Silicon Valley startup Kno Inc. on Wednesday began accepting submissions to a new pilot program for its education-focused, dual touchscreen 14.1" tablet, also called the Kno. The program is open to qualified undergrad and graduate school students who have submitted a resumé and their list of required reading to Kno.

When accepted into the program, students don't get anything for free. But, they get a 50% discount on either a single-screen or dual-screen Kno tablet. And since these devices carry an MSRP of $600 and $900 respectively, a decent amount of money is saved.

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Apple's record fiscal 2011 first quarter will be the Starbuck's coffee talk of Wall Street today. Apple beat analysts' revenue consensus by about $2.3 billion. Behind the numbers there are lessons to learn about the company and economic opportunities that competitors, non-competitors and partners should be aware.

I've chosen five things, which are presented in no order of importance. As usual, I expect to get whacked aside the head by Apple worshippers who balk at the slightest criticism. For some people, there's only one side to every argument.

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Nintendo 3DS, which proved to be a real scene-stealer at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) 2010, will be launching in North America, Europe, and Australia on March 27, and will cost $249 at retail. It hits the market approximately one month after the device launches in Japan.

At a press event held by Nintendo on Wednesday, the company showed off a few more titles expected to be available when the console launches, including Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D, Kid Icarus Uprising, Pilotwings Resort, Nintendogs & Cats, Steel Diver, Dead or Alive Dimensions, Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 3D, Super Street Fighter IV: 3D edition, Starfox64, Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater, Resident Evil: Mercenaries, Asphalt 3D, Combat of Giants: Dinsaurs 3D, Ridge Racer 3D, Lego Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and a new Madden football title.

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AMD Wednesday unveiled the newest member of its Fusion APU family called the G-Series, designed for use in embedded environments, and primed to be the eventual replacement to the long-running Geode line of embedded processors.

Like the Fusion APUs for consumer PCs that AMD unveiled just prior to CES 2011, the G-Series incorporates an x86 CPU with a DirectX 11 capable GPU and an integrated DDR3 memory controller all on the same die.

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Adobe on Tuesday announced that it had acquired audience and data management company Demdex, growing Adobe's Web marketing platform further as the online advertising business continues its evolution.

Just over a year ago, Adobe acquired Omniture, a leader in web analytics and audience management that formerly acted as a partner for Adobe. Since the acqusition, the software formerly known as Omniture Online Marketing Suite has become Adobe Online Marketing Suite powered by Omniture.

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[Editor's Note: This was a live document from 4:45 p.m. EDT through 6:35 p.m., following Apple's earnings call.]

This afternoon, Apple delivered record holiday sales results, reporting fiscal 2011 first quarter earnings after US stock markets closed. Investor anticipation about the quarter seemed to hold back a major stock sell off. Yesterday, when US markets were closed, Apple CEO Steve Jobs revealed that he would be taking another medical leave -- for indeterminate amount of time. The sudden and open-ended medical leave raises concerns that Jobs might not return. What then for Apple?

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Today, the Federal Communications Commission conditionally approved the license transfers to create the Comcast-NBCU joint venture that contains the media content from Comcast and NBCU's properties. The FCC voted 4-1 in favor of the transaction with Commissioner Michael Copps casting the only dissenting vote. Simultaneously, the Department of Justice has approved the FCC's proposed content licensing conditions, but the Antitrust division has not yet given clearance to the merger.

"This is the most intense review the FCC has ever run for a single transaction," FCC officials said today.

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Huntington Beach city council members are considering a unique way to fight back against drunk driving: posting the photos of repeat offenders to the police department's Facebook page. The idea is actually a scaled-back version of one proposed in November by Councilman Devin Dwyer, who originally wanted the photos of every DUI offender posted.

The problem of drunk driving is a serious one for this resort city a hour south of Los Angeles: according to the Associated Press, some 1,700 DUI arrests were made in 2009, and 195 were either killed or injured as a result of drunk driving. Huntington Beach ranks first among cities of its size for alcohol-related causalities.

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Microsoft on Tuesday announced that the iOS version of OneNote
is available for free download in the iTunes app store, the new note-taking app integrates with Windows Live services such as SkyDrive and Office Web Apps as well as the standalone Office OneNote 2010.

OneNote is entering its ninth year of availability in the Microsoft Office suite of products, and it has struggled to get Office users to jump in and just try it.

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Today, IDC initiated coverage of the media tablet and e-reader markets, ranking Apple and Amazon leaders in their categories, respectively. Reporting on two separate product markets in one release is unusual for IDC. But it makes sense. So-called media tablets and e-readers will likely become one category in the not-so-distant future.

What's more interesting is IDC's tablet definition. In October, I observed that if iPad counted as a personal computer, Apple would likely meet or beat top-ranked HP in Q3 US PC market share. IDC has decided iPad isn't a PC, but Tablet PC would be one.

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Expanding a fee already charged to those on 4G data plans, starting Jan 30 all new smartphone customers would be charged an extra $10 per month. The company says the decision reflects increased costs to provide these more bandwidth-hungry devices with data service.

The change would not affect current customers, who would be grandfathered in under their preexisting plan. In any case, Sprint's decision may also be a side effect of its push for "unlimited" plans last year.

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I'm not doing cartwheels over the new HTML5 logo, which reminds me of a superhero badge. It's bold, masculine and sort of orange, which will appeal how to the majority of web users? But the logo is a great idea, and it's big splash promotion -- some of that from Microsoft -- is exactly what the standard-in-progress needs right now.

Today in a blog post, Jean Paoli, Microsoft's general manager of interoperability, writes: "The logo links back to W3C, the place for authoritative information on HTML5, including specs and test cases. It's time to tell the world that HTML5 is ready to be adopted."

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Today is an important, perhaps defining, day for Apple. As US stock markets open, investors will give their vote of confidence about the company's future. Yesterday, in a stunning and unexpected announcement, Apple CEO Steve Jobs took another medical leave, but this time with no set time period like the last one. "When, or perhaps that should be if ever, will Jobs return and what does it mean for Apple?" is question of the day. Later, after the stock market closes, Apple plans to announce holiday quarter earnings results.

"Strange they left it until a day that the stock markets are closed," observed Betanews reader Brian Butterworth. Commenter rrode74 made similar observation: I have zero doubt Apple announced this [yesterday] when US markets are closed. Apple manipulates even when Steve's health hangs in the balance. With the stock having climbed so high so fast, even with Steve it will hit a peak and come down. This could bring it down much faster." Apple opened at $327.05, or about 5 percent off the previous close.

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Roku's streaming set-top box has been an unequivocal success for the "over the top" content industry, bringing streaming video on demand to millions of homes. Today, Roku announced it has gotten its first "port" of a cable channel in its channel store: WealthTV.

When I say "port," I mean users who tune into the WealthTV channel on their Roku set top box will see the same thing that WealthTV is broadcasting to its cable partners.

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Microsoft announced the worldwide availability of its Dynamics CRM Online on Monday. The software is the cloud-based version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, and will be released globally both in on-premises and partner-hosted versions on February 28.

Dynamics CRM Online first launched in 2008 (after shedding its original "Live" moniker) to compete in the burgeoning business of cloud-based Customer Relationship Management software where Salesforce and Oracle also sought to establish dominance.

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