A snapshot of who is buying what based on a sample of first-day pre-orders

The team at Investor Village's AAPL Sanity board have completed their initial analysis of pre-orders for the iPad tablet computer.

Apple (AAPL) began taking orders on Friday for delivery starting April 3.

Based on a sampling of 48 orders (for 54 iPads), and not counting units that were reserved but not ordered, the Sanity team estimates:

• Nearly 120,000 iPads sold. Their math: 124,596 (orders of all Apple products Friday) minus 16,500 (the average number of online orders on a normal day) times 1.11 (the average number of iPads ordered per customer) equals 119,987 iPads.
• Wi-Fi over Wi-Fi+3G. Customers preferred the cheaper (and available April 3) Wi-Fi-only iPad over the Wi-Fi plus 3G model (due out at the end of April) by roughly two to one.
• 16 GB iPads only slightly more popular.  Pre-orders were almost evenly split between the 16, 32 and 64 GB models, with a slight preference for the less-expensive 16 GB model, which starts at $499. The highest-priced iPad is the 64 GB Wi-Fi+3G model, which retails for $829, AT&T charges not included.

"Apple has been able to generate over $75 million in revenue in one day on a product that 99.9% of purchasers haven't touched or for that matter, even seen in person," said Victor Castroll an analyst with Valcent Financial Group. "And, we're still three weeks away. That is amazing."

Castroll was one of two AAPL Sanity members who monitored the order numbers as they flowed in, but he credits Deagol — a blogger-investor whose predictions of Apple's earnings are consistently more accurate than the Street's — with doing the heaving lifting. You can follow Deagol's work at Deagol's AAPL Model.

Estimates of the number of iPads Apple will have manufactured by April range from a high of 1 million to a low of 300,000.

If you want to contribute to the Sanity spreadsheet, send your information to ipadsales10@gmail.com. Include your order number with the last three digits Xed out, the number of iPads you ordered, the order time, time zone, memory capacity and whether your iPad is Wi-Fi only or Wi-Fi + 3G.

See also:

• Apple sells 50,000 iPads in two hours
• The wild iPad Ruckus begins
• How many iPads will Apple sell?

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

The 10-year plan will reimagine the nation’s media and technology priorities by establishing high-speed Internet as the country’s dominant communication network.

Hooray for Hollywood! — the big winner this week in our roundup of the top 10 Twitter trends. From the Oscars to Alice in Wonderland (and of course, Justin Bieber), celebrity — whether be it music or film — dominated the Twitterverse.

The latest data, which comes from our friends at What the Trend, gives us a snapshot of what topics dominated Twitter. Given the topical nature of the list, hashtag memes and games have been excluded.

Tween-favorite Justin Bieber lost his spot at #1 to the Big Show — AKA the Oscars. The 82nd Academy Awards dominated Twitter on Sunday night and was the most discussed topic of the week as a whole. Don’t feel bad for Bieber though: he’s still number two on the list.

Now, who’s hot who not/Tell me who rock who sell out in the stores. Well, that would be B.I.G P-O, P-P-A, also know as the Notorious B.I.G. The legendary Brooklyn rapper, who was murdered 13 years ago this week, was #5 on this week’s list of trends. More than a decade after his tragic death, Biggie continues to be a larger than life figure.

Music continues to be a big topic of discussion on Twitter, with artists like Lady Gaga, Bieber and the Jonas Brothers all appearing on the list. We expect to see Lady Gaga next week too, given the camp-infused epic music video for “Telephone” that was released at the end of the week.

Looking forward, we predict Justin Bieber, the iPad and Twilight: Eclipse to all appear on the chart next week.

You can check past Twitter trends in our Top Twitter Topics section as well as read more about this past week’s trends on What The Trend.

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Top Twitter Trends for 3/7 – 3/13

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Rank	Topic	Top Index This Week	Change	Description

Tags: top twitter trends, twitter, What The Trend

Facebook Connect can help nascent Web services recruit a healthy crowd of users in a hurry, and help the users find their friends on those sites.

Filed under: Duke, ACC, March Madness, University of Miami, ACC Tournament

GREENSBORO, N.C. -- So much for worst to first.

No. 12 seed Miami had the heart and hope, but the Hurricanes simply didn't have enough juice to keep pace with No. 1 Duke in Saturday's Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament semifinal. That's not to say the South Beachers didn't make it entertaining, however.

Duke was tested, squandering a pair of double-digit advantages in each half, but it regrouped to earn a 77-74 victory that advances it into Sunday's championship at the Greensboro Coliseum.

The Blue Devils, who can win a league-best 18th tournament title, also continue to play for a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

Duke (28-5) got a brief scare when the Hurricanes (20-13), who were in the ACC semifinals for the first time in their history, put together a 17-2 run to erase a 12-point deficit and take a 35-32 lead at the break.

Not to worry.

 

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This weekend, thousands of WordPress users and developers are among the people attending the South by Southwest (SxSW) Interactive conference in Austin, TX. To celebrate this, we’re throwing a WordPress BBQ at SxSW tomorrow so that there’s a place for us all to get together.

If you’re a WordPress fan attending SxSW (or you just happen to be in Austin), please join us for lunch after 12pm* tomorrow, Sunday March 14. We’re getting the BBQ from Rudy’s and the red velvet cake from Central Market. Yum! Come, eat, talk about the cool things you’re doing with WordPress, let us know what we can do better, gossip about Mark Jaquith’s new hairstyle, whatever. Think of it like a WordCamp without presentations. I’ll be there, lead developers Mark Jaquith and Ryan Boren will be there, core contributors will be there, plugin and theme developers will be there, and basically all the most intelligent and attractive people from SxSW will be there. You should be, too!

Location: Conjunctured coworking space, 1309 East 7th St., Austin, TX 78702. From the convention center, walk up to 7th Street, hang a right, and walk until you get to #1309. If you’re tired of walking, taking a cab is a decent option. Note that this is on the other side of I-35 from the convention center.

View WordPress BBQ at SxSW in a larger map

* We’ll keep serving until we run out of food, so probably until around 2 or 3? We’ll have a hundred pounds of bbq meat, a bunch of sides, and dozens of gallons of iced tea, so come hungry.

Coming to you live from Blackbaud Stadium in Charleston, SC - D.C. United takes on Real Salt Lake in the first game of the Carolina Challenge Cup. Our thanks to Toronto FC for providing a live stream of tonight's game.

 

D.C. United starters: G: Perkins; RB: McTavish, CB: Jakovic, CB: Pena, LB: Wallace; RW: Barklage, CM: Morsink, CM: Quaranta, LW: Castillo; F: Allsopp, F: Moreno

Real Salt Lake starters: G:Rimando; RB:Russell, CB: Olave, CB: Borchers, LB: Wingert; RW: Grabavoy, CM: Beckerman, CM: Morales, LW: Johnson; F: Espindola, F: Findley

GREENSBORO, NC – Greetings from ACC Central and semifinal day here at the Greensboro Coliseum where your Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets are playing N.C. State at a 4 p.m. tip.

Hm. Last time we saw N.C. State, there was a four-minute, 16-point near collapse, and much fretting about inbounds plays and Tech’s press offense.

So who has the mental advantage today, then? Tech? Because the Yellow Jackets know how dangerous the Wolfpack can be? Or State because the Wolfpack came oh so close and fell short at Alexander.

Either way, Tech still looked pretty darn vulnerable to the press last night, when Maryland went fullcourt to start the second half. Need I remind you of the three turnovers in the first 52 seconds of the second half, five by the first media timeout, 14 in the second half in all, and a season-high 25 by the end of the game.

Unlike the State game, when D’Andre Bell took basically initiated all the inbounds plays, last night it was either Zachery Peacock or Moe Miller. …

With a larger television contract a strong possibility, the idea of increasing the number of teams to 96 in the tournament has gained momentum.

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