The first noticeable aspect of the release of Apple’s new iPad, announced yesterday at a launch event in San Francisco, is the fact that it’s called just that: “the new iPad,” rather than the iPad 3 or iPad HD. Why this is, is unclear – is it not sufficiently different to be an iPad3? Or has a decision on a name just not been taken?

The new device, to go on sale on March 16, has:

• a ‘retina display’ of the type seen on the iPhone 4. For the iPad this means 3.1m pixels, 2048 x 1536 – double the resolution of previous versions.
• a dual-core ‘A5X’ chip with quad-core graphics
• 4G/LTE wireless, which is much faster than 3G but currently only available in the US
• an upgraded iSight camera which has a 5 megapixel sensor and HD video recording capability.
• voice dictation (in English, French, German and Japanese)
• updated iWork applications, and iPhoto with more advanced editing options

It does not have haptic feedback, as commentators had predicted, notes the Guardian, or anything in particular that seems to justify the emphasis put on ‘touch’ in the invitation to the event.

The Washington Post has started to produce a daily minute-long video compiling latest news headlines, that it posts on its homepage on weekdays at noon. Called '59 Seconds,' the segments include coverage of "politics, policies, sports, personalities in Washington and more," the paper says on its website.

The video show is presented by Ylan Mui, a staff writer at Wash Post who writes about consumers at the economy, and the segment is a mix of Mui speaking directly to the camera from the paper's newsroom, and a mashup of videos and photos. Currently, the videos begin with a 15-second pre-roll ad from Conoco Phillips, the launch sponsor.

"Our goal is to give readers a snapshot of news that reflects Post coverage in a way that's easy to digest and available at the same time everyday," said Andrew Pergam, director of video for The Post. "This is the first of more video products in the pipeline focused on reaching people in ways that are unique to The Post and the region."

The Washington Post already offers a video section of its website featuring the latest videos from WaPo journalists.

The popular social newsreader Flipboard has announced that it's adding a new feature to its iPad app: Cover Stories.

Cover Stories, previously only available on Flipboard's mobile app, is a feature that picks links most likely to be relevant to users' interests based on what their friends are sharing and what they've previously read.

Daniel Terdiman at CNET writes that the feature learns from users' behaviour, so that the more they visit, the more relevant articles Flipboard can deliver. Terdiman quotes his colleague Rafe Needleman, who said that Cover Stories "did a good job of finding articles I didn't know about and that I would be interested in reading."

For more on this story please see our sister publication www.sfnblog.com

As everyone from businesses to governments to individuals go digital, the amount of raw data being recorded and stored is growing at a dizzying rate. Often this data contains useful information that it is in the public interest to analyse, but it exists in a format that very few people can understand. The solution to the problem? Find experts who can convert large amounts of data into easily accessible stories. In other words, find data journalists.

These are some of the ideas fuelling Danish daily Dagbladet Information's new initiative, Nordisk Nyhedshacker 2012 ("Nordic News Hacker 2012"). The project, run in collaboration with The Guardian, Google and Syddansk Universitet's Center for Journalism, invites journalists or data experts to create a piece of data journalism - which could be anything from a data mash-up to a new mobile app - and submit it to a panel of judges. The creator of the winning entry will be given a $20,000 scholarship by Google and will be invited to work with the Guardian Data Blog in London for one month. The Center for Journalism contributes by advertising the competition and incorporating elements of data journalism into its curriculum.