Apple has taken firm root in America. Just over half of all households in the country own at least one Apple product, a new survey says, showing just how far the reach of the company has come in the last decade.

At the turn of the 21st century, Apple was in rough shape. It had narrowly avoided bankruptcy, and Steve Jobs’ return as CEO a few years earlier was turning the company around, but the market share of its products — then almost exclusively Mac computers — was dismal, at about 2% worldwide.

Then came the iPod, which begat the iPhone and the iPad. As Apple’s gadgets gobbled up market share (and in some cases created new markets), its Macs experienced a rebound, too. Now, according to CNBC’s All-American Economic Survey, 51% of U.S. households own at least one Apple product.

Few brands have such a deep reach among American consumers. Certainly, product categories such as refrigerators or even smartphones have achieved even deeper penetration, but looking at single companies, it’s a short list with probable names such as GE (light bulbs) or 3M (Scotch tape). Reducing to just technology companies would make it even shorter.

See also: Sorry, Google: Apple is America’s Valentine This Year [study]

Of the households that own Apple products, they own an average of three, making the overall ownership rate of the American public 1.6 Apple products per household. About 25% plan to buy another Apple product in the next year.

The survey shows Apple buyers tend to skew male, young, with higher education and incomes (77% of households making $75,000 or more have an Apple product). If you have kids, the likelihood of being an Apple household grows — 61% compared with 48% if you don’t.

As far as politics is concerned, both Republicans and Democrats appear to like Apple products equally, with 56% of people counting themselves a member of either party owning Apple, although a greater portion of Democrats plan to buy more products soon.

CNBC’s survey polled 836 Americans via both landlines and cellphones over three days in March. The network says it has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4%.

Do you own Apple products? Why did you pick Apple instead of another brand? Let us know in the comments.

Sad face of the day: Adulthood is just an endless string of irritating to-dos.

They hang over your right shoulder in an angry gray cloud, extending in billowy tendrils into your consciousness whenever you begin to think about sinking into a lawn chair in the backyard or inviting some neighbors over for a themed poker night. “You should be productiiiiiive,” they nag you in a sibilant whisper. “You have ressssponsibilitiesss.”

To be fair, technology has done a decent job of cutting down on said inconveniences. At one point, you had to use your own two feet or hitch up a carriage to go into town and pick up some edibles.

Then: the car! And now: FreshDirect, which has made us so immobile we actually roll our eyes when we have to get up to let the delivery boy inside. So he can deliver our groceries directly to our kitchens.

Still, there are plenty of bothersome tasks that technology hasn’t yet eliminated. It’s done its best, though, to at least make the odious tasks less so. With that in mind, we give you: three major drags, and the apps that’ll make them … well … if not fun, a bit less miserable.

The drag: Losing those last 10 pounds

… Or the first 10 pounds, as the case may be (and probably is).

Lucky for you, some new-ish gadgets and tools stoke your competitive streak to get you out of that permanent, butt-shaped indentation you’ve left on your Lay-Z-Boy.

Witness UP by Jawbone, a bare-bones bracelet (OK fine, insecure men, “wristband”) that tracks your activity levels and sleep by sensing movement and lets you sign up for organized challenges (e.g., “Get 49 hours of sleep per week.”) The FitBit, a little chapstick-sized clip, has almost identical claims, plus it awards you Foursquare-like badges for hitting fitness milestones (15,000 steps in a day … yahoo!).

Both gizmos are $100 and encourage you to compare your totals with other users, though there probably aren’t really enough people in the communities yet to compete with anyone you know.

If you’re thinking, “One hundred clams for a fancy-pants pedometer?! What am I, a sultan?!” — you are probably a miser, in which case, have we got the app for you: GymPact asks you to predict how many times you’ll make it to the gym in a week.

Check in appropriately, and you’ll earn cash. Fail miserably, and you owe the site money. Hey, it’s only annoying if you remain glued to that recliner, butterball.

The drag: Saving up for a trip/surgery/down payment on that Uglydoll Swarovski watch

Yes, you could spend your tax return on a wild spree at the mall, spittle collecting in frothy flecks on the corners of your mouth as you breathlessly vault from store to store. But there’s that hissing conscience again, urging you to sock away the funds instead.

Look, 9 times out of 10, not spending is way less fun than spending. But free personal finance site Mint.com makes saving — if not enjoyable — at least candy-colored and pleasant-looking.

Use the “goals” function to map your progress in a bar graph and you might even be likelier to hit the target, according to research from the McIntire School of Commerce. When people were more than 60% to their goal and could see the progress visually, they were more motivated than those who just saw the growing dollar amount.

The drag: Going to the dentist

The thing you have to bite on to take X-rays will hurt, your gums will bleed when the dental hygienist goes to town with that little metal weapon, and the dentist will absolutely give you a look when you lie through your filmy, yellow teeth about how often you actually floss.

These things we cannot change. But we can encourage you to at least find a hot dentist — a little eye candy to deliver that message about how you need to cut back on the sweet stuff.

Online directory ZocDoc lets you browse health care practitioners by location and the types of insurance accepted. You can book an appointment online, read reviews, and — this is critical — view pictures of the smiling physicians. The service is free for patients; doctors pay a fee to be listed.

Sure, you wouldn’t want to select your heart surgeon based on his winning smile, but there’s really no harm in choosing a gorgeous dental doc to take care of your pearly whites.

Over the course of more than 15 years, “Resident Evil” has established a rich history as one of the video game world’s most storied franchises.

Sadly, “Resident Evil: Raccoon City” fails to add to that rich history, serving up ordinary squad-based game play and limited threats from the franchise’s iconic zombies.

The latest venture into the zombie-filled world by Capcom is supposed to take place in time between between two other games in the series, “Resident Evil 2″ and “Resident Evil: Nemesis.”

This time, you play as a member of the Wolfpack squad for the always dubious Umbrella Corporation. You’re tasked with retrieving a virus that turns people into the undead creatures before the U.S. military can get it.

Raccoon City is the location where the zombie phenomena first occurred and has been the setting in many of the “Resident Evil” games.

Working for the bad guys in this title was supposed to be a refreshing change from others in the series. And it might have worked, if the squad-based third-person shooter game didn’t feel more like a poorly lit “Call of Duty” than what we’ve come to expect from the “Resident Evil” franchise.

Each member of your squad specializes in a different field (stealth, explosives, recon, etc.), and you play as one of four soldiers fighting their way through Raccoon City.

Either your friends can fill in the roles of the other three squad members or the game will control the others. You get to choose your special abilities and weapons at the beginning of each mission, but these are all locked down once the game starts.

The weapons are similar to those you’d find in a first-person shooter, and your character can carry one sidearm and one long-barreled weapon. Ammo and other weapons are sprinkled throughout the battleground and very rarely will you find yourself without bullets.

There are a couple of high-powered, single-use weapons (grenade launchers, flamethrower) that can’t be replenished with additional ammo. If you use one of these, make sure you can pick up another weapon as soon as you run out of fuel or grenades.

One of the most frustrating aspects of combat is what I call “magnetic cover.”

If you’re trying to use cover from your enemies while you’re moving, you end up essentially plastered to a wall if you get even close to it. Forget about moving stealthily from one covered spot to another. If you want to progress, you have to stand up, exposing yourself to enemy fire, then move to the next safe spot.

The artificial intelligence that runs the game is fair, but its decisions are sometimes hard to understand. Your squadmates will rush into a room with guns blazing at times when the team could have easily sneaked past. At other times, they will arbitrarily fling themselves to the ground for no apparent reason.

At least they are good in a fight and and very effective at taking the heat off your character. Be sure to have a medic in your squad to help heal injured party members.

Most of the opponents are not zombies. You’ll spend a lot of time battling the U.S. military in firefights, not that the soldiers you face seem much smarter than the undead.

Character models for the soldiers and the zombies are reused often. You’ll see the same zombie police officer, zombie large guy and zombie girl in short-shorts over and over again.

You will kill a lot of living and nonliving enemies in this game. The experience points you gain can be used at the beginning of each mission to upgrade weapons or personal abilities. But, even if you don’t use any upgrades at all, you will still be able to succeed.

The passive abilities that help you find items and enemies on your mini-map are probably the most useful. None of the weapon upgrades felt like they were necessary.

“Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City” ultimately comes off as a mundane, average shooter that abandons its heritage in the zombie/horror genre.

There aren’t enough zombies and too many living-breathing enemies to truly feel like a worthy outing for this franchise.

The ending flies in the face of “Resident Evil’s” history and leaves more questions unanswered. It feels half-done with no real finale.

Obviously, the ending leaves the door open for another shooter in this series. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really deserve one.

“Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City” is currently available in North America, Australia and Europe. It will be available in Japan on April 26. It is available for Windows PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It is rated ‘M for Mature’ due to blood and gore, intense violence, and strong language. This review was done playing the Xbox 360 version.

You’re on the Internet. What does that mean?

Most likely, it means one of a handful of telecommunications providers is middle-manning your information from point A to point B. Fire off an e-mail or a tweet, broadcast a live stream or upload video to YouTube, and you’re relying on vast networks of fiber optic cables deep underground and undersea, working with satellites high above, to move your data around the world, and to bring the world to your fingertips.

It’s an infrastructure largely out of sight and mind. AT&T, Level 3, Hurricane Electric, Tata Indicom — to most these are simply invisible magicians performing the act of getting one online and kicking. To many open-source advocates, however, these are a few of the big, dirty names responsible for what they see as the Web’s rapid consolidation. The prospect of an irreparably centralized Internet, a physical Internet in the hands of a shrinking core of so-called Tier 1 transit networks, keeps Isaac Wilder up at night.

Wilder is the 21-year-old co-founder of the Free Network Foundation. Motherboard, VICE’s science and technology offshoot, first caught up with Wilder at Zuccotti Park during the fledgling days of Occupy Wall Street. The Kansas City native seemed to be running on little sleep. He’d gone hoarse from chanting relentlessly over the first three days of a populist movement that would soon sweep the country and the world. But there was an undeniable urgency and excitement when Wilder told us about the efforts of the FNF, a non-profit, peer-to-peer communications initiative striving to liberate the global Internet from corporate and governmental interference.

It all sounded lofty and arcane and way, way over our heads. But Wilder seemed committed enough to his drop in the bucket of global revolution, which comes in the form of nine-foot-tall Freedom Towers that beam out free, secure Wi-Fi to occupied sites and underserviced communities, that we wanted to hear more.

See the rest of Free the Network at Motherboard.tv.

If the argument for mesh networking, a sort of pirate radio Internet scheme that allows people to talk to one another online through no middle man, is that a centralized ‘Net lends itself to the sort of surveillance and censorship that, however futile, strokes the Internet kill switch of science fiction, is there a way to circumvent that system altogether? Is there a way to build a new network from the bottom up? To occupy a fresh Internet outside the existing confines of the Web? Or is that all just the stuff of ideological fantasy?

To check the pulse of the Internet — and to get a feel for what life’s like in the digital nerve center of what’s arguably the first fully Web-fueled social movement in America — Motherboard has been following Wilder and Tyrone Greenfield, communications director for the Free Network Foundation, for the past half year. Through the thick of Occupy marches, in squats and test-lab offices, on rooftops and all places in between, we saw Wilder, Greenfield and the FNF building and perfecting their Towers and their humble, cooperatively owned, physical Internet.

We even broke a story that popped off on the Internet in the immediate wake of the New York Police Department’s November 17 raid on Zuccotti Park. We traveled with Wilder to a Department of Sanitation garage shortly after he was released from a 36-hour stint in jail. He was looking for things lost in the early morning sweep of Occupy’s epicenter: cash, his backpack and laptop, Zuccotti’s Freedom Tower.

What he found next to a wet heap of clothing and tents were a number of laptops splayed in rows. They appeared mangled and snarled. One was even stripped of its back casing. Whether Occupy’s laptops were purposefully destroyed, or merely crunched under the hydraulic mash of a Sanitation garbage truck, remains unclear.

To be sure, after the incident we contacted the NYPD, who forwarded us to Sanitation. Sanitation was tasked with hauling away all the abandoned property from Zuccotti to an off-site garage, where demonstrators were later allowed to rummage for their belongings. A Sanitation representative told Motherboard there had been no directive to destroy property, but that he wasn’t surprised to hear that some items, including laptops, had maybe been mishandled or misplaced.

In the end, what we came up with is a short documentary called Free the Network. It’s a story about big dreams and cloudy missions, about complex affiliations and what happens when a DIY hack-tech movement confronts the force of the state.

But beyond that, it’s a story about the incredibly high stakes of living networked in today’s world. We all have skin in this game. Remember: You’re on the Internet.

To the dismay of some, Facebook has no “Dislike” button. But a new application for the social network may prove to be the next-best thing.

The app, EnemyGraph, encourages Facebook users to list people or places or things they dislike, then share them with like-minded haters as a way of bonding. (“You think Crocs are hideous? I think Crocs are hideous! Let’s be buds!”)

“Most social networks attempt to connect people based on affinities: you like a certain band or film or sports team, I like them, therefore we should be friends,” writes EnemyGraph co-creator Dean Terry in a blog post. “But people are also connected and motivated by things they dislike. Alliances are created, conversations are generated, friendships are stressed, stretched, and/or enhanced.”

Among the app’s most-mentioned “enemies” so far are some familiar targets: politicians, teenybopper Justin Bieber, the Internet Explorer browser, pop group Nickelback, social game FarmVille and, yes, Crocs — those odd-looking plastic clogs that fashionistas love to hate.

Users of the app appear to largely be left-of-center politically. Near the top of the enemies’ list are GOP candidates Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, Fox News, conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. President Barack Obama is the sole Democrat on the list.

Terry is an artist, technologist and director of the emerging media and communications program at the University of Texas at Dallas. EnemyGraph was developed in one of his classes. He credits grad student Bradley Griffith and undergraduate Harrison Massey with actually building the app.

The EnemyGraph app, or plug-in, is easily installed through Facebook. The idea behind it, Terry said, was to offset what he sees as Facebook’s enforced artificial culture of niceness, which encourages affinities but leaves less room for disagreement.

Say, for example, that you like Kanye West on Facebook but one of your friends lists the hip-hop star as an “enemy.” EnemyGraph will send you a “dissonance report,” pointing out the difference and offering it up for conversation.

“When I saw the first friends list at the beginning of the social media era the first thing I thought was, “where’s the enemies list?” No one ever made one, so we did,” Terry said in his post. He calls EnemyGraph “a kind of social media blasphemy” and predicts Facebook will try to shut down his subversive project.

Facebook did not immediately respond Wednesday to a request for comment.

Thanks to a wave of press coverage, EnemyGraph’s site has been inaccessible at times this week. Terry said on Twitter this week that the app has more than 10,000 users and that new servers are coming.

To kick off the release of her new album, Madonna is joining Twitter for one day to answer questions from fans.

The pop legend will be turning to Twitter on Monday night to promote her 12th studio album, MDNA, and interact with fans on the popular social network. She will be answering questions starting at 10:00 p.m. EST/7:00 p.m. PST.

The Twitter handle @MadonnaMDNAday sent out its first tweet on Sunday to get the word out about the Q&A. Fans can submit questions to Madonna by tweeting @MadonnaMDNAday and using the hashtag #askmadonna. The account already has over 12,000 followers.

The news was also announced on Madonna.com/AskMadonna, with the following message:

“Madonna joins Twitter for one day only to answer fan questions and celebrate the release of her MDNA album. Got a question? #AskMadonna,” the site says.

It’s uncertain if the account will still send tweets about the album or if it will be shut down after the online event. The Twitter account has not yet responded to questions from Mashable.

Madonna’s dip into Twitter isn’t just to promote her album, but also to increase her social media presence. She recently granted a Facebook Live-exclusive interview with late-night host Jimmy Fallon on Saturday. Fans — who had to “Like” her Facebook page in order to watch the interview — were also encouraged to submit questions for the pop queen. Her interview with Fallon was the only talk show appearance planned to promote the album.

Madonna has nearly 9 million subscribers on Facebook.

This is her first album since the release of “Hard Candy,” featuring “4 Minutes,” in April 2008.

Finally, fans of the world’s most famous boy wizard can follow his fight against the evil Lord Voldemort on their e-readers.

The entire “Harry Potter” series is now available in digital form at Pottermore, author J.K. Rowling’s website for all things Potter, ending what was easily the biggest e-book holdout in the literary world.

The books come in a downloadable format that is compatible with all leading e-readers, tablets, personal computers and smartphones — including Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s Nook. Readers seeking the e-books on Amazon or Barnes & Noble’s site will be directed to Pottermore to buy them.

“For years our customers have loved reading Harry Potter books in print, and have made them the best-selling print book series on Amazon.com,” said Russ Grandinetti, Amazon’s vice president of Kindle content. “We’re excited that Harry Potter fans worldwide are now able to read J.K. Rowling’s fantastic books on their Kindles and free Kindle reading apps.”

“By offering the NOOK editions of this popular series, long-time fans and first-time readers can experience the magic of Harry Potter in a new, exciting way and read what they love, anywhere they like,” offered Jim Hilt, Vice President of e-books for Barnes & Noble.

All seven books in the series will be available in English, at prices ranging from $7.99 to $9.99, through an agreement with Pottermore.

Rowling didn’t agree to make the books available digitally at all until last year, a full 14 years after the first, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” was published. (It was published in the United States as “Sorcerer’s Stone” the following year).

“I wanted to give something back to the fans that have followed Harry so devotedly over the years, and to bring the stories to a new digital generation,” the British author said last year in an announcement on YouTube. “I hope fans and those new to Harry will have as much fun helping to shape Pottermore as I have.”

The content side of the Pottermore site, which promises users an interactive journey through the Harry Potter universe, is still in beta testing. It’s scheduled to go live in April.

Not always a fan of the latest technology, Rowling famously wrote the Potter series by hand. Through the years, Rowling and her representatives expressed two reasons for being slow to the e-book world: a fear of online piracy and the desire for readers to experience her books the old-fashioned way.

The Harry Potter books have sold more than 400 million copies and been translated into more than 60 languages.

Tuesday’s e-book launch is the second time Rowling has made news in recent weeks.

Late last month, she announced that she’s working on an adult novel – rumored to be a crime thriller.

It’s been billed as an astronomical equivalent of the Large Hadron Collider, offering new insights into the formation of the universe and so powerful that it might even detect alien life.

The Square Kilometer Array (SKA) is an international effort to build the world’s largest radio telescope, one which will probe the dark heart of space shedding new light on dark matter, black holes, stars and galaxies.

“It will have a deep impact on the way we perceive our place in the universe and how we understand its history and its future,” says Michiel van Haarlem, interim director general of the SKA project.

“We know we are going to discover things that we haven’t already. It’s going to be very exciting,” van Haarlem said.

Taking its name from the total size of its collecting area, the SKA telescope will consist of 3,000 dish antennas, each one around 15 meters wide. Construction is slated to begin in 2016.

Collectively the surface area of all the dishes will amount to one square kilometer — hence the name — all combining to detect radio waves that penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere, emitted by stars, galaxies and quasars.

Two other types of radio receptors — aperture antennas and array antennas — will combine with the dishes to provide continuous frequency coverage from 70 MHz to 10 GHz.

“It’s not like an optical telescope where you see an image of the sky directly. What you do is measure signals from the antennas and process them,” van Haarlem says.

Around half the antennas will sit in a “central core region” made up of three separate five-kilometer clusters.

The remainder will extend out in five carefully aligned “spiral arms” stretching out ever more sparsely over an area in excess of 3,000 kilometers (1,864 miles) or more.

The configuration, say scientists, will create the most sensitive radio telescope ever built.

Currently, that honor is held by the Very Large Array(VLA) in New Mexico, says Alastair Edge, from Durham University – a leading UK center for astronomical research.

“(VLA has) just undergone a very large refit. Telescopes themselves haven’t changed but the computing at the back end has changed dramatically,” Edge said.

See also: Mapping out a new era in brain research

At the moment, we simply don’t have the computing power for the SKA telescope to perform at full tilt, Edge says.

Van Haarlem concurs.

“We’re talking about huge computing hardware that still needs to be developed. There’s a big challenge there,” he said.

Supercomputers capable of performing billions and billions of operations per second will be required, but the results will be spectacular, van Haarlem says.

“We will have high-resolution images where we will actually peer into the center of what is going on in galaxies,” van Haarlem said.

“We will also have the big picture where we can make surveys of vast areas of the sky to map out the large-scale structure of the universe.”

The project is entering a crucial stage with an announcement on where the array will be based expected imminently.

Two locations, one in South Africa’s Northern Cape, the other in western Australia, are in the running.

Brian Boyle, project director of the Australia/New Zealand bid, extols the virtues of Western Australia’s “intrinsic radio quietness” and the “excellent geophysics” of the proposed Australian site.

Meanwhile, SKA South Africa project director Bernie Fanaroff says hosting the “world’s largest science project” would be extremely important to the country and the continent.

“It could carry immense importance for the perception of Africa — by Africans and by the rest of the world,” Fanaroff said.

“It has already attracted a lot of young people into science and mathematics in South Africa and from other African countries and it’s attracted a lot of top-rate scientists,” he added.

Recent reports suggest that South Africa is favorite to host the SKA, but van Haarlem wouldn’t be drawn on the matter.

Wherever the location, the effort to build and operate the SKA will be an international one, with 20 countries and 70 institutions already on board, as well as private backers. And whatever the outcome of the bids, it will be a while before the array is up and running with construction slated to start four years from now and full operation not expected until 2024. The total cost is estimated at €1.5 billion (around $2 billion).

But it will be money well spent van Haarlem thinks.

“If it only tells us when the first stars and galaxies formed then it would have already contributed a huge amount to our understanding.”

Alastair Edge agrees. “It is possibly the most complex experiment we could possibly do. It has huge potential for allowing us to determine the distance to every galaxy in our local universe,” Edge said.

“The Large Hadron Collider produces a certain amount of data per hour. This will produce the same amount of data in the space of a couple of minutes.”

As with any high-profile product release, Apple’s new iPad device has been peppered with complaints since reaching consumers’ hands on March 16. Among them: that magazines look terrible on the iPad 3′s high-resolution display.

The complaints were first brought to light by Tumblr blogger Jamie Billett. He pointed out that in the New Yorker’s iPad app, the text on some pages is rendered as HTML, and the text on other pages is rendered as an image (.png) file.

The latter pages now appear “badly aliased” — i.e. conspicuously pixelated — throughout the app because the images haven’t been formatted to accommodate the iPad 3′s 2048 x 1536-pixel resolution, he complains. (The iPad 2, by comparison, has a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels.)

The New Yorker and other Conde Nast title have taken the heat for looking poor under the new display, but they’re not alone. Titles from other magazine publishers — we looked at Time magazine and Sports Illustrated from Time Inc., and at Esquire and O: The Oprah Magazine from Hearst — all suffered from the same problems.

The only exception? Vogue, which launched its iPad edition the same day the iPad 3 hit stores. The title planned its debut in conjunction with the tablet’s release, and thus was able to optimize for the iPad’s “retina display” ahead of time, a Conde Nast spokesperson told us.

The spokesperson added that the company is “working to optimize the rest of our digital edition portfolio over the next few weeks.”

But what will the ‘optimization’ process entail? How much will it increase file sizes? (We noticed, for instance, that Vogue’s premiere issue was a full 408 megabytes on the iPad 3, and less than 300 on the iPad 2.)

We spoke with Zeke Koch, senior director of product management of Adobe’s digital publishing arm, to find out. Adobe’s software powers all of Conde Nast’s editions for tablets.

Magazine publishers who use Adobe’s software all begin with InDesign to develop layouts, Koch explained. Those layouts can then be exported in three different kinds of formats: as images (.png or .jpg), PDF or HTML.

Different kinds of files — images, for instance, or video and audio files — are embedded within those larger file types.

Since magazines began publishing on tablets, “virtually all” publishers have chosen to export their digital editions as PNG (.png) files, Koch said. “The primary reason they did that is because the fidelity is perfect.

What you see on the desktop when you’re designing is exactly what you see on the iPad when you’re finished. Images are the fastest thing to load, and if you’re trying to create a quick, effortless browsing experience, images are the way to do that,” he explained.

“That was okay when there was only one screen size — when you were just working with the iPad 1 and 2,” he added. “When the iPad 3 came out, you were now dealing with a device with four times as many pixels.”

The iPad 3 applies an anti-aliasing filter to all low-resolution content, which blurs images ever so slightly. As a result, photographs still look about the same on the iPad 3, but the text looks a lot worse — i.e., visibly blurry, or pixelated.

What Vogue did — and what all other titles will have to do in the coming weeks — is begin exporting their digital editions as PDFs, said Koch.

But what about file size? I pointed out to Koch that Vogue was nearly as large as Wired’s first issue for the original iPad. Unfortunately, he said, magazine files will be larger for iPad 3 readers because the image and video files need to be delivered at a higher resolution.

Owners of first and second-generation iPads will still be able to download smaller, lower-resolution files, however. A magazine that is around 400 megabytes on the iPad 3 will be around 280 megabytes on the iPad 1 and 2, Koch said.

But why not render in HTML? I asked Koch. Wouldn’t that make the files smaller, and give readers the added benefit of selectable text?

Koch claimed that publishing in HTML wouldn’t substantially reduce the file sizes. “In both cases, you have a bunch of words, and descriptions of where things should be, and multimedia. Those multimedia files are still the same size.”

He said the big disadvantage with HTML is that it’s “not very good at layout out things predictably and perfectly.” Rather, it’s optimal for helping people create content that will adapt to any size screen.

Ultimately, however, Koch believes most publishers will move to HTML as standards improve and as publishers move to publish on a wider range of tablets.

So there you have it. Magazine readers need not despair about the appearances of their magazines for too much longer, as publishers are working to optimize their editions. The fix is relatively simple: publishers will have to increase the resolution of their image and video files, and export their digital editions as PDFs.

iPad 3 owners will have to suffer longer download times, and won’t be able to store as many magazines on their devices as iPad 1 and 2 owners, but that’s the price one pays for a visually stunning reading experience, no?

If you’re at a coffee shop, anywhere in Philadelphia, or if it’s late at night, hang on to your smartphone.

Losing your smartphone can be stressful, given how much important data and access to services a typical one contains. On average, people lose their smartphone once per year, according to Lookout Mobile Security.

Recently, Lookout analyzed phone loss data and found some interesting trends about where and when people lose their phones. This data is presented on a new interactive website, Mobile Lost and Found.

Lookout gathered data from its mobile security app, which is on more than 15 million cell phones around the world (mostly Android phones). In 2011, Lookout found 9 million smartphones. (The company considered a phone as having gone missing whenever a user logged in to Lookout via the Web to find a phone.)

“Losing your phone is absolutely the biggest mobile security risk cell phone owners currently face, even more than malware,” said Kevin Mahaffey, Lookout’s chief technology officer. “People lose their phones in the places they go every day. It’s not a stray comet from the sky snatching your phone. That’s why we wanted to study this.”

When are people most likely to lose their phone? Lookout found that the vast majority of smartphone losses happen late at night, from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. Looks like nightlife may be a culprit.

But on holidays, or during major events such as festivals or big sporting events, people are especially likely to lose a phone. In 2011, phone losses around the world spiked on Christmas and New Year’s Eve.

And on February 27, 2011, phones in Dublin, Ireland, were lost at nearly three times the normal rate during a major international rugby tournament there.

In general, throughout the United States, the five types of places where people are most likely to lose a cell phone are coffee shops, bars, restaurants, at the office or at home.

Also, the five U.S. cities where people are most likely to lose a smartphone are Philadelphia; Seattle; Oakland, California.; Long Beach, California; and Newark, New Jersey.

Mahaffey observed that several of the top phone-losing cities also have high crime rates, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that more phones are stolen in these cities.

Lookout’s data does not indicate what actually happened to those missing phones — how many were stolen vs. lost, or how many were eventually found. That might be a subject for future Lookout research, he said.

However, where you’re most likely to lose your phone may depend on which city you live in. For instance, people in Austin, Texas, are most likely to lose phones at a gas station or garage, at the grocery store or at a pizza place.

But church is the third most common setting where Chicagoans lose their phones. And in Atlanta, people are most likely to lose a phone at the office.

One reason why losing your smartphone is so risky is that recent research by Symantec (another mobile security provider) showed that more than 95% of the time, people who find lost smartphonestry to access sensitive data or accounts on those phones — which can including e-mail, online banking, photos and more.

This is why it’s so important to always protect your cell phone with at least a security passcode or swipe pattern.

What’s the cost of a lost smartphone? Lookout estimates the average replacement cost (just the device, not counting costs associated with lost data, international phone calls, unauthorized online purchases and illicit access to online banking or other accounts) is about $200.

“For a lot of people, $200 is a lot of money,” Mahaffey said. “It could be a month’s rent, or groceries.”

That said, Mahaffey emphasized that Lookout didn’t conduct this research to frighten people, but rather to help them understand the importance of protecting your phone. “You should never be afraid of your phone,” he said, “But you should know how to protect it.”

Consistently using a passcode or swipe pattern to lock your phone is the most basic level of protection — not just from a random person who finds your lost phone, or a deliberate thief or snooper, but also from police.

Courts in several states have authorized police to conductwarrantless searches of cell phones seized from people under arrest, but they probably cannot compel an arrestee to unlock a seized phone.

Several mobile security services offer additional features (for an annual fee) such as causing a lost phone to beep (which can help if you just can’t find where you put it down at home), or to show the current location of the phone on a map (which in one case helpedcatch a carjacker), or to remotely lock or even wipe all data and contacts from a lost or stolen phone.

The opinions expressed in this report are solely those of Amy Gahran.