TheTodayNews.com

If you’ve been putting off purchasing an iPad, just one word that will make you run out and buy one right now:

Madden.

Electronic Arts released “Madden NFL 11 for iPad” yesterday, and the quality of the HD game is absolutely amazing. Designed to take full advantage of the iPad’s multi-touch screen, the game one-ups other platforms by allowing you to create on-screen touch routes to immediately design your own plays on the fly.

So far our team choice of Green Bay with Roethlisberger at the helm, supported by Browns teammates Josh Cribbs and Joe Thomas, is starting the Madden 11 season off right!

Every 27 million years life on earth is obliterated. But don’t worry, we still have 16 million years to go.

Scientists from the University of Kansas and the Smithsonian Institute have been studying worldwide “extinction events” over the last 500 million years, and have discovered an eerily regular cycle occurring every 27,000,000 years.

One theory is that a distant dark star in orbit around the sun intersects the Oort Cloud (a vast belt of ice and solar system leftovers) at regular intervals, sending a deadly shower of asteroids and comets through the solar system.

The next cycle isn’t projected to occur for another 16 million years though, so better not send any emails telling people off just yet!

A restaurant in North Sydney, Australia has found a way to gain über-cool status as an eating establishment…by replacing all of their menus with iPads.

Global Mundo Tapa created a custom iPad app to take customer orders, make meal suggestions based on the weather or the diner’s mood, and display pictures of every item on the menu.

I guess this means I can dispense with one of my favorite pre-meal traditions…looking at the food on everybody else’s plate as I walk to my table, trying to figure out what looks good so I know what to order!

Woo-hoo! Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has announced that all company-operated stores in the United States will offer free Wi-Fi to its customers starting July 1.

Honestly I’m surprised it took this long for Starbucks to crack. For a company whose carefully crafted image has been one of trendiness, the lack of free wireless internet access has always been surprising.

Starbucks will try to one-up the independent coffee shops though by also offering what they call the “Starbucks Digital Network”, allowing customers free unrestricted access to various paid sites and services such as wsj.com, exclusive content and previews, and free downloads.

Now if only Starbucks would offer their mini-donuts for free. Mmmmmm…donuts…

The popular TV show viewing site Hulu.com plans to begin testing a $10-per-month subscription service (Hulu Plus) as soon as May 24 sources say, and undoubtedly this will coincide with the release of a long awaited Hulu app for the iPad.

One of the few weaknesses of the iPad is its inability to play Flash-based internet content. But not wanting to miss out on the one-million-and-counting user iPad market, most video providers have already quickly switched from Flash video to either a more open H.254 & HTML5 standard (i.e. YouTube), released an app that will play their content (i.e. ABC.com and Netflix), or made their shows available on iTunes (i.e. NBC).

As iPad users, we at TheTodayNews.com hope the Hulu app will be similar to the ABC.com model where recent shows are available for free with limited commercial interruption, coupled with a library of other content available under subscription only (similar to the Netflix business model), or some combination thereof.

Netflix already has a massive customer base in place for viewing older programming via streaming, so we don’t expect many suckers willing to take on a Hulu subscription as well. Look for a free Hulu model with commercials, similar to ABC.com, to be the most successful option.

Got an iPad? Want to use it to make free phone calls anywhere in the USA? There’s an app for that!

We at TheTodayNews.com recently downloaded the free Whistle Phone app as a curiosity, but the more we used it, the more we liked it. The voice quality was unexpectedly better than both our land-line and our cell phones.

Using the WiFi or 3G connection on your iPad, iTouch or iPhone, the free VoIP phone service gives you a personal phone number, allows you to make free calls anywhere in the USA, and also allows you to forward incoming calls to your land-line, cell phone, and office in any order you wish.

You do have to listen to a brief advertisement before your outgoing call is placed, because the Whistle Phone service provider Vail Systems has to make money somehow!

Look for free VoIP phone services to explode in popularity, with Google Voice already offering a similar service.

Apple has now sold one-million iPads, just 28 days after the product debuted. In only one country, mind you.

When the product was first announced there were many nay-sayers who didn’t understand the significance of a stable tablet device with tens of thousands of pre-existing applications, courtesy of the iPad’s close relatives the iPhone and the iTouch.

What other $500 product can you think of that was purchased by 1 out of every 300 Americans, not even a month after it came out?

We have to give props to Steve Jobs once again for recognizing the future trends of technology and being the first to deliver.

You might think astronomers would LOVE to meet an alien. Stephen Hawking, however, has a decidedly different view, instead encouraging the human race the avoid being noticed by alien races.

In his new Discovery Channel TV series, “Stephen Hawking’s Universe” the theoretical physicist explains “If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”

Hawking envisions a scenario similar to the TV series V, noting “I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach.”

If one of the world’s smartest men warns us to stay away from aliens, who are we to argue!

Although Apple was first out of the gate this year with its iPad device, many other companies are ready to present their own tablet offerings in 2010.

The most recent contender in the WiFi tablet market is the “WePad” from Germany’s Neofonie GmbH. It sports two USB ports, a built-in camera, and a Linux-based operating system compatible with Google’s Android and Flash applications. Pre-orders start on April 27, with the entry-level 16GB model priced at euro449 ($600).

WePad does trump the iPad hands down in one respect: having a name with not one, but SEVERAL double entendres. From surfing the web, to solving senior incontinence issues, to being a place for your puppy to relieve itself if you don’t come home from work in time, the WePad does it all!

If you are like a certain editor at TheTodayNews.com (we’re not naming any names), then you’ve wasted countless quarters and hours of your 1980s youth in video game arcades.

John McAllister of Seattle, Washington may have just vindicated his own playing time by breaking the all-time Asteroids high score after 58 hours of continuous play, racking up 41,338,740 points on the classic 1979 coin-op game. The previous record of 41,336,440 was set in 1982.