Have you ever thought about just how much stuff is on display in an Apple store? Those Macbook, iPhones, and iPods are probably worth hundred of thousands of dollars. Apple products aren’t cheap, after all.

Maybe that’s why these crooks targeted an Apple store in Marlton, New Jersey for a seemingly well-plan heist. The result was that five men were able to nab 23 Macbook Pros, 14 iPhones, and 9 iPod Touches. The kicker? The thieves were able to steal all of this stuff in exactly 31 seconds.

Video obtained by WPVI-TV highlights the tremendous efficiency of the operation. They quickly broke the glass and grabbed a range of Apple gadgets in speedy fashion, all while threatening a security guard with a possible firearm. Their faces were also covered to elude identification by the security tape. These are not your ordinary crooks.

We’ve included the shocking video below. Let us know your thoughts about this crime in the comments:

Tags: apple, Apple Store, iphone, robbery

As you no doubt have heard, Twitter’s traffic is growing at an incredible rate – the most recent numbers we’ve seen show that the microblogging service now attracts nearly 14 million visitors in the US alone (Nielsen Online, March ’08).

But how many of those visitors – many of whom are likely checking out Twitter after hearing about it on TV – are actually signing up for the service? eMarketer takes a stab at that question today, and estimates that there are currently about 6 million registered Twitter users, which equates to around 3.8 percent of people on the Internet.

The research firm further projects that those numbers will double by the end of this year to 12.1 million users, and gap up another 50 percent in 2010 to bring the service to a total audience of roughly 18 million registered users.
 

Now, while that’s impressive growth by almost anyone’s standards, it still makes the site sound fairly tiny compared to Facebook, who now has more than 200 million active users, or even MySpace who still has user counts in the high 8 if not 9 digits.

However, the passive Twitter audience – people who don’t actually tweet, hence accounting for the difference between traffic and users – will likely continue to grow, much in the way that blogs have over the past decade. People will visit the Twitter profiles of friends, family, or their favorite celebrities, and access that information in different ways, whether it’s through clients or portals that attempt to aggregate it.

With that in mind, it actually might be best to start thinking of Twitter as the new Blogger – the startup that put Evan Williams on the map in the first place – as opposed to the new Facebook.

Have no doubt: Twitter has gone mainstream. And Ashton Kutcher has a million followers.

At the time of writing, Kutcher is still live streaming (video below) his successful attempt to reach 1 million Twitter followers before CNN, which Kutcher reports has been clamouring for new followers on its live news ticker. On Friday morning he goes on Oprah, who will post her first @oprah Tweet on live TV, reaching millions of US households.

It’s hard to define, exactly, when Twitter entered the public conscience: perhaps the Hudson plane crash, where the first real photo of the event appeared on Twitter before reaching the mainstream outlets. Perhaps it was earlier, in September 2008, when we noted that CNN was actively promoting its Twitter feed on air. Perhaps it was March 2009, when Twitter co-founder Evan Williams was interviewed by Charlie Rose…or perhaps fellow co-founder Biz Stone’s hilarious Stephen Colbert interview was the moment Twitter tipped. Or maybe all those declarations of a breakthrough were premature: perhaps a starring role on Oprah, hours from now, is the true mark of mainstream success.

And yet this assumes that social media needs mainstream media to justify its existence: that without its blessing social media is not confirmed. But mainstream media is increasingly becoming an echo of social media, allowing YouTube’s masses to define what matters (Susan Boyle, the Domino’s Pizza scandal) and mirroring that public sentiment.

For now, Twitter needs mainstream media more than mainstream media needs Twitter. But Ashton has an audience of 1 million at his fingertips: how much longer will the talent need its mainstream middleman?

rossboardman posted a photo: