Barnes & Nobles, based in New York, said it was shipping Nook e-readers to the majority of its stores beginning this week, with devices on sale in stores as of February 10.

The Nook's in store debut, originally expected in December, was delayed after Barnes & Noble sold out of the device before the holidays and was unable to get production sufficiently ramped up.

The tag is set with several pre-recorded tweets that are triggered by the dog's activities. So if he's running around, you might get a tweet that says "I finally caught that tail I've been chasing and...OOUUUCHH!"

If Sparky is napping, he'll tweet "Somedays it feels like my paw is permanently on the snooze button!" If he's making a ruckus, his tweet will let you know that as well, saying "YAHOOOOOOO! Somedays you just gotta get your bark on."

"Puppy Tweets capitalizes on two popular trends - the use of social media and real time communication, as well as peoples' extreme love for their dogs," said Susan Russo, Mattel's director of marketing.

"This is the boldest step we have seen so far in 3-D printing," says Scott Summit, chief technology officer for Bespoke Innovations, a company that creates 3-D artifacts for medical use. "A lot of people want to do 3-D printing but it is a mysterious world. With HP embracing it, it is likely to demystify the idea to many consumers."

HP's printers will be manufactured by Stratasys, a company that specializes in 3-D printers.

The printers have long been used by designers and architects in computer aided design (CAD) to create prototypes before finalizing on the design for larg-scale production. But these printers cost many thousands of dollars and have been popular with only a select group of specialists.

He says they didn't block Blippy, but simply insisted that the service stop pulling user purchase data, and erase all historical data they had already collected. They were also summoned to Seattle to speak with a "high ranking executive" of the company. Blippy complied (with both the summons and the demand to stop accessing user data).

Kaplan is soft stepping around the Amazon issue, and is hoping to come to some agreement with the company to allow them to access data in the future. He says "We believe our users feel strongly, as we do, that it is their right to access and use their data however they want. We're optimistic that Amazon will come to the same conclusion."

Apple’s iPad announcement has set off a new round of reports of networks overburdened by a data flow they were not built to handle. These problems are reminiscent of the congestion dialup users experienced following AOL's 1996 decision to allow unlimited internet use. For months users had trouble connecting and, once they did connect, experienced frequent service outages. The FCC even held hearings on the problem.

The congestion problem circa 1996-97 revealed an intense latent demand for Internet access. Similarly, wireless network congestion today reveals intense demand for wireless broadband. Widespread use of smartphones, 3G-enabled netbooks, and now, perhaps, the iPad and its competitors demonstrate that wireless broadband will be a hugely important part of the broadband ecosystem as we move ahead.