Highlights from the press release:

• 33% thinner
• “Up to 15%” lighter (depending on configuration)
• Dual-core A5 processor makes it a lot faster
• Two cameras, one front- and one rear-facing
• Same 10-hour battery life
• Same price
• Smart cover: “…provides protection for the iPad screen while maintaining its thin and lightweight profile. Designed with a unique self-aligning magnetic hinge that makes it easy to attach and remove, the new iPad 2 Smart Cover automatically wakes iPad 2 when it’s opened and puts it to sleep when it’s closed, and has a soft microfiber lining to help keep the screen clean.”
• Available March 11

Engadget provides a thorough overview of Mac OS X Lion, including some tidbits I hadn’t seen elsewhere. I hadn’t heard the little blue dots on the Dock were off by default.

It definitely seems the Magic TrackPad collecting dust on my desk will become more useful.

Their conclusion:

Taking the plunge into this band’s mysteries is one of rock’s true pleasures.

I wholeheartedly agree.

My favorite Radiohead album in several years. AV Club:

With The King Of Limbs—recorded in fits and starts over the course of a year, making it a virtual toss-off by Radiohead’s exacting standards—the band has made its most subliminal record. Dealing almost exclusively in sensation and texture, The King Of Limbs invites comparisons to the challenging abstractions and chilly atmospherics of Radiohead’s game-changing Kid A/Amnesiac period. The difference is that those records conveyed a sort of emotional paralysis; this one is about fumbling into motion.

Lots of Lion coverage this weekend and over the last few days.

From Mac Rumors:

• Safari’s using WebKit2
• A grab bag of smaller enhancements

AppleInsider has a great “Inside Mac OS X Lion” series they’ve been building since the preview was announced last week.

TechCrunch reports a 30% drop in Windows-using visitors over the last four years:

Just as happened in the browser world with Chrome taking over, a transition is happening among TechCrunch readers in the ecosystem space. The numbers don’t lie. And Microsoft better pray that our readers aren’t leading indicators of overall trends in the space — which is exactly what you have been in the past.

They attribute 25% of the shift to Apple (Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod) and the remainder to Android.

Microsoft’s strategy to generate some unique-to-Windows Phone apps:

Because the platform is new, developers have to learn its ways before writing many of those apps. So to add them quickly, Microsoft has taken an unusual step. It has relaxed a strict rule and will let employees moonlight in their spare time and keep the resulting intellectual property and most of the revenue, as long as that second job is writing apps for Windows Phone 7-based devices.

One potential byproduct: the practice might stem employee defections to competitors and startups.

Excellent overview of NFC technology and its current and potential applications.

Currently FareBot can parse and display balance and trip history information from Seattle’s ORCA card, and can dump raw data from any other MIFARE DESFire card including San Francisco’s Clipper card. FareBot is open-source and designed to be flexible so that hopefully other developers will add support for other types of cards.