The rapid growth of smartphones and electronic tablets is making the Internet the destination of choice for consumers looking for news, a report released Monday said.

Local, network and cable television news, newspapers, radio and magazines all lost audience last year, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a research organization that evaluates and studies the performance of the press. News consumption online increased 17 percent last year from the year before, the project said in its eighth annual State of the News Media survey.

The Vatican will unveil the latest installment in its social media transformation next week — a Facebook page dedicated to the upcoming beatification of Pope John Paul II, officials said.

The site, which will link to video highlights of John Paul's 27-year papacy, is designed to promote the May 1 beatification. But it may well continue beyond given the global and enduring interest in the late pontiff, Vatican officials told The Associated Press.

Searching the Internet on sites such as Google and Twitter and their local variants has become more effective in finding loved ones than sifting through wreckage following Japan's devastating tsunami.

As the floodwaters subsided Saturday, worried friends and relatives leapt onto their computers to find information about people who had not been heard from since the mighty wave crashed ashore.

Apple's new iPad goes on sale across the United States on Friday as the gadget-maker seeks to stay a step ahead of its rivals in the booming market for sleek touchscreen tablet computers.

Apple was to begin taking online orders for the iPad 2, which was unveiled by chief executive Steve Jobs last week, at 4:00 am (0900 GMT), but as of 5:00 am it did not yet appear to be available.

Internet search giant Google is warning users on its search page about the tsunami danger across the Pacific following the earthquake off the coast of Japan.

Google has in the past set up a crisis response service following quakes in New Zealand and Chile but so far has apparently begun its response with an alert underneath the search bar of its main www.google.com page.

Google-owned YouTube said Thursday it plans to increase its staff by nearly a third in what will be the online video-sharing star's biggest hiring year.

"2010 was a bang-up year," Jeff Ferguson of YouTube human resources team said in a blog post. "And in 2011, we plan to grow the number of people working at YouTube by more than 30 percent!"

The new iPad model hitting stores Friday comes with several improvements over the original version but the same price tag, hobbling efforts by rivals at breaking Apple Inc.'s hold on the emerging market for tablet computers.

Competitors such as Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. can't seem to match the iPad's starting price of $499. Tablets that are comparable to the iPad in features cost hundreds of dollars more, while cheaper tablets are inferior to the iPad in quality.

South Korea's electronics giants are engaged in rare public mudslinging about whose 3-D television technology is better, as they battle for a greater share of a potentially huge global market.

Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics, respectively the world's largest and second largest flat-screen TV makers, each claim their technology offers more vivid images and wider viewing angles.

Eden Sawczenko used to recoil when other little girls held her hand and turned stiff when they hugged her. This year, the 4-year-old autistic girl began playing with a robot that teaches about emotions and physical contact — and now she hugs everyone.

"She's a lot more affectionate with her friends now and will even initiate the embrace," said Claire Sawczenko, Eden's mother.

Developed nations have become "dangerously over-reliant" on satellite navigation systems such as GPS, which could break down or be attacked with devastating results, British engineers said Tuesday.

The Royal Academy of Engineering said the application of the technology was now so broad -- from car sat-navs to the time stamp on financial transactions -- that without adequate backup, any disruption could have a major impact.