As we approach the expected launch of an iPad 3 next week, it struck me at last week's Tablet Revolution event in New York (our second in this series) just how far ahead of the curve Apple's technology and even its user base remain two years after the device's launch.

Amazon's Kindle Fire has grown the number of app downloads in the Amazon Android Appstore exponentially in recent months. But I have to wonder if the online retailer will see even broader benefits from the Fire.

Your customer just walked into your store with a camera, an HD screen, a music player on a single device that also happens to be wrapped in her contact list of like-minded friends. It is a moving, personal funhouse just waiting to be occupied by your content.

With a new tablet-optimized portal page and experience in its Editions news app, AOL is very big on tablets. But the company wants to extend its new desktop less-is-more approach to the platform.

"Sir, you aren't booked in this hotel until next month," the clerk said as my heart sank. My wife was already gasping for air at the check-in counter, she was laughing so hard. A crafted romantic getaway had been thwarted by my mishandling of the iPad.

As fellow Mediapost columnist and social/mobile guru David Berkowitz pointed out the other day in one of my MoBlogs, it is pretty much astonishing that Facebook has allowed such scale to accrue on mobile without a clear monetization path here. In fact, from a consumer's perspective, Facebook was among the first smartphone apps to make the case that mobile could be a superior platform to the desktop for some core interactive media habits. Not only was the Facebook interface cleaner and more usable in an app, but the smartphone seamlessly converged all of the multimedia input tools that could bring …

"Who is that, and what the hell is she wearing?" my daughter asked as the NBC Super Bowl pre-game show started with some country-like bleached blonde in silver lame pants singing the unctuous intro. I had a vague memory of this woman, but I was clueless. And this was only the first of countless times in the next few hours I couldn't ID someone who clearly the rest of the country knew as a celebrity.

Funny thing about the 425 million monthly users of Facebook on mobile devices: they don't monetize well, and Facebook itself admits it is unsure when and how they will. In all of the press attention to the size and overall prospects for Facebook's new public form, the elephant in the room that seemed to elude notice was sitting in every analyst's pocket. In fact, in yesterday's SEC filing for its proposed initial public offering, social network and mobile Goliath Facebook underscores the prospect that its massive popularity on devices could pose a business risk.