Apple made the iPad 2 thinner, lighter, and more powerful than the first-generation tablet. The iPad 2 also has front- and rear-facing cameras, which enable FaceTime video chat, and at least one high-profile launch app iPad 2 exclusive in iMovie.

While the iPad upgrades qualify as something more than a fresh coat of paint, the functional differences between the first generation iPad and iPad 2 are minimal. The iPad 2 is essentially the same device that reinvented the tablet market in 2010.

This time though, Apple does not have the luxury of setting the standard. Competition from Google in the form of Android Honeycomb has pushed tablets further in function with Flash support, widgets and slick 3D effects. Hardware makers like Motorola and Samsung have upped specs to near notebook levels, including screen resolutions approaching true HD.

If Apple wants to maintain its sizable market lead, it will have to do more than just play catch-up with each successive iPad release. It will have to continue to innovate and offer the best tablet experience available.

Does it succeed with the iPad 2? Read on to find out.

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Apple iPad 2 specs:

iOS 4.3

9.7-inch diagonal capacitive touchscreen (1024 x 768, 4:3)

Apple A4 1GHz dual-core processor

512MB RAM

Choice of 16GB, 32GB, 64GB capacity

Front-facing VGA webcam, rear 720p camera, both 30 frames per second, no flash

Wi-Fi (802.11a/b/g/n), 3G optional (CDMA GSM)

Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR

30-pin port, 3.5mm headphone jack

9.5 x 7.3 x 0.34 inches

1.33 pounds

Price at Launch: Ranging from $499 to $829

JAPAN 8.9 EarthQuake

An 8.9-magnitude earthquake hit northern Japan on Friday, triggering tsunamis and sending a massive body of h2o stuffed with debris that included boats and houses inching toward highways.
The epicenter was 373 kilometers (231 miles) away from the funds, Tokyo, the us Geological Survey stated. But residents there felt the tremors.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Japan Earthquake 8.9-magnitude Live Video 3/11/2011 Tsunami Warning

The quake rattled buildings and toppled cars off bridges and into waters beneath. Waves of debris flowed like lava across farmland, pushing boats, homes and trailers toward highways.
In Tokyo, crowds gathered within the streets and attempted to achieve family members via cell phone.
Quake slams Japan Tsunami waves crash ashore Japan
Scenes within office buildings showed papers strewn throughout the floor and people clinging onto seats and desks.
This kind of a big earthquake at such a shallow depth creates a lot of energy, stated Shenza Chen from the U.S. Geological Survey.

It caused a energy outage in about four million homes in Tokyo and surrounding areas.
A tsunami in the Pacific was shifting closer to other shorelines in other nations, stated CNN meteorologist Ivan Cabrera.
It triggered tsunami warnings for numerous countries, including Japan and Russia, the Nationwide Climate Services said.
“Earthquakes of this dimension are known to generate tsunamis possibly dangerous to coasts outside the supply area,” it said.

“Based on all obtainable data a tsunami may have already been produced by this earthquake that could be harmful on coastal locations even far from the epicenter.”
The quake was the latest in a sequence in the region this week.
Early Thursday, an earthquake having a preliminary magnitude of 6.3 struck off the coast of Honshu.
A day earlier, a 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck off of Honshu, the country’s meteorological company said.
The largest recorded quake happened in Chile on Might 22, 1960, having a magnitude of nine.5, the USGS said

Watch Movies Online Free. Download Full Movies Online Free. as little as seven years ago, trying to obtain video on the Internet, much less watching a movie, was a complete nightmare. With much of the Internet still on dialup, it could take hours to download even a three minute music video, days for a feature-length film.

Furthermore, the video-watching experience was hampered by a kludge of competing codecs and video players, largely driven by competition from Apple, Microsoft and Real. This meant that, even if you had the patience or fast enough connection to download a video of any size, there was no guarantee that it would work.

However, in 2004 that began to change. With the release of Flash Professional MX 2004, the FLV file became a standard and, for the first time, high-quality video could be streamed using the Flash plugin. Since nearly all surfers had Flash, it meant that video could be streamed seamlessly in Web sites without any codec or video player issues.

This, combined with the widespread adoption of broadband, paved the way for streaming video to enter the mainstream and for sites such as YouTube, Veoh and Vimeo to blossom.

However, most of the major video sites specialize in the streaming of short clips, less than 20 minutes in length. Those wanting to watch full movies are often disappointed. The good news is that, as the Web has grown, more and more places have sprung up to help you watch full movies on the Web for free. Furthermore, there are still many of the pre-FLV solutions available to help you download and save movies to your computer.

So where can you find full movies to watch?

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The 6.4-magnitude quake hit about 70 kilometres from the main southern city of Kaohsiung and it was felt as far away as the capital Taipei in the north of the island.

Kaohsiung county is still recovering from a massive typhoon that triggered floods and mudslides last August, killing more than 700 people.

Most modern buildings in Taiwan are built to withstand earthquakes.

The company also said Wednesday it will offer free at-home pickup of vehicles covered by the national safety recall, pay for customers’ out-of-pocket transportation costs and provide drivers free rental cars during repairs. The deal was initially announced as part of an agreement between Toyota and New York state.

Toyoda also said that new systems to allow brakes to override gas pedals were being put on new models.

“Notwithstanding that, accidents actually happen,” he told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, the second of three congressional panels examining Toyota’s troubles.

Toyoda, 53, remained calm when some Democratic and Republican lawmakers scolded the company for the recalls and safety problems.

He stood firm on many points, including saying he was “absolutely confident” the causes of runaway acceleration were mechanical, and not a design flaw in the company’s electronic throttle control system. Many safety experts and lawmakers have suggested that the electronics systems should not be ruled out.

Rep. Mica said it was an embarrassing day not only for Toyota but for US safety regulators, whom a number of lawmakers said should have acted more quickly and forcefully.

Mica held up a copy of a July 2009 internal Toyota document boasting of a “win” for Toyota in striking a deal with the US government for a more limited recall involving floor mats. The document said the agreement saved the company $100 million.

The internal presentation was addressed to Yoshimi Inaba, chief of Toyota Motor North America, who sat next to Toyoda at the witness table.

“It is inconsistent with the guiding principles of Toyota,” Inaba told Mica.

Toyoda’s testimony got off to an agreeable start, as he promised to tell the truth and gave an opening statement in clear, if heavily accented, English.

“My name is on every car. You have my personal commitment that Toyota will work vigorously and unceasingly to restore the trust of our customers,” he said.

Committee members praised him for voluntarily venturing onto a potential minefield. Under intensifying grilling, Toyoda chose to answer all questions in Japanese. He brought a translator with him.

Although he answered every question put to him, many of the answers repeated company talking points. He did not offer any new company concessions beyond a general promise to be more vigilant, open in communications and responsive to calls for change.

Toyoda testified for a little over three hours.

Later, Toyoda met with a more receptive audience: a group of US Toyota dealers who have been in town lobbying members of Congress. “Words cannot express my gratitude,” he said in English. “We need to rethink everything about our operation to regain customer confidence.”

Asked to assess Wednesday’s hearing, Jack Taylor, an Alexandria, Va., Toyota dealer, said he thought some of the lawmakers “were very rude.”

“I think they were a little rough,” agreed another dealer, Troy Duhon, who employs 180 people at Toyota dealerships in New Orleans and Poway, Calif.

Shares of Toyota traded on the New York Stock Exchange rose steadily Wednesday as Toyoda testified, closing up 4 percent.

The statement was part of a flurry of reaffirmations of where the United States and Mexico stand with each other in relation to anti-drug operations in Mexico, spurred by a Washington Post report that U.S. agents would be embedded with Mexican law enforcement units.

The newspaper, citing unnamed officials from both countries, posited that the unprecedented levels of violence in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, is pushing the neighboring nations to cooperate ever closer.

Military and municipal police spokesmen in Juarez said they had read the report, but they officially had no comment on coordinated efforts.

Diplomatic officials denied there are plans to have American intelligence officials embedded with Mexican units.

“I want to absolutely clarify that the United States does not have operations in Mexico, [and] doesn’t have field agents from U.S. security forces that are operating in Mexico,” U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Carlos Pascual said. “What we have are people who work there as advisers to share intelligence information, something that is absolutely normal between the two sides and something we have done for a long time.”

His counterpart, Mexican Ambassador to the United States Arturo Sarukhan, said, “At no point do we intend to infringe, violate or modify the laws that govern the presence of foreign agents, in this case Americans.”

Mexican law has explicit rules about what foreign agents in their country can and cannot do.

According to the interior ministry, foreign functionaries in Mexico can only share information and coordinate with their Mexican counterparts.

“These rules have not been modified nor has their modification been contemplated,” the statement said.

The ministry added that combating organized crime in Mexico is a shared responsibility between the two countries, and that increased cooperation, within the framework of current laws, is a desired thing.

“International cooperation is a complementary factor to national efforts,” the statement said.

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman Lawrence Payne echoed that statement.

“We’ve worked together on historically successful cases and record-breaking numbers of extraditions,” he said. “We have assisted them and supported them as much as possible. Nothing has changed from our standpoint.”

A new classified directive to coalition forces in Afghanistan puts restrictions on nighttime raids of Afghan homes and compounds, according to a senior U.S. official who has seen the document.The official declined to be identified because a declassified version of the document has not been made public. The directive is signed by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, the official said.The directive comes as the coalition seeks to reduce tension between its military forces and Afghan civilians in an effort to maintain Afghan public support.Nighttime raids in which troops enter private homes have sparked problems for U.S. and NATO forces. The raids are viewed as overly invasive — a violation of the privacy of the home in Afghan culture — and they can turn violent.The document orders forces to use Afghan troops at night “whenever possible” to knock on doors of residences and compounds, and to use them if forcible action is required for entry, the official said.But the directive also orders troops to “conduct an analysis” of whether it is militarily essential to conduct a raid at night or whether it can be put off until daylight, the official said. If troops can keep a target under surveillance but wait for daylight, they then can enlist the aid of village elders, perhaps, in determining if a home or compound poses a threat, the official said.The official emphasized that troops always have the right to defend themselves and are given leeway to use their best judgment on the battlefield.McChrystal also is updating another directive, first issued last year, on conducting operations to minimize civilian casualties, the official said.The updated version, which is yet to be published, will include “more clarity” for troops on how to operate in “escalation of force” incidents, such as when a vehicle approaches a checkpoint in a potentially threatening manner and troops must decide whether, and when, to fire at it. The official declined to offer further details but said the aim is to make sure even the most junior troops have full understanding of rules and procedures.Some troops and local commanders have expressed concerns that recent rules can inhibit their ability to take action under fire.These directives come as the coalition has been involved in several recent incidents in which civilians were inadvertently killed, and as the coalition conducts major operations in southern Afghanistan.McChrystal released a video message to the Afghan populace apologizing for an incident this week in which 27 Afghan civilians were killed.”I have made it clear to our forces that we are here to protect the Afghan people. I pledge to strengthen our efforts to regain your trust to build a brighter future for all Afghans,” he said in the message.The official said the documents may be made public in the coming weeks, after current operations ease.