested Development) running 21:54, 55MB of bandwidth was used; so, let’s say 22min is 55MB, then Netflix consumes 2.5MB for every minute of streaming video watched. Therefore:

• A half hour TV show (~22min.) on Netflix would consume 55MB of data
• An hour-long TV show (~43min.) on Netflix would consume 110MB of data
• An hour-long movie on Netflix would consume 150MB of data
• An hour and a half movie on Netflix would consume 225MB of data
• A two-hour movie on Netflix would consume 300MB of data

** In total, you could watch 13.65 hours of programming on Netflix before using up all your bandwidth. This assumes you do nothing else on your iPad that month to eat up your bandwidth.  (And remember: the average American watches over 150 hours of television per month alone.)

ABC App: We watched an episode of Better Off Ted, running 25:41 with ads used 97MB. For simplicity’s sake, let’s average it out to 26min and 100MB. That’s ~4MB/minute.

• A half hour TV Show on ABC streaming would consume an estimated 100MB
• An hour-long TV Show on ABC streaming would consume an estimated 200MB

** In total, you could watch 10.24 hours of programming on ABC Streaming App before using up all your bandwidth. Again, this assumes you do nothing else on your iPad that month.

I see the iPad as a media consumption device. Keyword: consumption. And if you also plan on using the iPad to watch videos than I suggest you get on the unlimited plan now while it’s still available. The good news is after a few months if you don’t feel like the extra $5 a month for unlimited is worth it you can always downgrade to the 2GB plan. But if you’re not on the unlimited plan in time you’ll miss out for good.

Rumack: Can you fly this plane, and land it?
Ted Striker: Surely you can’t be serious.
Rumack: I am serious… and don’t call me Shirley. – Airplane

“Ladies and gentleman you are now free to use approved electronic devices” are the sweetest words you can hear on an airplane. That’s when you can pull out your iPad. But what if you don’t have an iPad? Then you’re left staring enviously at the passengers that do.

But it seems that Jetstar, a subsidiary of Qantas, has a solution in iPads for rent on every flight.  They will begin a trial program later this month with iPad’s available pre-loaded with movies, music, TV shows, games and books for $10.

“We are really excited to commence trialing the iPads, as we’re always looking for ways to enhance our customer’s Jetstar experience. Given the demand for the iPad so far, I anticipate it will have strong appeal amongst our passengers,” said Jetstar CEO Bruce Buchanan as reported by Sydney Morning Herald.

And here’s the clincher they will even allow for the iPad to be used during take-off and landing, when other electronic devices have to be shut off. I think this will prove to be a popular program for sure. Not only will it provide great entertainment to passengers, but I foresee it leading to more iPad sales. If you can put an iPad in someone’s hands for a 2 hour flight you’ll likely have a future iPad customer. I’m sure many of you have experienced putting an iPad into the hands of a non-believer only to have to pry it out of their hands an hour later.

So would you like to see iPads making an appearance on your future flights?