Weekly Wrap-up: The New iPad Launches, Netflix Didn't Know They Advertised on Limbaugh, Google Starts Selling Airfare and More

The new iPad isn’t a large step forward in terms of features, but it will be huge for Apple. Netflix didn’t realize it was advertising on the Rush Limbaugh Show. And, Google started selling airfare to searchers. All of this and more in the ReadWriteWeb Weekly Wrap-up.

After the jump you’ll find more of this week’s top news stories on some of the key topics that are shaping the Web – Location, App Stores and Real-Time Web – plus highlights from some of our six channels. Read on for more.

Why the New iPad is So Huge for AppleHOT TOPIC

Most will agree that the new iPad, launched this week, isn’t a huge step forward. That being the case, Dan Frommer still believes it will be of enormous significance for Apple this year. 2012 may well be the year of the iPad.

From our readers:

Netflix: No, We Don’t Advertise with Rush Limbaugh HOT TOPIC

Did Netflix advertise on the Rush Limbaugh show? Yes. Did they mean to do this? It’s complicated.

The answer is really more of a primer in the way radio advertising works. Joe Brockmeier shares how buying general airtime is different than specifying a particular show in your ad buy. He also explains why those general ad buys may not be a good idea if you are advertising on a network that airs controversial content.

From our readers:

Jason — I see Netflix has continued to run ads on Rush today – and not just any station, on flagship Rush station WABC.

I understand network buys. I also understand a company has the right to demand “no controversial programming” with those buys.

Obviously, all but Netflix have made this demand. There are no major buyers airing during Rush except Netflix now.

So, do you think you’ve been used? I’d like to hear your thoughts on this.

Google Gets Into the Airline Ticket Business

Just in case it wasn’t clear Google is going into the business of selling airline tickets. It’s starting small with Cape Air, an independent New England-based regional airline.

The websites for Cape Air and Nantucket Airlines now have new booking software under the hood powered by Google-owned ITA Software, one of the “Ten Most Innovative Companies in Transportation,” according to Fast Company.

More Top Posts:

Sencha Touch 2 Allows Developers to Code iOS Apps With Windows PCs

Mobile HTML5 developer framework Sencha wants to be more than just a tool to develop hybrid mobile applications. The company’s roadmap for 2012 is to become an end-to-end solution for designing, developing and deploying HTML5 applications and is taking its first steps toward that goal today by releasing Sencha Touch 2 out of beta. Sencha Touch 2 gives developers a better user interface for developing HTML5 that will give consumers a more robust user experience. More

Google Slashes Storage Prices: Still no GDrive

Google announced today that it’s dropping its pricing on Google Cloud Storage and its integration with several enterprise storage offerings. Google’s updated pricing scheme puts it roughly in line with Amazon’s S3, but what else does Google have to offer except a new pricing scheme?

I spoke to Google’s product manager for Cloud Storage, Navneet Joneja on Monday about the pricing change and how Google stands out in storage. More

The New iPad: The Perfect Tablet at the Perfect Time HOT TOPIC

So, Apple just threw a bunch of numbers and specifications at you. Yeah, it is a new iPad. So what? Nothing about the rumor cycle heading into the third generation iPad had me excited. Honestly, I am probably not going to buy the new iPad. Well, not anytime soon. But, as we noted earlier today, you probably will. My colleague Dan Frommer will explain later today why the third generation iPad will be the most important product Apple releases this year and will sell two to three times better than the previous two iPads … combined. If you have never bought a tablet before, this is likely going to be the one that you do buy. More

[Infographic] How to Write the Best Call to Action Emails

The folks at Litmus.com have prepared this interesting infographic about to boost the results from your email campaigns. Who knew that your readers would be more likely to click on your messages if a button included an arrow icon? And that because of image-blocking features on most email programs, make sure that you use what they call a “bulletproof” button by combine HTML and background codes so that the button will be visible when images are enabled. More

How Social Networks are Killing the Internet HOT TOPIC

Share this on Facebook! Tweet this to your followers! Pin it to Pinterest! Submit the link to StumbleUpon and drive tons of traffic to your site! Digg it and hopefully more eyeballs will see it (and then it will end up on Facebook through the Digg Social Reader). Isn’t it great? You can cross your fingers and hope that the entire social Web sees something you like if you share it to all of your social networks. After all, we are what we share. More

Amazon Leads Price War: Drops AWS Pricing Again, Leans Heavy on Reserved Instances

According to Amazon’s blog today, the company is now on their 19th price cut since AWS debuted, but who’s counting? Well, they are, apparently. The company is lowering pricing on EC2 instances, ElastiCache, Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) and Amazon Elastic Map Reduce are all dropping significantly. Significantly, Amazon is heavily emphasizing its price cuts on Reserved Instances. More

Apple, That iPad Will Never Get the Network Speed You Claim HOT TOPIC

When Apple executives rolled out the new iPad yesterday, there was a lot of hyperbole and cheerleading on stage. Hey, these things happen, it is a launch event for one of the year’s biggest products, after all. Yet, those with a critical eye noted something peculiar with Apple’s announcement of its 3G and 4G LTE announcement: the speed numbers that executives touted are nowhere near what consumers will find in the real world. More

ReadWriteWeb Channels

Enterprise

Mobile

Cloud

Follow ReadWriteCloud on Twitter and join the ReadWriteCloud LinkedIn Group.

ReadWriteWeb Community

You can find ReadWriteWeb in many places on the web, a few of which are below.