iPad Mini releasing Sept 15. Price US $249

All you need to know about Apple's tiny tablet

The new iPad has been and gone, sporting a chunkier and heavier build than the iPad 2, which left some wondering: what's with all the extra weight?

However, it looks like Apple may be about to aid those conscious of extra grams in their bags, as rumours hot up about a potential iPad Mini (or iPad nano, if you prefer) arriving later this year.

As the Amazon Kindle Fire steals the budget tablet show and with more small, cheap tablets on the horizon, such as the Google Nexus tablet, Apple may well want a bite of the, well, apple.

Back in 2010, former Apple CEO Steve Jobs said that smaller screened tablets were not "sufficient to create great tablet apps" and would be "dead on arrival", so rumours suggesting a new iPad mini is in the works reveals a potentially new direction for the firm in its post-Jobs era. Believe it or not, there's certainly a lot of chat surrounding the iPad Mini, so we've scooped it all up, mushed it all together and expelled it into a handy round up, allowing you to keep track of every twist and turn. 

Update: A new report has examined the prospects for an iPad Mini - and how it might contribute to the company's bottom line, particularly with gamers and the educational market.

According to analyst Ben A. Reitzes, the iPad Mini would not be a threat to Apple's current domination with the New iPad, and is likely to be a favourite among gamers as well as educational institutes, particularly with the electronic textbooks introduced earlier this year.

iPad Mini release date

There's not even an official sign from Apple that the iPad Mini/iPad nano is even in the works, so a release date for the tablet is even more up in the air.

Although if the rumours turn out to be true, we can expect Apple to start rolling out the iPad Mini very soon after a extraordinarily over-hyped launch event.

According to a Digitimes source the iPad Mini/nano could start production in the third quarter of 2012.

Analyst Shaw Wu says the "exact timing" for an iPad mini release date "is difficult to predict", but said its launch is a "question of when, not if." Pretty confident then, are we, Shaw?

A report straight out of China suggests that key Apple manufactures Foxconn and Pegatron have started to receive orders for the new iPad mini. It goes on to say the factories will have 6 million units ready for a launch in Q3 of 2012.

When Apple announced its annual WWDC event running from June 11-15, which sold out in just two hours, there was some speculation that we could see the Cupertino firm announce the iPad mini there, but no new iPad broke cover at WWDC.

Update: A iMore source claims that the iPad Mini will be ready by October 2012. Hold on to your hats people!

Update: A Taiwanese source has claimed that the mini iPad will be in the hands of consumers before Christmas, with a third quater launch on the cards.

Update:According to Bloomberg an unnamed source said a tablet with a screen size of "7 to 8 inches diagonally" will arrive before 2012 reaches its close.

Update: The Wall Street Journal reports that sources in Apple's Asian supply chain have revealed the iPad Mini will go into production from September.

Update: The latest rumour in the mill of iPad Mini release dates comes from an unknown source (*sigh*) - which claims we'll see Apple take to the stage on September 12 to show off the next handset, alongside theiPhone 5.

Update: Or... the iPad Mini may be getting its own launch event in November, as stock of the tablet won't be ready for a September release.

iPad Mini price

Apple is known for its extravagant products, launch events and pricing policies, but the iPad Mini may herald a new era for those who long for an Apple device, but simply can't part with an arm and a leg to buy one.

It's thought that Apple's idea behind the iPad nano is to tackle the budget end of the market, where the Amazon Kindle Fire is currently king, and a Digitimes source predicts it could land with a very reasonable sub £200 ($249-$299) price tag.

Update: Could the iPad Mini be a super cheap tablet contender? It can according to one source, who claims it will land with a price tag between $200 and $250 (around £150) - we certainly hope this turns out to be true!

Update: Those famous "various analysts" and "industry sources" havespoken out again, confirming that the iPad Mini should arrive on the market for $249-$299 (around £159-£190).

Update: On 9 July, we covered a report from Japanese blog Macotakara which said that the iPad Mini price would be in the region of $250-$350 (around £160-£230).

Update:The New York Times has spoken to people "with knowledge of the project" - who claim the iPad Mini will be significantly cheaper than the current iPad.

iPad Mini display

As the name suggests, we're looking at an iPad which will be sporting a screen smaller than the stock 9.7-inch display found on the first three Apple tablets.

In February we saw a report from the Wall Street Journal claiming a source from an Apple component supplier had confirmed it was testing a smaller screen for Apple, in the region of 8-inches with a similar resolution to the iPad 2.

At the start of March, Digitimes reported that the new iPad Mini would actually come with a 7.85-inch display – a tad bigger than the 7-inch screen found on the Kindle Fire.

April saw Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu reveal that Apple had been testing devices with screens ranging from 4 to 12-inches and highlighted that the 7.85-inch format would be most likely "when, not if" the iPad mini is launched.

Wu also predicted the iPad nano would sport the same resolution as the original iPad and iPad 2, at 1,024 x 768 – meaning developers wouldn't have to tweak their apps.

Update: According to an iMore source, the mini iPad will sport a 7-inch screen with the same retina display as the iPhone 4S and new iPad.

Update: The 7.85-inch screen rumour gets ever stronger as industry sources claim the iPad Mini will sport IGZO display panels, which are capable of delivering a retina-quality display.

Update: According to Bloomberg's sources, the iPad Mini will not arrive packing the Retina Display featured on the new iPad 3.

Update: According to sources "with knowledge of the project", the iPad Miniwill indeed sport a 7.85-inch display.

Other iPad Mini specs

To help keep the cost of the iPad Mini down, one source reckons it will ship with just 8GB of internal storage - the same amount as the Amazon Kindle Fire.

In terms of thickness, Japanese blog Macotakara cites an unknown source, claiming the iPad Mini will be a 7.2mm thick.

Macotakara also wrote that the iPad Mini would come with 3G functionality.

iPad Mini early verdict

Well, we're still unsure whether Apple will go down the iPad Mini route. Steve Jobs made his stance on smaller tablets quite clear and it would be a daring move by the Cupertino-firm to go against its popular former boss.

The budget tablet market is one which is definitely growing, and one which Apple is currently not part of, so it won't be too much of a surprise if the firm does decide to go down this route.

We'd love to see a new iPad Mini come to market, as it would certainly give Amazon and co a run for their money... plus it would be intriguing to see what Apple would do with the smaller format.

Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 shows up for pre-order at US retailer

Samsung had originally planned to launch the larger incarnation of their Galaxy Note earlier in the summer, but the device took a detour on its way to store shelves and re-emerged with a quad-core processor and built-in S Pen.

Now US retailers are beginning to offer the device up for pre-order. J&R has the 16GB Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 for $499 and the 32GB model for $549, the only problem being a lack of clarity on an actual release date.

The Galaxy Note 10.1 has experience its share of false starts. It was initially unveiled back at Mobile World Congress in February and featured a slightly different spec sheet at the time. As an expected launch neared, rumors picked up that Samsung was redesigning the slate with quad-core processing in mind. The tablet’s chassis also got a slight makeover. Let’s just hope the Note 10.1 can make it to release this time without the folks behind the scenes deciding a few more upgrades are in order.

APJ Abdul Kalam joins Facebook

Former President A P J Abdul Kalam has become the latest personality to make foray into social networking site, Facebook, where he will share his thoughts on issues concerning the country's development and his interaction with various sections of people.

81-year-old Kalam, who is already on video sharing website YouTube, will be a regular onFacebook and make his observations about making India a developed nation before 2020.

Called the 'Billion Beats', Kalam's Facebook page is an extension of his e-paper initiative which he started immediately after he demitted office of President of India in July 2007.

"In his Facebook page, Dr Kalam will share unique moments, his interaction with the unique people and achievers, share the success stories and celebrate the success of fellow Indians who contribute to the development of the nation," V Ponraj, Advisor to Kalam and Editor of Billion Beats e-paper, said. The former President would share his thoughts and about 


his meetings on www.facebook.com/kalambillionbeats every day.

"He will start writing every day on the page and will also encourage the youth who have unique innovative ideas, discuss his visits to various R&D organisations and institutions towards realising the goal of developed India before 2020," Ponraj said.

In his first post yesterday, Kalam wrote about his meeting with Madam Madeleine de Blic of Volontariat in Puducherry on July 8.

"Madeleine has saved thousands of lives in the last five decades. When I met her, I saw in her the service spirit of Mother Teresa and the compassion of Florence Nightingale. The people lovingly call her 'Amma! Madaleine Amma!', and these words of kindness radiate everywhere," he wrote.

Android 4.0 source code now available: Google

Google has rolled out the source code of Android4.1 (Jelly Bean) for developers, who can receive it from Android Open Source Project. 

With this release, the manufacturers who use Android in their smartphones and tablets can begin working on the latest edition of Google's open source mobile operating system for existing and upcoming devices. 
Google Nexus 7 Tablet

Custom firmware providers like CyanogenMOD and MIUI will also use the source code for JellyBean to build the next iteration of their firmware. The team at CyanogenMOD has already stated that it will commence working on CM10, whereas the plans for the previous edition of its custom firmware are on schedule. On the official Android building group, Android team's Jean-Baptiste Queru posted that the search giant has also rolled out the 'proprietary binaries' for devices like Nexus 7 and Galaxy Nexus. The same for Nexus S and Motorola Xoom are expected soon. 

BlackBerry Porsche Design P’9981 review

For all the claims that RIM is dead, they still have a stronghold on the corporate sector. So how do you create a product for the discerning CEO and set it apart from the millions of other BlackBerry devices out there ? The aim  here was not to attain the best performance or best in class camera but to a device which would sets them apart. Something which would be unique enough to show that they have arrived.

The Porsche brand is a symbol of automative excellence. The Blackberry is a CEO’s best friend. Sometime back, the two decided to get together and create a product which combines high end materials and design abilities of Porsche along with the business ready nature of a Blackberry. When Porsche Design CEO Huergen Gessler decided to speak to Blackberry about a prospective collaboration, one thing led to another and the Porsche Design P’9981 was born.

Specifications

Internally, the phone is identical to the Bold 9900. You can read our review of the BlackBerry Bold 9900 to get a better idea of the performance. We’ve listed the specifications to glance through below.

• 1.2GHz Qualcomm MSM8655 CPU with 768MB of RAM
• 2.8-inch touchscreen with a resolution of 640 x 480 (286ppi)
• BlackBerry OS 7.0 with Liquid Graphics
• 1,230mAh battery
• GPS
• NFC
• 5MP rear camera with an LED flash and 720p HD video capture
• 8GB storage + 16GB microSD card bundled in box

Hardware

The Blackberry Porsche P’9981 is a gorgeous looking phone but perhaps not in the traditional sense. There is no doubt that a lot of work has gone into the design but it is not a design which you fall 

So what exactly do you get for the small fortune you hand over for the Porsche P’9981 ? Well for one, the phone is constructed almost entirely of stainless steel. The touchscreen is very sensitive and the navigation buttons under the screen are individually cut out of glass. The bottom of the phone is plastic to prevent any unnecessary interference in the radios.

A lot of attention has been paid to the keyboard. Each key is individually forged from metal and has really great feedback as expected from a BlackBerry keyboard. More on it later.

The right side of the phone is busy with the volume up, down and mute keys along with a convenience key. The left side is comparatively cleaner with a microUSB port and a 3.5mm jack

The back of the phone is wrapped in genuine leather and generally feels great to hold. A steel plate at the back of the phone has the model number of the phone inscribed on it while the camera and led flash flank it on either side. The battery cover has an NFC antenna built in to facilitate contact transactions and NFC based device pairing.

Keyboard

The keyboard is pretty interesting on the Porsche Design P’9981. Individually crafted from metal, it will easily stand years of heavy use and abuse. Each key has an alphabet and number inscribed on it which glows white when in a  low light area.

As expected, the keyboard has frets as seen on all high end BlackBerry phones. Compared to the 9900 on which this phone is based, the keys are shorter and wider making typing a bit more difficult.

Camera
The BlackBerry Porsche Design P’9981 has a 5MP EDoF camera around at the back. The lack of auto focus means that it is impossible to capture close up shots.

Macro shots end up being inevitably blurry. Long distance shots are much better though the phone struggles to get the white balance correct.

Shot to shot times are quick and there are almost no advanced settings to play with here. Its a very straightforward point and shoot experience.

Software
The P’9981 runs the same operating system as the BlackBerry 9900. We’ve already taken an in depth look at BlackBerry OS 7.0 in our Bold 9900 review so we won’t repeat ourselves here. The P’9981 differs from the standard OS 7.0 by including a custom theme.

The home panels offer a set of special icons and background options. Menus elements remain pretty much the same an the UI is for better or worse same as the standard OS 7.0. The phone comes with the same set of applications preloaded.

Conclusion
The P’9981 is a device which sticks out. If the standard BlackBerry doesn’t cut it for you then this is the device that you should be looking at. Packing all the smarts of the Bold 9900, the P’9981 kicks it up a notch in the bling department and makes sure that you get noticed.

At close to $2350, the P’9981 is not better than the Bold 9900. It is a device for someone with a lot of disposable income and particular affinity for Porsche and BlackBerry. For the rest of us, there’s always the Bold 9900.

Pros

• High end materials
• Unique

Cons

• Price
• No BB10 upgrade path

Amid Obamacare confusion, 81-year-old Supreme Court blogger shines

Supreme Court bloggers usually don't have fan clubs.

But 81-year-old, twice-retired blogger Lyle Denniston became an Internet celebrity of sorts on Thursday amid the confusion about the Supreme Court's ruling on President Obama's health care law.
Moments after the ruling was handed down, both CNN and Fox News briefly and incorrectly reported the Supreme Court had struck down a central provision of Obama's health care law.

Denniston's online publication, SCOTUSBlog, which stands for Supreme Court of the United States, however, got the news right, and published to Twitter only a minute after CNN did.
"#SCOTUS upholds #ACA individual mandate," said the blog's Twitter feed.
More than 2,900 people retweeted that post.

"I think it took us maybe three minutes to figure out exactly what the court had done," which was to uphold a mandate on buying insurance, Denniston said by phone on Thursday afternoon.

During that interview, fans approached Denniston asking him to take pictures with them while wearing T-shirts that say things like "#TeamLyle" -- an Internet meme started by fans of his fast-paced reporting. He doesn't expect the attention to last.

"In the digital and Internet age, I know that celebrity is likely to be prolonged for less than the usual 15 minutes," he said. "Once today and maybe tomorrow is over, I think the phone at my house and my cell phone are going to stop ringing from people who want to talk to me. Celebrity, if that's what it is, is really fleeting ... "

Denniston and the SCOTUSBlog, which was founded by a husband-wife pair of attorneys in 2002, haven't exactly become household names, at least until this week.

Their rise to prominence comes at a time when the Internet's instant news cycles are colliding with complicated stories like Supreme Court rulings. Plenty of news organizations leaned, in part, on SCOTUSBlog's fast, furious coverage of Thursday's ruling as a way to supplement their own live blogging of the event.

Twitter become so flooded with chatter about the SCOTUSBlog that Slate's Farhad Manjoo wrote, "Twitter is basically a mirror of Scotusblog now." White House spokesman Jay Carney reportedly said in a news conference Wednesday that he would rely on TV news and the SCOTUSBlog to see what the court had decided in the landmark health care case.
Editors at the blog anticipated the attention.

"Here we go. 4 more web servers. 5 bloggers. 2 tech teams. $25k for 20 mins," the group wrote on its Twitter feed, @SCOTUSBlog, which had more than 42,000 followers as of about 1 p.m. ET on Thursday. "Probably more traffic today than in SB's first 5 years, combined. So grateful; a little scared," the group said on Twitter before the decision was handed down.

The site has become known for its "plain English" versions of court news and for its expertise. Denniston, the veteran blogger, isn't an attorney but he joked in a 2007 interview with C-SPAN that he has "always indulged the arrogance of saying the only time I've ever been in a law school was to teach." The blog's co-founders, Tom Goldstein and Amy Howe, are both lawyers. Goldstein teaches Supreme Court litigation at Stanford and Harvard and has argued 25 cases in front of the Supreme Court, according to his online bio. Howe has argued two cases in front of the court.

Denniston started his day by posting to the network's live blog:

"Good morning from a slightly zoo-like, but still surprisingly civil, press room at the Court."
Three minutes later, a reader asked if he thought there would be a "clear majority" opinion.
"I am still hugging the trunk of the tree -- solidly avoiding any predicton (sic)," he wrote. "No limbs for a traditional journalist."

Denniston, who has covered the Supreme Court for 52 years and has twice gone into retirement, doesn't relish the attention. In fact, it bothers him a bit.

"I'm afraid I will be accused of false modesty if I say what I really feel, which is that in all of my years of journalism, I had never wanted to be part of the story. I would hope that when I say that people will take me sincerely. I grew up in journalism believing that the story was the story -- and not the messenger," he said. "And what this kind of celebrity, as you put it, does is to lift the reporter out from behind the screen of objectivity and make the reporter the story. And that's troubling to me."

That kind of comment probably only will make fans adore him more.

"We are grateful to you! Thank you for everything. #TeamLyle," one wrote on Twitter.
"Because it is important to say, right now: #TEAMLYLE!" said another.

For a blogger, Denniston has an unusual history with technology.

"I don't do the Twitter thing very much," he said. "I used to do it a bit. I'm usually so verbose in my writing -- 140 characters isn't nearly enough for me to even clear my throat."
In 1998 or 1999, he paid a tutor to teach him how to use the Internet. He often calls in information -- even entire stories -- to the blog's editors by phone, as he did with Thursday's news.
Asked what keeps him going at age 81, he gave a personal answer.

"My father retired and it was virtually the end of his life," he said. "He really declined after that. A long time ago I made up my mind that I would find something active to do, even though I left newspapering and sort of thought I was retired. ... It is just so immensely fascinating to me and I do find that having a prolonged institutional memory about the court and about the law and particularly about the Constitution makes it even fun for me to do. And it allows me to be an even greater resource for my readers."

Just in case you're thinking the Internet has gotten way too serious -- court reporter as meme? -- don't fret. There's of course another website that chose to tell the story of the court's decision in cat photos.

Why Google Plus isn't dead -- well, yet

Google Plus, Google's much-chided version of Facebook, celebrated its first birthday last week.

That probably means one of two things to you.

If you're a tech geek: "That site's still around?"

Or if not: "What the heck is Google Plus?"

Both of those reactions, however, may be missing the point.

'Social glue' for the rest of Google

Google last week released a few updates to its social network -- including an Events feature and new methods of live photo sharing with small groups. Perhaps more importantly, it underscored the idea that the company doesn't see Google Plus as a social network at all.
Google's Vic Gundotra told the blog Mashable that "Google Plus is just an upgrade to Google."

On one hand, this seems convenient, since Google Plus is losing the numbers game to Facebook. (More on that soon). On the other, it might be really smart. Google Plus has the potential to be the "social glue" that binds all of Google's already-interesting and already-used products together, writes Richard MacManus, from the blog ReadWriteWeb.

"One year ago, I think we all expected Google+ to turn into a better standalone product than what we've got now. But despite that, Google+ has turned out to be incredibly useful to Google," he says. "If I was to project what Google+ will be like in July 2013, I'd guess it will be even less about being a standalone social network and even more about supporting YouTube, Google search et al."

You may have noticed this showing up in all kinds of small ways on your version of the Internet. If you have Google social search turned on, you see links friends have posted on Google Plus. It's now possible to log into YouTube using the network. Google Reader's "share" feature coordinates with Google Plus these days -- and even e-mail lists can be pulled from Google friend "Circles."

The rest of Google's products, especially search, are popular, even if Google Plus isn't on its own.

Passionate audience

OK, so the numbers. Facebook is clearly winning that war.

Google Plus has 150 million monthly active users -- compared to Facebook's 900 million. And there's evidence, some of it from independent traffic monitors, that Facebook users engage much more frequently and for longer than Google Plus users, at least in public posts (A comScore report in January said Facebook users spent an average of 7.5 hours on the site, compared to 3.3 minutes on Google Plus.")

As The Atlantic put it: "People are 'on' Google Plus, but they are not really ON Google Plus. The infrastructure is there. The street signs are there. People own plots of land. But there's nobody actually visiting town."

Or, more cuttingly, BuzzFeed's version: "Logging into Google+ feels like logging into a seminar, or stumbling into the wrong conference room at an airport Marriott. It looks like a cubicle farm and smells like a hospital. Posting anything on Google+ is like talking into a pillow."

Forbes wrote a eulogy for the network in 2011.

Google Plus does, however, have some passionate users.

In a comment on my feed, a person identified as Tristan Cunha wrote that the site may have gotten a slow start but now "it's so easy to find lots of interesting people to follow/interact with that if you can't find someone, you're probably just missing the point. Either that, or you want to connect with your long lost friends from high school, which is something that FB probably does better."

And from another commenter, Colleen Lynn, wrote: "Google+ cannot be dead with so many of us here! It is true that I have not gotten many Facebook friends to join, but as (another user) said, Google Plus is international. If one is interested in learning and sharing in a much broader space than Facebook, Google Plus is the place to be!"

Mobile apps

Mobile apps are another area where Google Plus has been making up ground.

As a blogger at the tech site VentureBeat put it:

"Google Plus is better than Facebook -- at mobile."

Jennifer Van Grove goes on to say the Android tablet app for Google Plus makes Facebook's apps "look as if they were built in the MySpace era," adding: "Mobile is Facebook Achilles' heel, and it certainly doesn't look good for the newly public company to lose to Google in a mobile face-off."

That's especially troubling given that Facebook execs have said mobile is one of the company's investment areas moving forward.

Video chats

Google Plus's group video chatting feature, called Hangouts, has long been one of the (only) things that made the site fundamentally different from Facebook and Twitter.

The free service lets friends and/or strangers talk in a group. You can also record the conversations and take live questions from an audience, which makes the feature popular with news sites, celebs and politicians. President Obama hosted a Hangout earlier this year.

To drive this point home in adrenelline-filled fashion, Google streamed a video from a skydiver (who was wearing Google's version of "Terminator" glasses) at a recent press conference in California using a Hangout.

"As a social network competing with Facebook it's a flop, but its video-chat tool Hangouts is a winner," Heather Kelly, now at CNN Tech, wrote for VentureBeat in May.

New features and product integrations

Timed with its one-year anniversary, Google announced a few new Google Plus features -- and most of them, as other tech writers have suggested, integrate with Google's other products.

The Events feature, for example, automatically coordinates with Google Calendar. It also lets attendees at a party or gathering post photos from the event and host Hangouts beforehand.
Here's how the company describes the feature in a blog post: "Today's online event tools are really just Web forms that ask, 'Are you going?' Worse yet, they bail when you need them the most: during the actual event, and after everyone leaves. In life we plan, we party and we keep in touch. Software should make all of this more awesome."

A "live slideshow" feature lets hosts display photos from the event as they're taken.

Do you think these updates are enough to save Google Plus? Do you use it? Do you still see it as a Facebook competitor? Let us know what you think in the comments section -- or, if you want to get super meta, on Google Plus.

Judge orders Twitter to turn over Occupy protester's tweets

You probably think your tweets aren't of any interest to the government. After all, most 140-character posts are public, often detailing nothing more interesting than snarky jokes or links to adorable cat videos on YouTube.

However, courts are increasingly subpoenaing Twitter for data on its users that can be used in criminal and civil cases.
That's what happened to editor Malcolm Harris. On Monday, New York Criminal Court Judge Matthew A. Sciarrino ordered Twitter to turn over Harris' tweets and data from a three-and-a-half-month period, striking down the company's request to quash a subpoena from the Manhattan district attorney.
Twitter claimed that complying with the request would violate United States privacy laws.
The case itself is over a minor charge that normally wouldn't draw much attention. Brooklyn resident Harris was arrested along with 700 other people during an Occupy Wall Street march on the Brooklyn Bridge's roadway on October 1, 2011, and charged with disorderly conduct.

If Twitter complies with the request, prosecutors wouldn't just gain access to Harris' tweets (which were public but have since been deleted), they would get a host of other information stored by Twitter that could be used as evidence in the case, such as Harris' IP address, e-mail address and location information at the time of the incident.

Monday's decision could have far-reaching implications for the many other requests for tweets and other data Twitter receives on a regular basis, as well as users' rights to challenge such requests themselves.

"We are disappointed in the judge's decision and are considering our options," a Twitter representative said in a statement released to news organizations. "Twitter's Terms of Service have long made it absolutely clear that its users *own* their content. We continue to have a steadfast commitment to our users and their rights."

The ruling also dismayed online privacy advocates.

"The court continued to fail to grapple with one of the key issues underlying this case: do individuals give up their ability to go to court to try to protect their free speech and privacy rights when they use the Internet? As we explained in our friend-of-the-court brief last month, the answer has to be no," Aden Fine, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, wrote in a blog post.

Fine later added: "The government shouldn't be able to get this sensitive and constitutionally protected information without a warrant and without first satisfying First Amendment scrutiny."

In his ruling, Sciarrino speculated that the founding fathers would have quite enjoyed expressing themselves on today's social networks. But while freedom of speech applies to Twitter, "that is not the same as arguing that those public tweets are protected."

"There can be no reasonable expectation of privacy in a tweet sent around the world," wrote the judge, who went on to compare information posted on a public network to an eyewitness's account of a crime on the street.

In a smart bit of timing, Twitter on Monday released its first Twitter Transparency Report, detailing requests from governments around the world to get user information or suppress tweets during the first half of 2012. There have been 849 requests for information so far this year (for 1,181 individual Twitter accounts) -- more than during all of 2011, the report said.

The United States leads the charge, with 679 requests for information, and Twitter says it provided at least some of the requested data 75% of the time. Japan comes in second place with 98 information requests, and the UK and Canada tied for third with 11 requests each. Twitter is still banned in a number of countries, including China, Iran and Pakistan.

When Twitter receives one of these requests, it automatically informs the user before taking any steps, unless prohibited by law, which is what it did with Harris. However, this is more of an admirable courtesy than a set-in-stone policy, since all users have already been informed that Twitter reserves the right to "access, read, preserve, and disclose any information as we reasonably believe is necessary to (i) satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or governmental request."

A key issue in the Harris case that could affect similar subpoenas is determining who really owns a tweet. Harris originally filed a motion to quash the DA's subpoena himself, but Judge Sciarrino dismissed it in April because he said Harris didn't own the information being requested -- Twitter did.

According to Twitter's terms of service, the user gives Twitter a "worldwide, nonexclusive, royalty-free license" to distribute tweets in any medium, even those that don't exist yet. In May, Twitter added a line to its terms of service clarifying that users retain their rights to their content.

Tech is getting more gay-friendly

James Lazar is married to a man. He won't buy anniversary cards that picture a man and a woman. He didn't want his Facebook page to show those symbols, either.

"I don't like being forced into typical gender roles -- because we aren't," he said by phone. "I think it's offensive."

The 38-year-old Chicago man wouldn't have considered changing his Facebook status to "married" until recently -- not because he wants privacy, but because Facebook hadn't created icons for same-sex couples. His marriage would have tagged with a cake-topper-looking picture of a male-and-female couple, and there was no way to change it.

But on Saturday or Sunday -- Facebook won't say specifically when -- the 900-million-person social network updated its marriage icons to include one for men who marry men and women who marry women. The changes took place automatically for many people. Lazar updated his status because of the news.

"I honestly didn't realize it was going to show up in my feed," he said with a laugh. "I have 80,000 people 'liking' it and congratulating me and I'm like, 'Well, it was seven years ago!' "

Facebook's icon shift may seem like a relatively minor update, but for some members of the LGBT community it's a sign that the social network -- and other tech products that, increasingly, serve as some sort of stand-in for real-world identity -- are becoming more inclusive of LGBT people.

Anderson Cooper: gay role model?

"People can say 'Who cares, that's just an icon,' but we definitely don't see it as that because of the scale of this platform and because of its role in our culture today," said Allison Palmer, a spokeswoman for GLAAD, a group that advocates for fair inclusion of LGBT people in the media. She added: "There's more marriage equality on Facebook than there is generally in the United States. In most states your marriage can be recognized by Facebook but not your state."

This is just Facebook's latest step in reaching out to the gay community. The social network in 2011 added "in a domestic partnership" and "in a civil union" to its list of relationship statuses, which long has included everything from "in a relationship" to "it's complicated." This summer it painted a courtyard at its California headquarters in the colors of the rainbow flag, in support of gay-pride month. The company likes to brag that the courtyard, which displays the word "HACK," is visible from space.

And the trend, of course, isn't limited to Facebook. Apple recently updated its mobile operating system, iOS, to include text-message "emojis" of same-sex couples. Google employees march in gay pride parades, and the company controversially added a rainbow feature to its search engine last summer in support of the gay and lesbian communities.

MySpace (remember that?) added "Gay" as a relationship status in 2003 and the dating site eHarmony added same-sex icons on a spinoff site in 2009 following a lawsuit. Check out a timeline of same-sex icons in tech history on BuzzFeed.

Facebook, however, has become a specific target for LGBT activist groups in part because the network does so much these days to shape a person's digital identity. The social network has formed a taskforce in collaboration with LGBT groups to address issues sensitive to them.

That doesn't mean there's always been a warm reception for these changes.

Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes published an update to his page over the weekend indicating that he had married his boyfriend Sean Eldridge. The item got media attention because of the recently released same-sex icons, and Hughes' history with Facebook. More than 2,700 people "liked" the update, but one person commented that the marriage was "NOT normal!!!!!!" Another used a derogatory term for gay people.

Last year, in a highly publicized case, Facebook deleted a photo of two men kissing, which was seen as violating its terms of use. Facebook apologized and the take-down was chalked up to Facebook's arduous process for vetting content that is flagged as inappropriate.

Additionally, some LGBT advocates have called for Facebook to include gender options that go beyond "male" and "female" -- such as "third gender" or "other" -- for people who have another gender identity. Facebook has said such users can opt out of selecting a gender on the site, according to news reports.

And there has been debate about the role Facebook plays in outing people as gay or straight. In his 2010 profile of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Jose Antonio Vargas writes about the difficult choice he faced about Facebook and sexuality.

"Users are asked to check a box to indicate whether they're interested in men or in women. I told Zuckerberg that it took me a few hours to decide which box to check. If I said on Facebook that I'm a man interested in men, all my Facebook friends, including relatives, co-workers, sources -- some of whom might not approve of homosexuality -- would see it." He added: "Facebook had asked me to publish a personal detail that I was not ready to share."

LGBT Facebook users can opt to have their relationship status seen by only a certain category of Facebook friends, although users need to know how to navigate those setttings in order to hide the information from some groups of people. That may seem like no big deal, but consider that in 29 states, a person legally can be fired for being gay, according to the Human Rights Campaign.

Chely Wright: The cost of coming out

For Lazar, the man in Chicago, and his husband, Paul Buranosky, the same-sex icons provided a new way to show that they're proud of their relationship. Lazar compared it to flying a rainbow, gay-pride flag in front of their home in a mostly-straight neighborhood.

Buranosky, however, had changed his status to "married" before the same-sex icons were released. He said he wanted to recognize his wedding on the digital network in whatever way was available at the time -- even if his timeline had a picture of man and woman next to the item about his 2005 wedding.

When the new icon was released, he said, "I was deeply excited."

"The little things like that are really important as a gay man," he said. "When you're' taking about marriage, it's all about the vernacular and the context of where things are. It makes a distinction. I think having those icons that are two men is really important."

Apparently This Matters: Doink the Clown

When you're sitting on your couch on a quiet Monday night searching the Web for a decent trending topic and the almighty Twitter gods give you Doink the Clown, you take it. And if you happen to have a goat, it's polite to offer them a sacrifice. I was fresh out of goats, so I murdered a Klondike Bar.

And the Twitter gods were pleased.

Truth be told, I had no idea who Doink the Clown was. But it sounded like a good topic, just so long as he wasn't making headlines for cruising the suburbs in a windowless van.
Clowns and vans. Not good.

So, why the trend? Well, it turns out Doink the Clown is an old-school WWE wrestler who had just made a blast-from-the-past appearance on "Monday Night Raw." I guess this was kind of a big deal. I don't know -- I'm not really into wrestling.

In fact, the closest I ever came to a real match was when two of my college friends battled each other inside an old Dodge Daytona to see who could be first out the sunroof.
We lost a lot of good brain cells that day.

Anyway, according to the WWE website, the evil Doink was known for scaring children and making them cry. Basic clown stuff. But Doink would also bludgeon his opponents with a prosthetic limb. That leads to years of serious therapy.

"So, tell me how Doink made you feel."

"You mean before or after I went home and cut off my genitals?"

Of course, the really good wrestlers have their signature moves, and Doink was also known for utilizing something called the "Whoopie Cushion." Apparently he would butt-slam his opponent's head while viciously breaking wind.

Doink was a classy clown.

I actually found one good example of this on YouTube, which shows Doink dropping the Whoopie Cushion move on some guy named Barry Horowitz. Yes. Barry Horowitz.

I'm not saying my people are bad wrestlers or poor athletes. After all, we did have Goldberg. But if tomorrow I had to get in the ring and you gave me a list of 10,000 wrestlers to choose from, I'm absolutely, positively picking the guy named Barry Horowitz.

Unless there's a Shlomo Rothstein. In which case, I choose him.

Now, as I remember it -- and this was a long time ago -- unless it was a pay-per-view mega-event, the big name superstar wrestlers always just faced some random mullet-man in a pair of briefs. And won. Because, let's be honest, Brutus "The Barber" Beefcake doesn't get pinned by the night manager at Denny's.

Apparently, there's an actual term for these no-name wrestlers. They're called "jobbers." Their job is to lose the match. Barry Horowitz, it turns out, made a nice career out of getting his brains beat in. Though I'm sure Mr. and Mrs. Horowitz were never pleased with their son's life choice.

"You're such a smart boy, Barry. You could've been a doctor!"

By the mid-'90s it seemed as though WWE (then, WWF) started using fewer of these jobbers in favor of marquee fights to increase their TV ratings. Especially on Mondays.

It was 1993 when Raw first appeared on television. Almost 20 years later, they've done it 997 times. So, there's a big milestone coming up. To celebrate the upcoming 1,000th episode, WWE has been sending Heath "The One-Man Band" Slater into the ring each week to compete against past WWE legends. This week, they brought back Doink the Clown.

Twitter went crazy. And here we are.

Doink lost the match within minutes, and most people online seemed to think it was a rather lackluster performance. Alas, on this warm summer night, an old, sad clown was just doing his "job."

And perhaps somewhere a Denny's was missing its night manager.