Chris Loas

Analysis and surveys conducted by a company titled, Pew Internet & American Life Project, determine that almost 50 percent of 12 years old children of the U.S. population have their personal accounts on social networking sites, regardless the 18 years old limitation required to sign up for these websites, of which Facebook is indisputably the king.

Whereas, this percentage shows a trend of increasing with the age of children, as 64 percent of 13 year old children use such websites and for the children of age between 14 and 17 the percentage is as high as 82 percentages, claims Pew.

However, that does not necessarily mean that Facebook is not working a strategy to stop such actions and these youngsters to become addicted to the network.

Daily Telegraph reports that Facebook has been removing almost around a total of 20,000 underage users everyday–who are found to be aged less than the set age limit of 18 years age. Australia’s cyber-safety committee hosted a meeting where Mozelle Thompson, the chief privacy adviser of Facebook, confessed this overly growing issue of underage users. He said that obviously “It’s not perfect.”

However, he did make his point at the committee meeting informing everyone that Facebook completely recognizes this issue and has been making innumerable attempts to stop the children to take advantage of the network.

He agreed that 20,000 accounts out of the huge lump of 600 million users of Facebook, shared his sadness of underage usage issue which is becoming increasingly dangerous.

Chris Loas

Apple Inc. launched the iPad 2 in the international market today right on schedule as the company had said.

Hundreds of customers hung outside stores in New Zealand and Australia on Friday so they would get it. The tablet is out of stock in US and now the company is pondering ways to the demand.

Apple is being launched in 25 countries today including Canada, Italy, France, Spain, Mexico, Denmark, Poland, Portugal and many more.

The tablet was officially launched on 11 March and sold like steamy hot cakes. The device features a faster, thinner machine with two cameras, two colors and many more colors for the smart covers.

Many customers came fully packed with sleeping bags to camp outside the stores just so they would get the tablet and not miss it completely. Alex lee from Canada said that “If it wasn’t for the iPad, I wouldn’t be in Australia right now,” He was in Singapore and came from there for the launch. He had a folding chair and a blanket and was camping out since two nights; he added that “It’s like a habit. I’ve also lined up on Regent Street in London for the iPhone.”

The staff of Apple store was handing out sandwiches to the loyal customers who had been camping out. Fiona Martin, Spokeswoman for Apple did not say if the company was short on supply but said that “we don’t comment on speculation, we’ve got plenty down there for all those folks that are in the queue.”

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Inc. stated on Tuesday before the international launch that he was happy to “experiencing amazing demand for iPad 2 in the U.S.” and mentioned that he appreciated “everyone’s patience” and “are working hard to build enough iPads for everyone.”

Ian MacDonald, a student looking to buy the iPad 2 said the he refrained from buying the first one as it did not have a camera and wanted all the bugs fixed. He said “This version looks way better, with the cameras and it beats all the other tablets because there are so many apps”.

iPad 2 faces competition from Samsung Galaxy Tab and Motorola Xoom and very soon BlackBerry will launch their Playbook and HP too will step in this market.

Next countries that will see the launch of this iPad 2 are South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and other regions.

Alice White

California Economic Development Department reports that last month, their state saw approximately 100,000 new jobs dropping the rate of unemployment from 12.4% to 12.2%.

LA Times reports that because the top technology companies are constantly battling over designers, engineers, data analysts and executive staff, jobs keep coming up. Some companies are laying off but not in California, anyone who wanted a job got it last month as the companies not only required the office staff but other workers as well.

LA Times supported the example of Josh Persky who sacked by the Fox Sports Radio in LA and couldn’t find a proper fulltime for two years. He did many odd jobs during this time before he landed an office job in San Francisco at ‘Causes’, a startup that donated money to user’s favorite charity place.

If it was not for the tech companies, Persky would still be unemployed doing an odd job for who knows till when. He said that “every company in the technology industry is growing. ‘Causes’ employs 24 people and plans to be over 35 people by the end of the year. Every engineer has three offers on the table, and working in technology is the kind of job you think you are going to have when you are 14 and you have never had a job before.”

In the Silicon Valley, companies are starting up left right and center and with all that we have Google who raised their staffs’ salary by 10% this year, the search giant has over 24,000 employees and announced back in January that this would their biggest hiring year ever. Though no specifics were involved but it does not take a genius to figure out that in 2007 they hired almost 6,200 people worldwide so this year would see more or much more than the previous record. This announcement also resulted in a flood of job applications at the Google HR

Social media companies who are building apps, refining services or simply coming up with another bright idea all hiring and looking to expand their business. Take YouTube for instance, they said they are looking to increase their staff by 30%. Facebook, though not in Silicon valley is also recruiting heavily because every day they are coming up ideas and funding it to build it into a reality.

Facebook is growing by 50% every year; their current staff number is 2,000 out of which 1,400 are based in Palo Alto. In 2010 they opened an office in Seattle and another in Austin. One source familiar with Facebook’s hiring strategy said that this summer the staff from Pal Alto will shift to another office in Menlo Park which has the seating permit of 3,600 employees; something says that is the projected staff number for the social networking site.

Similarly Zynga has 1,500 employees and is looking to double it. Twitter has over 400 staff members on their pay role and they are hoping to grow that to 3,000 by 2012. Dice.com has over 5,000 job openings on their site.

One big plus side of this hiring boom is that companies will look to retain their employees in any means necessary.

John Hall

FOX has renewed their sci-fi drama ‘Fringe’ for another season, the network announced.

J.H. Wyman, Executive producer to the show tweeted on Friday saying “Fringe was picked up!!!! Thanks Fringedom!” Directed by J.J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, the show follows a set of government agents that investigates supernatural events as they happen.

Premiered in 2008, the show follows a huge set of fans but the show was generating a series low of 1.3 rating which translates to saying that only 3.6 million viewers tuned in. Still the show was picked for another season and also noteworthy point is that it was picked for a full 22 episode run.

The series includes Anna Torv, Joshua Jackson and John Noble as the lead cast members. The show attracts over 6 million viewing but this year it was proving to be less and less popular with each episode that aired and came down to 3.3 last Thursday.

Now that the show is airing on Friday it has again gained some viewership and the ratings improved bringing the total number to 4.1 million viewers.

Earlier this year Kevin Reilly, chief of Fox entertainment said at the Television Critics Assn.’s press tour that the show was fantastic “and honestly I’d be heartbroken if it went away.”

Jillie Simons

Around half a decade back, Jack Dorsey typed in the world’s first Tweet ever, “just setting up my twttr.” Today, twitter is used to upload what your weekend plans are and more notably, break news before they come on TV.

In spite of how one feels about Twitter and Tweets, there is no contradiction that it is something that is progressively more useful and spread everywhere, particularly as of recent mutiny in Egypt and throughout the upsetting tremors in Japan. In a first-hand know-how of just how important a role Twitter played to make contact over borders during the Japanese crisis, Adario Strange said, “Twitter proved to be an invaluable for information collection, distribution and two-way communication” immediately after the kaput of cell phones.

Many did not appreciate Twitter at first, outlaying it as just a site to complain about our discontents of life and as a platform used to gain virtual attention. But after the majority started to use it, Twitter made certain to its users that conversation is a must.

2011 is the year of celebration of the fifth year of Twitter. We wish you a very happy birthday Twitter!