• 700k number of iPads some random analyst said Apple sold this weekend
• 300k number of iPads Apple said they sold this weekend, which is still pretty good
• 5M number of iPads new analysts are suggesting Apple will sell this year; gah, hype! source

• frum the heart Conservative commentator David Frum isn’t cut from the same cloth as the Rush Limbaughs of the world, and he makes that clear with this rip on Limbaugh and Fox News. They don’t work for Republicans, the Republicans work for them.
• sarcasm = dangerous At the end of this clip from last week, Sean Hannity threw the unbelievable phrase “Tim McVeigh wannabes” in reference to the Tea Party. And the Tea Partiers cheered. The left was like, whoa. But Raw Story reports that it was sarcasm.
• feel like making love On Friday, rubber-faced personality machine Rachel Maddow brought Xeni Jardin from Boing Boing onto her show to talk about how attracted they collectively are to the iPad. Maddow is probably caressing one in her arms right now.

• Our take? It depends on the app. Right now, the iPad does three things really well. It allows you to surf the Web at nearly the same clip as a laptop, it rules at non-Flash video playback, and it allows you to read the news better than either a newspaper or Web browser. For a 1.0 product, this is polished. But we’re journalism nerds that read a lot of links, so let’s focus our appeal. How is reading and curating news on this thing, anyway? (Hint: Pretty good.)

First: What a good news app needs

• one A simple format that makes it easier, not harder, to read the news. It’s not a newspaper or a Web site; it’s a little of both
• two An easy way to share content – you should be able to copy quotes, tweet links, and e-mail articles to a friend (or yourself)
• three A solid offline reading mode – these apps need to be able to work without a wi-fi connection nearby; all of the apps had this

Second: The best news apps

• best The Reuters app is
  super-readable,
  easy to scan, and
  best-formatted for
  the iPad. It’s also
  the one that tried to
  look least like a
  newspaper.
• great The USA Today
  app has a mix of
  strong readability,
  easy organization,
  and smart uses of
  swiping. It’s nearly
  as good as the
  Reuters app.
• eh The New York
  Times app isn’t
  bad, but its body
  type isn’t on the grid. The Wall Street Journal app tends to overreact
  to tiny movements.
• wtf The Associated
  Press app went all
  scrapbook with
  their format, which
  is OK – for a
  scrapbook. For
  reading hard news,
  it’s very annoying.

Third: Twitter on the iPad

• 
  Best balance Twitterrific was designed for the iPad the way that one would expect someone to use an iPad Twitter app. The use of Twitter lists, for example, makes for great news-reading. Less is more in this case.
• 
  Most complex TweetDeck could stand to be a little less complicated right now. It loads too many windows at once and comes across as a bit bloated and overwhelming. A bit more interface furniture to clean up the look would help this greatly.
• 
  Best mashup As many people know, the EchoFon/Firefox setup is hard to top for reading linked tweets, and TweetBrowser goes a long way to replicate that on the iPad. Only issue: We wish we could hide the feed in the horizontal format.

• » One side note: Webkit’s skills at rendering the Twitter web apps are mostly pretty good. The web version of Hootsuite is actually better than the iPad-native version of TweetDeck on the iPad. Threadsy also works great, as does the Web version of Seesmic. You’ll have to use a two-finger swipe to navigate, though, which can be cumbersome.

Overall: What did we think?

• » What we like: It’s a good reading format, and Safari could handle nearly everything we threw at it (except the TinyMCE rich-text editor, which means it sucks for blogging because WordPress uses that). The format is awesome for video and music. Once Hulu and Spotify get apps on here, it’s seriously a one-stop shop. Also, being able to load articles on the device and take it on the wi-fi-less D.C. Metro was downright perfect.
• » What we don’t like: It can be hard to hold the device upright, especially if you’re not sitting at a table. It’s strange that Apple didn’t consider putting a kickstand on the back. The keyboard is usable but not heavy-duty. Apple should consider putting in (or allowing) additional keyboard setups that make it more usable for typing in HTML. Right now, it’s a serious chore.
• » What we want to see: Surprisingly, we don’t miss multitasking on the iPad – it actually wasn’t noticeable for most apps. But we think someone needs to create a single app that mixes social media, web browsing and blogging/word processing. TweetBrowser gets the first two down, but WordPress‘ app isn’t designed for this at all. We smell opportunity (eh, Tumblr?).

• We think this magic trick is kinda fun, but it doesn’t beat the one he pulled when he was dating Kathy Griffin a couple of years ago.

• Some of our early iterations, in fact, had to be tossed out because when we looked at them we realized that parts of them were too, well, necessary. Don’t get me wrong. That’s fine for other companies. It’s just not what we do here at Apple.
• Fake Steve Jobs • In an open letter to the people of the world regarding the iPad. In the letter, he describes the design process for the device, which involved engineers and designers having to work on a device inside a black box, and constant surveillance to make sure no info got leaked by employees. “It’s not easy to work at Apple,” he says, “But I think you’ll agree with me that it’s worth the trouble.” source

• It really feels like the second coming of the CD-ROM ‘revolution’ in which ‘content’ people proclaimed that they were going to remake media by producing expensive (to make and to buy) products.
• Boing Boing blogger Cory Doctorow • Discussing why he hates the iPad so much. He notes a number of reasons, but the biggest is that it’s a machine that’s not designed to be tinkered with, and invokes the “Maker’s Manifesto” in his argument: “If you can’t open it, you don’t own it.” Don’t think he speaks for Boing Boing with this argument, by the way. Fellow Boing Boinger Xeni Jardin reviewed the device and gave it the headline, “Apple’s iPad is a touch of genius.” So, if anything, Doctorow (who’s anti-copyright, pro Creative Commons) provides the site some balance. source

• This is a drum machine emulator. As many budding musicians will tell you, learning recording techniques on a PC isn’t exactly much fun due to the learning curve involved. You can already see how much less of one a device like the iPad creates. Korg’s iElectribe app suggests just how much possibility is out there. Hopefully, Apple fixes their App Store situation to encourage creativity like this. source

• Edward Baig and Jefferson Graham of the newspaper both agree: The iPad is an amazing device. Graham, in the video above, notes some flaws, including the challenge of getting content on the device. But both seemed super-impressed, and in Baig’s case, he suggests that netbook creators may have to redesign their devices to compete: “They’ll have to adapt or disappear — especially since their price advantage compared with the entry-level iPad isn’t as great as some might have thought it would be.” (hat tip TUAW) source

• techies It’s just a giant iPod Touch, and
  it doesn’t do any of the technical
  stuff you’d expect a computer to
  do. The keyboard is hard to use.
  Oh, and it doesn’t run Flash.
• non-techies It’s just a giant iPod Touch, but it’s also loaded with possibilities thanks to the new format, and is fairly foolproof. It’s fast and loaded with battery life. Oh, and apps! source