If you have big plans this Earth Day, it might feel like the day flew by when it ends. But look back in a few weeks, and it'll seem like it lasted for months. This is called the holiday paradox, and now we're beginning to understand it

Proving that Foxconn employees, even those associated with worker hiring, aren't necessarily privy to information on launch schedules for Apple products, Kotaku reports on an article from Maeil Business Newspaper offering new claims on an iPhone 5 launch date. The report notes that the newspaper contacted the chief of human resources at Foxconn's facility in Taiyuan, China to ask about hiring and iPhone plans, with the employee disclosing that the company has just received an order from Apple for the iPhone 5 ahead of an expected launch date of "around October".

Ahh, the sights and smells of Spring: new life blooming, baby animal being born (at least according to Animal Planet), the beginning of baseball ... if it weren't for all that frustrating egg-dying we have to do, it's be just lovely. Well, Egg-Bot's here to save the day! This little robot will dye and decorate all your Easter and holiday eggs for you.

Macotakara points to a news report [ Google translation ] from TV Tokyo's World Business Satellite in which a Foxconn recruiter claims that the company is hiring 18,000 new workers to support production of the iPhone 5. According to the recruiter, the device is planned to launch in June.

Romance is almost in the air (even, if you're as single as I am, though you might not care), and that means what every holiday seems to mean around the App Store: More sales! With all these great deals on apps, you can either enjoy one with your sweetie, or use them to distract you from your lonely, solo existence. Match-3-alike Ablazed is free right now, as the recently re-released Hand of Greed (which has been re-released a few times now right?). Sega has quite a few of its titles on sale for just 99 cents, including most of the Sonic titles, Streets of Rage, Golden Axe, Altered Beast and Gunstar Heroes.

Verizon Wireless Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo today participated in Citi's Global Entertainment, Media & Communications Conference, and as part of his presentation revealed some iPhone sales numbers for the carrier. As noted by StreetInsider.com , Shammo announced that Verizon sold 4.2 million iPhones during the fourth quarter of 2011, a quarter which saw the launch of the iPhone 4S

Apple early today updated its investor relations page to officially state that it will announce its earnings for the first fiscal quarter of 2012 (fourth calendar quarter of 2011) and host a conference call regarding the release on Tuesday, January 24. Apple’s conference call webcast discussing Q1 - 2012 financial results will begin at 2:00pm PT/5:00pm ET on Tuesday, January 24, 2012. Please note that comments made during this call may include forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties, and that actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements

AllThingsD reports that Apple is said to be planning a special event in New York for the end of this month. The event is reported to be for a "media-related announcement" and not for the iPad 3 or an Apple television set. According to sources close to the situation, Apple is planning an important — but not large-scale — event to be held in New York at the end of this month that will focus on a media-related announcement

Just before Christmas, shipping estimates for Apple's 12-core Mac Pro model increased to 1-3 weeks , and while that specific model does tend to occasionally see some extra lead time, the shipping delays were later noticed to have extended to nearly any customized Mac Pro order. Even as simple a customization as increasing the RAM on an "In Stock" standard Mac Pro configuration increases its shipping estimate to 1-3 weeks. Quad-core Mac Pro shipping estimate bumped to 1-3 weeks by upgrading RAM Increases in shipping estimates in Apple's online store can sometimes be indicative of an upcoming product refresh as the company draws down supplies ahead of launching the updated models

Safari running on Apple TV Over the past few days, iOS developers Steven Troughton-Smith and TheMudKip have managed to hack the 2nd generation Apple TV to run iOS apps at full resolution.