The iPad is one of the most disruptive technologies of the past 5 years. Along with the iPhone, it birthed a new era of touch computing that does away with the mouse and keyboard altogether. And yet the iPad's undisputed dominance of the blossoming tablet market may not last forever. In fact, the iPad is about to get some stiff competition -- finally.

To understand why the iPad dominates the tablet sector is not difficult: Not only was it the first of the new wave of touchscreen tablets, but it's also the most desirable in the eyes of consumers.

The iPhone had a few chinks in its armor early on: It was only available on one network in the U.S., leaving room for competitors to thrive on other networks. This Achilles Heel isn't such a problem for the iPad: Not only is it available on both AT&T and Verizon, but many consumers simply buy the Wi-Fi version, meaning the carrier issue isn't as relevant.

How do U.S. wireless carriers expect their investments in new 4G high-speed networks to pay off? This shift is about more than simply providing mobile data -- and it could even bring some long-overdue improvements to the humble telephone call.

At the Open Mobile Summit conference last week in San Francisco, a panel of carrier executives and wireless industry experts discussed the revenue-generating opportunities of offering 4G service.

This is a big concern for carriers, since their costly move to 3G networks a few years ago appears to have financially benefited other players in the mobile industry (such as Apple) more than the carriers themselves.

Apple has released iOS 5.0.1, an update to its mobile OS that fixes a series of issues that drained the iPhone's battery.

iOS 5.0.1 is the first update to Apple's iOS 5, which brought the notifications tray, increased performance and iCloud to the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.

In addition to fixing the iOS battery issue, 5.0.1. adds multitouch gestures to the original iPad, fixes iCloud bugs and improves voice recognition for Australian iPhone users. This is the first OS update available both via iTunes and over-the-air.

Not long after the release of the iPhone 4S, users began reporting that their phone's batteries were draining faster than before. This issue affected not just iPhone 4S users though, but anybody using iOS 5.

Apple eventually figured out that there were bugs in iOS 5 that were causing the battery drain and enlisted developers to help them find the bug.

Porn, violent images and other graphic pieces of content are spreading across Facebook in what appears to be a widespread and ugly spam attack.

Graham Cluley, a consultant with Web security firm Sophos, said Tuesday that "explicit and violent" images had been flooding the News Feeds of Facebook users for the past 24 hours or so.

Cluley wrote on the Sophos blog that the images have included hardcore porn; photoshopped images of celebrities, including teen pop star Justin Bieber, in sexual positions; "extreme violence;" and at least one image of an abused dog.

The researcher said it wasn't clear Tuesday how the images were spreading.

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