When Steve Jobs introduced the “retina display” at WWDC, a lot of folks including myself were skeptical of its actual capabilities until we were given a hands-on session right after the Jobs’ keynote. I was impressed weeks ago and I’m even more impressed now. The amount of pixels that Apple managed to cram into such a small space is ridiculously amazing. Just look at the following comparison and it’s obvious to the naked eye how much better the iPhone 4 display is. Folks can argue about Apple’s somewhat outlandish claims that the display goes beyond what the human eye can digest but there’s no denying it’s beauty.

I’ll be perfectly honest, I wasn’t a big fan of the new design when images of the iPhone 4 first leaked. I actually thought it was downright ugly but after seeing it a few weeks back and now, I can’t help but appreciate what Jony Ive and his team have managed to accomplish with this iteration. Sure, it feels a big awkward in hand compared to the 3GS and 3G models because it no longer has a tapered back but it feels so damn good after a few minutes. The weight is perfect. I love the industrial design. The glass back, super high-res display and steel band leave me speechless. I just want to look at it all day long.

I’ll be the first to tell you that I’m not fanboy because I’ve never actually been a fan of the iPhone until now. My first gen iPhone literally sat in my desk drawer for an entire year. This is the iPhone that we’ve all been waiting for since day one. It has all the bells and whistles and then some. Because this particular unit is not my own, I can’t attest to call quality because it’s linked to someone else’s account and I’ll reserve judgment on the cameras until later in the day once I have my review unit.

No, I’m not having any reception issues or yellow discoloring. I simply cannot get my iPhone 4 to last longer than eight hours after a full charge. I’ve cycled it twice now and I’m still having battery life issues. I pulled it off the charger at 9:05 yesterday morning and by 4:30 in the afternoon I was at 13%. So what was I doing, you ask?

• One 2 minute phone call in Times Square (did not drop)
• No FaceTime sessions
• 3 Push e-mail accounts (Exchange, Gmail, Yahoo)
• Screen brightness at 50%
• No apps running in the background
• Sporadic Twittering (once every 45-60 minutes)
• Two minutes of the Flood-It! game on the subway
• 5 minutes of video playback
• No music playback
• No video recording
• 10 test photos
• 20-30 minutes of total web browsing
• 5 minutes of Google Maps usage
• 20-30 minutes of Wi-Fi connectivity
• No text messaging

So, yeah, I’m not really sure what the deal is. How’s your battery life?

The arrival of the Japanese language Twitter service in 2008 tapped into a greater sense of individuality in Japan, especially among younger people less accepting of the understatement and conformity their culture is usually associated with, analysts say.

A mobile version of Twitter started last October, further fueling the Twitter boom in a nation where Internet-connecting cell phones have been the rule for years.

These days, seminars teaching the tricks of the tweet, as the micro-blog postings are known, are popping up. Ending Japanese sentences with “nah-woo” — an adaptation of “now” in English — is hip, showing off the speaker’s versatility in pseudo-English Twitter-speak.

A TV show features characters that tweet. A Tokyo bar has screens showing tweets along with World Cup games. And pop idols, a former prime minister and plain regular people are all tweeting like crazy.

The proportion of Japanese Internet users who tweet is 16.3 percent and now surpasses the ratio among Americans at 9.8 percent. Twitter and Japan’s top social networking site, mixi, have been running neck-and-neck with monthly visitors between 9 million and 10 million but in April Twitter squeaked past mixi, according to ratings agency Nielsen Online.

In contrast, only 3 percent of Japanese Internet users are on Facebook compared with 62 percent in the U.S., according to Nielsen. MySpace has also failed to take off in Japan, at under 3 percent of Net users versus 35 percent in the U.S., according to comScore Inc.

Twitter estimates Japanese write nearly 8 million tweets a day, or about 12 percent of the global total. Data from Tweet Sentiments, a web site that analyzes tweets, show Japanese are sometimes tweeting more frequently than Americans.

“Japan is enjoying the richest and most varied form of Twitter usage as a communication tool,” says Daisuke Tsuda, 36, a writer with more than 65,000 “followers” for his tweets. “It’s playing out as a rediscovery of the Internet.”

One reason is language. It’s possible to say so much more in Japanese within Twitter’s 140 letter limit. The word “information” requires just two letters in Japanese. That allows academics and politicians to relay complex views, according to Tsuda, who believes Twitter could easily attract 20 million people in Japan soon.

Another is that people are owning up to their identities on Twitter. Anonymity tended to be the rule on popular Japanese Web sites, and horror stories abounded about people getting targeted in smear-campaigns that were launched under the shroud of anonymity.

In contrast, Twitter anecdotes are heartwarming. One well-known case is a woman who posted on Twitter the photo of a park her father sent in an e-mail attachment before he died. Twitter was immediately abuzz with people comparing parks.

So far, people are flocking to Twitter in positive ways, reaching out in direct, public and interactive communication, debunking the stereotype of Japanese as shy and insular, says Noriyuki Ikeda, chief executive of Tribal Media House, which consults on social media marketing.

“Twitter is turning out to be like a cocktail party,” he told The Associated Press. “Japanese see how fun it is to network and casually connect with other people.”

Twitter is also proving a good business tool. Companies are exploring Twitter as a way to reach consumers and get feedback, a function that holds potential in Japan where broadband connections are widespread and cheap, and mobile phones outnumber the population.

Retailer Tokyu Hands uses Twitter to answer queries from customers, while clothing-chain Uniqlo has used Twitter in marketing by setting up a virtual queue where people tweet with each other and get freebies.

Motohiko Tokuriki, chief executive of consultant Agile Media Network, who has nearly 200,000 followers, believes Twitter is on its way to be chosen the hit new word of the year, a coveted honor that draws great publicity here.

“It’s telling that Twitter was translated as ‘mumbling’ in Japanese,” he said. “They love the idea of talking to themselves,” he said.

Twitter may even offer Japan’s web entrepreneurs global opportunities that had so far eluded them because it’s the first digital “global-standard” outside of search engines like Google or Yahoo! to catch on here, says Toru Saito, chief executive of Loops Communications, which specializes in social networking businesses.

That means software applications Japanese develop for Twitter could win acceptance from a global market. Japanese mobile software products have tended to be for Japanese up to now.

“I’m getting so many queries, including those from abroad,” Saito said.

Rocky Eda, corporate communications manager for Digital Garage, which supports Twitter’s Japan operations, is thrilled people are embracing Twitter.

“In finding fulfillment in expressing what’s on your mind for the moment, Twitter is like haiku,” he said. “It is so Japanese.”

A study released Friday by The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project says adults and teenagers are equally likely to text while driving.

And adults are more likely to chat on their phones while driving: 61 percent of U.S. adults do it, compared with 43 percent of teenagers.

Two years ago, Padrini developed the iBreviary, an application that brought the book of daily prayers used by priests onto iPhones. To date, some 200,000 people have downloaded the application, he said.

The iPad application is similar but also contains the complete missal — containing all that is said and sung during Mass throughout the liturgical year. Upgrades are expected to feature audio as well as commentaries and suggestions for homilies as well as musical accompaniment, he said.

“Paper books will never disappear,” he said in a phone interview from his home parish in Tortona, in Italy’s northern Piemonte region. But at the same time “we shouldn’t be scandalized that on altars there are these instruments in support of prayer.”

Padrini, 36, said he expected priests who have to travel a lot for work would find the application most useful, noting that he recently had to celebrate Mass in a small parish where the missal was “a small book, a bit dirty, old.”

“If I had had my iPad with me, it would’ve been better than this old, tiny book,” he said.

Pope Benedict XVI, a classical music lover who was reportedly given an iPod in 2006, has sought to reach out to young people through new media: the Vatican has a regularly updated presence on You Tube and Facebook. Based on the success of the iBreviary, Padrini was recruited by the Vatican to oversee its youth outreach program in the new media, http://www.pope2you.net.

He stressed that the iPad application, like the iBreviary, was launched at his own instigation and with his own money and is not an official Vatican initiative. Vatican officials have previously praised the iBreviary as a novel way of evangelizing.

The method has grown in popularity — especially since President Barack Obama’s widely chronicled and successful embrace of social media during the 2008 campaign. He even had a sophisticated iPhone app that let people get in touch with local organizers and find local events.

“The demand for it, to be able to do it, is going to grow a lot, particularly if it’s shown that apps are an effective way to raise money for a political campaign,” said Peter Scheer, executive director of the California-based First Amendment Coalition.

Doug MacGinnitie, a Republican running to be Georgia’s secretary of state, has an iPhone app that provides information about his campaign and helps supporters donate money. Friends approached him about making one for the campaign last year, and it’s been downloaded roughly 200 times, he said.

“I don’t think it’s going to change the course of history, but I’ve gotten comments from people who think it’s cool,” MacGinnitie said. “It reinforces the notion that I come from the business world, which is generally quicker to embrace technology.”

Minnesota House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher, who’s running to be the Democratic nominee for governor, has an app that lets people follow her calendar, read news releases, familiarize themselves with her background and make campaign contributions.

“It shows that our campaign is a modern campaign,” said Kelliher spokesman Matt Swenson. “We’re connecting with people where they are right now through the phones in the palms of their hands.”

Illinois state Sen. Dan Rutherford, who’s the Republican candidate for state treasurer, said his campaign has been using so many other forms of social media — even announcing his candidacy via Twitter and Facebook — that an iPhone app was the next logical step.

“This is another medium for our supporters to track us, and we have people in house who can do it, so it was common sense to have one,” he said.

Apple says it doesn’t keep track of how many campaign apps — or any other kind of app — are among the roughly 225,000 in its app store.

If a candidate doesn’t have a friend or staffer who can do it, a basic iPhone app might cost between $5,000 and $10,000 to develop, said Gregg Weiss, the founder of iPhoneAppQuotes.com, which matches people wanting to create an app with U.S.-based developers.

Apple has had spats over rejected apps, including at least one candidate whose app was turned down. Some online chatter has focused on whether the power to reject gives Apple too much influence over politics, though Scheer dismissed that notion.

“There certainly would be a problem if there were no competitor to Apple offering an alternative platform to reach a similar audience,” Scheer said. But there are competitors — for instance, BlackBerry and phones that use Google’s Android software.

Google spokesman Anthony House said in an e-mail that the company doesn’t review Android apps but will take them down if they use illegal content, are obscene or violate other policies.

Jamie Ernst, of BlackBerry maker Research In Motion, said in an e-mail that apps must be submitted for approval before they appear in BlackBerry’s App World but that there are no specific guidelines for political apps.

Some also have worried that Apple’s rejections limit free speech. But Scheer said Apple is able to control what’s in the apps because it’s a private entity and not the government, and the company could reasonably argue it’s like a publisher.

“Their whole smorgasbord of apps is the equivalent of a magazine’s selection of the articles it wants to print and, therefore, it’s entitled to be as biased as it wants to be frankly,” he said.

Republican congressional candidate Ari David of California documented a tiff with Apple over his app on his campaign website. Apple initially rejected the app last month, saying it defamed the Democratic incumbent, longtime congressman Henry Waxman. David wound up losing the GOP primary.

Apple refuses to disclose the specifics of its vetting process. But the company did say a political app needs to come directly from the campaign, and its primary purpose cannot be to attack another candidate.

David argued that his app fell within Apple’s guidelines because it was critical of Waxman’s policy and actions as an elected official, not of the congressman himself. Apple subsequently reversed its decision.

“When this issue was brought to our attention, we reviewed it further and realized we made a mistake,” Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller told The Associated Press. “While we don’t approve apps that attack individuals, that is not what this app is primarily about.”

Previously, Apple had rejected an app from a political cartoonist under its no defamation policy. The company later changed that policy to exempt political cartoons.

At a technology conference organized by The Wall Street Journal earlier this month, Apple CEO Steve Jobs admitted that the company has made some mistakes when it comes to dealing with political content.

“We’re changing the rules when it makes sense, but we think it made sense to have a rule that said you can’t defame people,” he said.

At Apple’s annual conference for software developers June 7, Jobs said about 15,000 apps are submitted for approval each week in up to 30 languages, and 95 percent of them are approved within seven days.

He said apps are rejected for three main reasons: because it doesn’t do what the developer says it does; because it might not work with upgrades to the iPhone’s operating system; and because it crashes.