Research In Motion recalled about 1,000 BlackBerry PlayBooks on Monday due to a software glitch that prevents users from getting their tablets set up after purchase.

"RIM determined that approximately one thousand BlackBerry PlayBook tablets (16 GB) were shipped with an OS build that may result in the devices being unable to properly load software upon initial set-up," the Canadian company said in a statement.

"The majority of the affected devices are still in the distribution channel and haven't reached customers. RIM is working to replace the affected devices.

"In the small number of cases where a customer received a PlayBook that is unable to properly load software upon initial set-up, they can contact RIM for assistance."

RIM officially issued the recall on Monday morning after the website CrackBerry reported that the retail chain Staples sent out a company memo on Friday warning that about 900 faulty PlayBook units would be recalled.

On Saturday, Engadget published a list that it said contains the serial numbers of the affected tablets.

The PlayBook, which features a 7-inch touchscreen and connects to the Internet over Wi-Fi signals, was launched on April 19 and sells for $499.

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Photo: A Blackberry Playbook tablet at a Best Buy store in Chicago on April 19. Credit: Scott Olson / Getty Images

About one in five smart-phone owners use check-in services such as Foursquare, Gowalla or Facebook Places, according to the research firm ComScore.

In a study on the location-based social networking apps, ComScore found that about 16.7 million mobile subscribers in the U.S. used the check-in services on their phones in March 2011, representing about 17.6% of total smart-phone users.

ComScore also found that users of check-in services also displayed a "high propensity for mobile media usage," pulling up retail websites and shopping guides on their smart phones and tablet computers.

"Although still in their relative infancy, location-based mobile check-in services are seeing rather impressive adoption among smart-phone users," said Mark Donovan, ComScore's senior vice president of mobile. "The ability to interact with consumers on this micro-local level through special offers, deals and other incentives provides brands with the real-time opportunity to engage consumers through their mobile device."

Facebook Places is the most popular check-in service, said Sarah Radwanick, a ComScore spokeswoman.

"Facebook is the most popular social network and with people already using it for other things, it's really easy for them to check-in at a location," Radwanick said.

Of those who ComScore found to be using check-in services, 60% were between the ages of 18 and 34.

Almost half, 46.4% of check-in users had full-time jobs, which is slightly less than the percentage of total smart-phone users in the U.S. who are also employed full time -- 53.3%, ComScore said.

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Image: A screenshot of the Gowalla iPad app. Credit: Gowalla

Samsung has fit a version of its upcoming Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet with a high-resolution screen that will rival high-end screens such as Apple's retina displays.

The company is set to demonstrate the new tablet-computer display at the SID Display Week conference next week in Los Angeles, showing off a 2560 x 1600 resolution, with 300 dpi (dots per inch, which is a measure of how many pixel can fit in a square inch).

"The prototype demonstration marks the first time this resolution has been available for the tablet market in the popular 10.1-inch format, rivaling the highest resolution smart-phone displays now on the market," the consumer electronics giant said in a statement.

Samsung is releasing a Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet later this year, with a lower 1280 x 800 resolution and running on Google's Android Honeycomb operating system, but said the higher-resolution screen could make its way to a consumer tablet later this year.

When Apple unveiled its iPhone 4 last June, it touted what it called its retina display, which features 326 dpi. Any dpi of 300 or greater is said be so dense that pixels are indistinguishable from each other to the human eye at a distance of about 10 to 12 inches.

Many speculated that the iPad 2 would be outfitted with a retina display similar to that of the iPhone 4, but such a display was not included among the updates to the iPad in the second-generation model.

Samsung said its 300-dpi "PenTile" screen technology was developed in partnership with Nouvoyance, a display engineering firm based in Cupertino, Calif. The company also said the new screen will use about 40% less power than a traditional display of the same size.

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Image: Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. Credit: Samsung

The Queen of England, Elizabeth II, has bought an iPad 2 after being impressed with the Apple tablets belonging to Princes William and Harry.

The English newspaper the Daily Mail reported the Queen's purchase, which groups her with millions of commoners who also own the devices.

"The 85-year-old monarch is said to have been so impressed with the touch screen device that she immediately ordered staff to buy her one," the Daily Mail said. "She hopes to use the popular computer for long journeys around the country when she is inside the Royal car or train."

William and Harry "think it is hilarious," the report said. "They love the fact that their gran wants an iPad and think she's really cool."

This isn't Elizabeth's first Apple pick-up -- she's had a few iPods since those Apple gadgets were first released to retail, the Daily Mail said.

President Barack Obama gave her an iPod during a visit to London in 2009, the report said.

Apple has said that it sold more than 15 million of the first-generation iPads. The iPad 2, which is lighter and thinner and features front and rear cameras, was released in March.

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Photo: Queen Elizabeth II visits St George's School, on May 6 in Windsor, England. Credit: Arthur Edwards / WPA Pool / Getty Images

Google released an update to Google Earth on Thursday, optimizing the 3-D mapping software for use on Android tablets.

The update marks the first time that 3-D buildings in Google Earth have been available on any mobile device -- until Thursday, the 3-D views were only available on the desktop version of Earth, Google spokeswoman Nadja Blagojevic said in a statement.

The tablet-optimized version of Google Earth is available for tablets running Android Honeycomb, which is Google's mobile operating system built specifically for tablets.

"When we launched Google Earth in 2005, most of us were still using flip phones," Peter Birch, a Google product manager, wrote in a blog post. "At the time, the thought of being able to cart around 197 million square miles of Earth in your pocket was still a distant dream. Last year, that dream came to fruition for Android users when we released Google Earth for Android."

But although Google Earth for Android was a good fit for Android phones, Android tablets with larger touchscreens weren't taken care of as the company would have liked, Birch wrote.

Hence Thursday's tablet-minded update.

"We've added support for fully textured 3-D buildings, so your tour through the streets of Manhattan will look more realistic than ever," Birch said. "There's also a new action bar up top, enabling easier access to search, the option to 'fly to your location' and layers such as Places, Panoramio photos, Wikipedia and 3-D buildings."

Moving from a mobile phone to a tablet was akin to the transition from a regular movie theater screen to an Imax screen, he said.

"We took advantage of the larger screen size, including features like content pop-ups appearing within Earth view, so you can see more information without switching back and forth between pages," Birch said.

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Image: A screenshot of Google Earth from a tablet running the Android Honeycomb operating system. Credit: Google

Sony debuted its long-awaited entry into the tablet market on Tuesday morning in the form of not one, but two tablets running Google's Android Honeycomb OS.

The tablets haven't been given official names as of yet, but Sony said it had codenamed the two devices S1 and S2, and that the gadgets would make up the "Sony Tablet" line of products.

The S1 is a wedge of a tablet, with a tapering back and a 9.4-inch touch screen out front.

Sony said in a statement that the S1's "off-center of gravity design realizes stability and ease of grip." The S1 features front and rear cameras for shooting video and photos.

The S2 is a clam-shell device made up of two 5.5-inch touch screens with a hinge running through the middle of the device that allows it to close up, screen to screen.

The two displays which can be used together as one large screen to browse websites or apps, or the screens can perform separate functions, such as the bottom half acting as a keyboard for an email displayed up top.

Both of the tablets run on Google's Android Honeycomb software, will run Android apps and can connect to the Internet using both Wi-Fi and 3G or 4G cellular networks.

The devices will be able to tap into Sony's cloud-based services: Qriocity offering music and video, the PlayStation Network offering downloadable video games, and e-books from the Sony Reader Store.

The Sony Tablet line will also work with some Sony TVs and home speaker systems, allowing users to push video or music from the tablets to their home entertainment systems via infrared connections.

The tablets, which were first announced but not shown or detailed at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, are set to arrive in stores this fall. Prices weren't announced.

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Photos, from top: The new S1, left, and S2 tablets from Sony; a side view of the S1. Credit: Sony

A growing group of state, federal and foreign government officials is asking Apple Inc. to explain why its iPhone and iPad mobile devices track users’ whereabouts.

Illinois Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan on Monday requested meetings with both Apple and Google Inc, which also records users’ location data through its Android smartphones. Last week, two researchers drew attention to a data file embedded on Apple devices that apparently keeps tabs on years' worth of user location data.

“I want to know whether consumers have been informed of what is being tracked and stored by Apple and Google and whether those tracking and storage features can be disabled,” Madigan said in a statement.

Madigan’s letter followed requests to Apple last week by Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) and Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.). Privacy regulators in France, Italy and South Korea are also looking into the matter, according to news reports.

Apple has not responded to requests for comment on the tracking, which received wide attention last week.

Apple told lawmakers last year that its mobile devices send batches of user location data back to the company twice a day. The data do “not reveal personal information about any customer,” Apple said at the time.

Google too has acknowledged it collects location data from users’ mobile devices in order to be able to provide and improve applications like Google Maps, which helps users navigate city streets.

The company said in a statement that users are notified before their location data are collected and are offered the chance to turn off the function. Like Apple, Google has said that the location data it collects are stored anonymously.

Apple has also said that users can stop tracking features by turning off all location-based services on their phones, but a report in the Wall Street Journal last weekend contended that the data were collected even after those services were disabled.

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Image: A user who traveled in Austria and Germany posted a graphical representation of location data from his iPhone. Credit: alfaltendrof / Flickr

Best Buy has begun taking in-store pre-orders for the Wi-Fi version of the HTC Flyer tablet, which is set to launch this spring.

The Wi-Fi-only Flyer will sell for $499 at Best Buy and include 16GB of memory.

A Flyer model that can run on 3G and 4G networks will be released later this year as well, though HTC hasn't given an official release date for either version of the 7-inch touch-screen tablet.

Both the Wi-Fi-only and the 3G-4G Flyers will feature a front-facing 1.3-megapixel camera for video chatting and a rear-facing 5-megapixel camera for photos and video.

The Flyer's screen will not only use touch input, but also be compatible with a "digital pen" stylus, which will be included with the tablet.

Like many tablets on the market, the Flyer will run on Google's Android operating system. Out of the box, the Flyer will run on Android Gingerbread, a version of Android built for smartphones. But the Flyer will be upgradeable to Android Honeycomb, which is Google's first OS designed specifically for tablet use.

The tablet will support Adobe Flash, as is becoming a standard of Android tablets, and run on a 1.5-GHz Qualcomm processor. The 3G-4G flyer, whose price HTC hasn't yet announced, will feature 32 GB of memory.

HTC seems to be aiming for a higher-end feel with its Flyer: It has an aluminum body, a 7-inch touch screen and a quick 1.5-GHz Snapdragon processor from Qualcomm.

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Image: The HTC Flyer tablet with its digital pen. Credit: HTC

Barnes & Noble's Nook Color gained a few new features on Monday that push the device more into the classification of a tablet computer and not simply another e-reader.

Among the additions is a store for buying applications, which Barnes & Noble is calling Nook Apps; apps for email, calendars and contacts; support for Adobe Air and Flash; and a new Nook social networking app.

One thing that isn't changing, however, is the price -- $249 for the 7-inch touch-screen device, which features 8GB of storage.

The updates come as the Nook Color is being switched over to a newer version of Google's Android operating system, called Froyo. Unlike the Honeycomb software, which was designed specifically to run on tablets, Froyo was designed for phones but is on many tablets, such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab.

But while the Nook Color can now run Android Froyo, it won't be running all Android apps. Instead, Barnes & Noble is asking developers to optimize their apps for the Nook Color and submit them through the Nook Apps store, rather than simply allowing users to download apps from the Android Market.

As of Monday, 125 apps were available in the Nook Apps store, including Angry Birds, one of the more popular games available on tablets and smartphones nowadays. Other apps include Pandora Internet radio, the game Uno, the cooking app Epicurious and the as-seen-on-iPad news app Pulse.

Barnes & Noble is also taking a stab at building its own social network among Nook users called Nook Friends.

Using a Nook Friends app, Nook users can see what their friends are reading, read reviews of books, loan books to each other, share quotes from a book, list their progress in a book and recommend a title to a buddy.

In another nod to social networking, Nook users can now "like" titles in the device's bookstore app, with the liking showing up on a person's Facebook page.

The Nook Color updates, which are free, are being pushed to users via Wi-Fi beginning this week or available for manual download at www.nookcolor.com/update.

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Image: Angry Birds running on a Nook Color tablet from Barnes & Noble. Credit: Barnes & Noble

T-Mobile and LG are looking to 3-D to push their tablet, the G-Slate, above the increasingly crowded field of pads running Google's Android operating system.

Whether the bet on 3-D will work has yet to be seen -- the G-Slate hit T-Mobile stores for the first time Wednesday. The 3-D isn't what consumers might expect, such as the theater-style 3-D glasses or the glasses-free 3-D of the Nintendo DSi handheld gaming system.

The G-Slate harks back to the retro 3-D of the 1950s and Mad magazine inserts -- the old-school red and blue glasses -- to pull off the effect, which uses dual 5-megapixel cameras on the back of the tablet to capture the depth-adding photos and video.

One pair of the two-color spectacles is included in the G-Slate's box. A front-facing camera is included on the G-Slate as well, for video chats.

Android Honeycomb, Google's first operating system designed specifically for tablets, powers the G-Slate, as it does the Motorola Xoom and the upcoming Acer Iconia Tab A500.

However, the G-Slate does run on 4G mobile networks straight out of the box -- a feature that the 4G-capable Xoom lacks. The Xoom relies on 3G or Wi-Fi to connect to the Internet, and users will have to mail their devices in to Motorola to get the 4G option added, although at no extra charge.

The Acer Iconia Tab A500, which comes out April 24 at a price of $450, will run only on Wi-Fi networks.

The G-Slate is also going down a slightly different path with its 8.9-inch screen, which is smaller than 10.1-inch displays on the Xoom and Iconia Tab A500.

Apple's iPad 2, currently the most popular tablet on the market, has a 9.7-inch touch screen and is available in W-Fi-only or 3G and Wi-Fi models.

The G-Slate, which comes with 32 gigabytes of memory, undercuts the Xoom on price, selling for $529.99, after a $100 mail-in rebate and a two-year 4G data plan. Without the T-Mobile contract, the G-Slate sells for $749.99.

The 3G/4G Xoom, which has a 32-gigabyte hard drive, sells for $599 with a two-year data plan from Verizon or $799 without.

A 32-gigabyte, 3G iPad 2 retails for $729, with no discount for a data plan from AT&T or Verizon.

So far, T-Mobile and LG have announced no plans to offer a Wi-Fi-only G-Slate.

LG's bet on 3-D isn't limited to the G-Slate. Aside from its line of 3-D HDTVs, the South Korean consumer electronics company is also releasing the LG Thrill 4G smartphone in the next few months.

The Thrill 4G will feature a glasses-free 3-D display and, as the name hints at, run on 4G wireless networks (this time through AT&T). Like the G-Slate, two 5-megapixel cameras on the back will allow the phone to shoot 3-D videos and photos.

The red and blue look, however, will be absent -- a style seemingly saved for the G-Slate for now.

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Photo: Technology reporter Nathan Olivarez-Giles demonstrates the red and blue 3-D on the T-Mobile G-Slate tablet. Credit: Armand Emamdjomeh / Los Angeles Times