With a move that is set to bring the news-feeds of millions of Facebook fans to inboxes around the world, Microsoft announced the integration of Outlook, Facebook and Windows Live Messenger.

The development last year of the Outlook Social Connector plug-in gave users the ability to sync social networking feeds to Outlook contacts.  The LinkedIn integration worked well but the new plug-in will be a huge step up, bringing Windows Live Messenger, as well as Facebook, to your Outlook inbox.

Don’t have the latest version of Outlook on your system?  Don’t worry, Microsoft is also expected to release the new plug-in for Outlook 2003 and 2007.

What can you expect from the integration?  Well, when you’re reading an email, not only will it capture the Facebook profile photo to allow you to see the person behind the name, you will also see uploaded photos, wall posts, status updates and other actions.  Knowing when one of your clients’ has had an important milestone in their life, marriage, new child, or even just going on a vacation could give you the advantage over your competitors.

With the combination of social networking plug-ins such as LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook and Windows Live Messenger, you will be able to gain detailed knowledge of your contacts and clients interests and activities.

Updates in real-time are also to be a feature with the additional release today of an inclusion to the Social Connector plug-in.  Any Facebook status updates from your contacts will also be sent to your inbox, removing the need for you to manually refresh within Outlook.

The plug-in is expected to have its limitations however, with the exception of receiving friend requests, Outlook will only be able to grab information from Facebook.  It is not expected that you will be able to update your status or ‘like’ posts through Outlook at this stage.

It is a ‘given’ these days that social network data is of growing importance to the business community,  knowledge of what your clients and competitors are doing can give you the edge you need to succeed, although privacy will always remain a big issue.

The Outlook integration will only post feeds from email accounts linked to Facebook.  The user will get the choice on what email accounts to link and if your Facebook account isn’t linked to your business email the data feed will not be posted.

For more information on the new plug-in Microsoft has released a short video – Facebook and Windows Live for Outlook Social Connector

You can also download the plugin from the Microsoft Download Center.

Senior Vice President of Microsoft’s Mobile Communications devision, Andy Lees provided some updates and showed features of the new Windows Phone 7 mobile operating system during an event held last week in Washington DC.

With the current focus on connected entertainment, the main feature in regard to this is the smooth integration of applications no matter what machine or device you happen to be using during the day. For example, connected entertainment from Microsoft will span Windows 7 PCs, the Xbox 360 with Kinect and Windows Phone 7, linked with services such as Xbox Live for games, Zune for music and video, Windows Live for email, calendars, pictures, services and Bing the search engine.

Many of Microsoft’s new consumer technologies are featured on Windows Phone 7. It consolidates many common tasks and services by the use of shared hubs that allow you to save time and effort by using the same apps rather than moving in and out of different ones.

The Bing search engine comes built in, so searching is only a button away just about wherever you are on the Windows Phone 7.

The Music and Videos hub uses Zune and it will connect with the Zune software via Wi-Fi access to the PC to play and manage music, video, high-resolution photos and other multimedia files. Likewise, Xbox Live is featured on the Games hub and Windows Live integration can be found in the People and Pictures hubs.

The Office hub includes programs such as OneNote, Word, PowerPoint and even SharePoint server integration. The phone will also combine with Web based applications such as Windows Live, Gmail and others, plus hosted email Exchange accounts. The new Windows Phone Live companion site was discussed for the first time and features a central point for users to view published pictures, their Windows Live information, swap OneNote files and access data shared between the phone and the Net. The free site will also boast 25GB of SkyDrive and the Find My Phone service, created to enable users to find and manage a lost phone with map, ring, lock and erase capabilities directly from the PC . Initial availability will see Windows Phone 7 support 5 languages; English, French, Italian, German and Spanish.

The Windows Phone Marketplace will support application buying and selling in 17 countries; Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, UK and United States.

Introduction & Positioning

It is a little early to judge Sony Ericsson’s attempt to reach a larger market by creating smartphones running on different operating systems. However, this approach produced a larger range of devices than Sony Ericsson used to have in the past and has spawned some interesting phones.

No matter how hard I tried, I could not write this article without often referring to the other two X-series devices running Google’s Android OS – X10 and X10 mini, so let me apologise for this from the beginning.

Today I’ll take a look at the “professional” version of the X10 mini. This is one of the two “mini” versions that complete the series along with their big brother – the X10. Hence the name – X10 mini pro, which some may find a little… boring to say frankly. The only notable differences between X10 mini and X10 mini pro are the size and usability of the keyboard. So, let’s begin.

Design, Size & Controls

Sony Ericsson is trying to make the most out of the design used in X10. And when you look at X10 mini pro, you are likely to get mixed impressions. The design itself remains simple and clean, which in some people’s eyes is seen as an advantage, however the appearance of the sliding QWERTY keyboard has altered the device’s size for the worse. Sony Ericsson ended up with a device with small length and width that looks and feels a little…. chubby!

Similarly to X10 and X10 mini, this device has three functional keys on the front panel. Along with the earphone and the ambient light sensor these keys complete the… let’s call it ‘simplistic’ front side.

Power button and a 3.5mm audio jack are placed on the top side the phone. The audio jack is combined with the interface used in Sony Ericsson’s headsets to provide control for the device’s music functions.

The microphone and a loop for the wrist band are located on the bottom side.

On the right side you will find the volume controls and the camera button. Both these buttons are well placed and easy to use. On the left side we see the microUSB slot that is used for both charging the device and connecting it to a computer with the provided cable. However this microUSB slot is poorly placed to say the least. It sticks out from the phone casing and can be felt by your hand when you hold the device, no matter which hand you hold it with.

And lastly, on the back of the device along with Sony Ericsson’s logo and the XPERIA sign, we have the camera, LED flash and the phone’s single speaker.

Display

The phone has a 240×320 pixel TFT capacitive screen. Even though it does have a small diagonal (due to the small size of the phone), its quality is far from perfect and individual pixels are clearly visible. Apart from the resolution, there is another problem caused by the display. And I think that this is the first major disadvantage of the phone. X10 mini pro runs on Android 1.6, which supports only a limited number of colors. Colors look “washed out” and that, combined with a mediocre brightness, makes the screen feel much cheaper than the device’s price and market position suggest.

Keypad

Here is where things turn for the better – this is the Mini Pro’s main advantage over the X10 mini and in some respect even to its big brother X10 itself, since it does not have a keyboard either. With the sliding keyboard closed, when you hold the device in your hand you can’t avoid feeling awkward and trying to see what’s wrong. However, as soon as you slide the keyboard open and hold the phone with both hands you realize the difference. The keyboard itself is slightly small and keys seem squeezed together. Still, both the actual usability and the feeling from using the keyboard are exactly the opposite since it is much easier than some might think to enter text with it and the feedback from pressing the keys is more than just good. It almost gives you the impression of a much more expensive device.

Getting used to the small size of the keyboard will not take more than a couple of days and after that you will find that entering text and using the phone with the keyboard open is more than just another option, it’s more the only logical option for using this device.

Battery

The phone uses BST-38 battery with a nominal capacity of just 970 mAh. However, due to the small screen and impressive work done on power consumption, the battery manages to keep the phone running for a couple of days when you use most of its features and capabilities.

Memory & Memory Cards

X10 Mini Pro comes with a little more than 150 MB of internal memory available to the user, as pre-installed applications take up some space.

The phone supports microSD cards and does have a “hot-swapping” ability since the card is placed under the battery cover but thankfully not under the battery itself.

Connectivity

The device supports all of the ‘usual’ connectivity standards:

Bluetooth. All the profiles needed to use the device in almost every possible mode are supported here, except one. Although their big brother the X10 can send and receive files over Bluetooth, this functionality is not available in X10 Mini Pro and X10 Mini.

Wi-Fi. The module supports b/g networks and manages to connect to them easily and stay connected without problems.

USB. The microUSB slot allows the device to be connected to a computer to transfer files through the mass-storage mode or to be synchronized as a normal Android phone. It supports USB 2.0 and the transfer speeds reach up to 4 Mbp/s, which is quite impressive for a device of this kind.

Camera

The phone comes with a 5 MPx camera which is a bit of a mishmash. Let me explain what I mean.

Most, if not all, Android phones are not even close to capturing more than just decent pictures if that. Sony Ericsson’s phones tend to break this “tradition” and all of the X10 devices produce pictures that on one hand are better than most Android phones, on the other hand though, they lag behind the solutions offered by Sony Ericsson itself in other, even lower price segments.

The camera in X10 Mini Pro produces acceptable, even good pictures in normal daylight, however the same cannot be said for the images taken in low light conditions or even indoors.

The camera interface does its best to keep the “mixed” impression we mentioned above. It makes the most out of the clever user interface that SE created to make this small screen as usable as possible. Four buttons are located in each corner of the screen and each one of them performs one of the most commonly used camera operations. This applies to both the still image and video modes with the options changing accordingly. However (and here is where the strange part begins), if you need to change any other setting related to the camera, there is no way to do that from the camera application itself. You will have to exit the camera mode, go to the phone Settings menu and there choose the Application Settings.

While personally I cannot find a good reason for this kind of split in available settings, I suppose that Sony Ericsson has its reasons.

There is ONLY one available resolution for still images, which I suppose is the maximum one. In video mode you can select the video resolution to be either 640×480 pixels or smaller and adjust the length in order to send the videos via MMS.

Now that I think of it, all of these shortcomings and strange options destroy the impression made by the camera as a whole.

Entertainment & Social Networking

Apart from the camera, the phone offers all the usual entertainment options of music, video and games with the first two offered in a slightly modified Sony Ericsson version in comparison to the original Android one.

And, of course, there is the Timescape interface. This interface is aimed to combine all communication and social networking features in one place.

Let us start with music and video playback features.

The music player is a redesigned version of the MediaScape interface available on X10, which as a whole is not and will not be made available for both of its “smaller” brothers.

The application itself cannot be found anywhere in the phone menu and can only be launched from the corresponding option on the stand-by screen, which some may find a bit awkward.

Describing the music player as poorly designed would honestly be an understatement. Apart from the fast forward, rewind and, of course, the play/pause keys that appear on the screen, there are few other options. There is an option to display a list of all available tracks and another option to categorise tracks using Smart Playlists – just a clever name for Newly Added, Most Played, Never Played and In Alphabetical Order.

There are no Shuffle or Repeat options to be found anywhere and, most importantly, there is no equalizer of any kind available, not even as a separate application as it is in Sony Ericsson’s S60 5th edition based devices.

So… the music must not be an important feature for Sony Ericsson or they think that it’s not a key feature for the potential buyers of the phone. I can only guess about the first part, but as far as the second goes, I am sure that it is far from being true.

After seeing the X10 Mini Pro’s music player or, I suppose, after reading about it, no one would expect anything radically different from the video playback. And rightly so – there are no surprises there. The video player is nothing more than a list of videos available in the phone memory, both internal and external (memory card), since they are displayed together. Upon user selecting a video to play, the phone starts displaying it and offers just a play/pause button and a progress bar under it. There are no controls to move to the next or previous video.

While playing with the TimeScape UI I found that at least this part of the phone is more or less the same as the X10 and provides all of the options available there.

Unfortunately the phone’s small screen size does not make navigation through Timescape an enjoyable experience.

All of the current events are displayed as small windows, compared to the big ones in X10 and most of the key features are available through the four buttons placed on each corner of the screen.

The options are as follows: you can choose which of the available communications, events and social networking features you want to be displayed in the application and you can choose between Facebook and Twitter, messages and missed calls (not received ones though).

The second option gives you access to a list of all the e-mail addresses available on your Google account and the phone’s address book. The third option lets you update your status on Facebook or on Twitter or both and the fourth and the last one is simply an option to manually perform an update of the application’s status.

All of these features or applications (you can call them any way you want) are far from perfect and give you the impression of both a “pared” down version of the applications found on X10.

Using the multimedia features on this device is more work than fun.

Platform & Performance

The phone is built on Qualcomm’s MSM 7227 platform and makes use of all the chipset’s abilities ranging from GPS receiver to the embedded light sensor.

Aided by the screens small resolution and quite good work that Sony Ericsson has done optimizing the OS, the phone is fast, with no noticeable freeze-ups and slowdowns.

However it is a shame that Android 1.6 cannot make use of the chipset’s embedded video decoder and some other features that are used in competing solutions based on the same platform, but running the 2.1 version.

The phone has 128 MB of RAM memory of which almost 50 MB are available to the user to run applications.

Navigation

Since there is a built-in GPS receiver, accompanied by the A-GPS function, the phone is expected to have the ability to find its location and guide you.

Sony Ericsson keeps offering Navipilot as an extra application for navigation. The phone comes with a trial version of the application installed and you will have to pay for it after the trial period is over.

I must say that this option is far from perfect and lags behind the solutions offered by others and especially Nokia’s free to all policy in S60 devices.

All of that along with the phone’s small screen does not make it even a compromise as a navigation solution and probably you will find yourself forgetting about this feature after a couple of weeks.

There is always an option to download special applications from Android Market to make use of GPS for measuring your speed for example, but I highly doubt that this can replace the core functionality of a GPS system as a navigation solution.

Software

While I’ve made some references to the software, let us try to put it all together here.

The phone runs on the Android Operating System, version 1.6.

More than a year ago this version was anticipated by almost everyone and thought to be the best version available. A year has passed and many things have changed. The latest version available at the moment is the 2.2.

Some parts of the 1.6 version were left unfinished by Google, and while some of them can be corrected by a device manufacturer, others cannot. The lack of the necessary Bluetooth profile for File Exchange is the one that could be changed by Sony Ericson, but, unfortunately, it was not.

The limited color palette used by the system cannot be changed or bypassed.

On top of that, some key functions are missing and the number of new applications for this version on the Android Market is decreasing. And this situation is about to get worse since some of the devices that come with version 2.2 are getting very popular and that makes most developers devoting their time and efforts to this version.

I must admit that this situation is mostly Google’s fault and not Sony Ericsson’s. This is because Google releases new versions quite fast, leaving phone manufacturers with a hard decision to either release new devices based on the latest version of the operating system, or to develop an update to the newer version for existing devices, or even both.

In my opinion Sony Ericsson’s fault lies only in the fact that the company does not have the resources to support more than one operating system. And until they are continuing to waste time without deciding which system to support, this situation will continue to exist.

The company is trying to make Timescape and Mediascape run without problems on version 2.1 in order to be able to provide it as an update for the devices that will be released in Q3 or even at the start of Q4 of 2010. This is the time when every other manufacturer will either be updating their devices to version 2.2 or designing and announcing, if not releasing, new devices based on this version.

As it stands today, all three devices from Sony Ericsson based on this OS are lagging behind and the company’s effort to hide this fact behind the heavily advertised Mediascape and Timescape UI is failing in the eyes of the consumers. This holds true for the X10 itself more than fot its two little brothers since it is sold in a higher price bracket, where it has to compete with many other offers by HTC and Samsung in particular . As for the X10 mini and the X10 mini pro, their lower price and their positioning in general makes them look less outdated.

Conclusion

Qualcomm eh… sorry, Sony Ericsson taught us to expect devices with excellent reception, good speech quality and the X10 mini pro is no exception.

The phone vibration function is powerful enough, perhaps a little too powerful and the speaker ringing volume is loud without many distortions.

In general the device manages to leave a positive impression, mostly due to its small size and straightforward design, even though it is not flawless. Based on an outdated version of a popular and pretty stable operating system, it manages to stay afloat, but barely, thanks to some optimisations made by Sony Ericsson that, although not capable to eliminate the shortcomings, made it at least acceptable and more than just usable.

If only it had made it to the market along with its brothers a little sooner the situation would have been radically different and favorable for this device.

Nowadays it is nothing more than an average solution making as much use of some distinct features as possible to justify both its existence and price.

I have my doubts about its success on the market since there are way too many competing solutions and the sliding keyboard by itself cannot differentiate it from most of them.

A simultaneous launch of all the three devices would have saved the situation a little in the way that Sony Ericsson would offer more than one choice to someone willing to stay loyal to this phone manufacturer. Now, most of these people will go for the already available X10 and try to forget it’s disadvantages both in hardware and software, while some of them will naturally and logically choose a phone from either HTC or Samsung if they are Android fans first of all things. This leaves a few potential buyers for the X10 mini and even less for the X10 mini pro.

[images via Sony Ericsson]

Google seems to be very keen to make Android the most popular mobile operating system. Few days ago the company announced new revolutionary service, which allows all users to easily create applications for their phones. Basically users will not require any programming skills or knowledge to create an application, and anybody will be able to do it.  This service is called Google App Inventor and is available for users to register their interest. The official website says that users will be given access to the service in the coming weeks. Users will be able to create and download applications to their phones, but not to other Android users at this stage.

In the application’s main window you see building blocks, which are used to create applications. You will get access to various settings, access to all phone functions, such as SMS messaging, Twitter, motion sensor, etc. Basically we are getting a powerful tool to freely express our individuality. After playing with the App Inventor for a whole evening, I can say that this application can and will change our perception about writing applications as a whole. Google is giving  a very powerful tool to non-programmers, and I am sure that many of them will use it to show off their creative potential.

No other company on the market offers such a tool to its users and they are not even close to be able to offer such functionality. I strongly recommend you to try this application – it is a revolution, which should not be underestimated. Latest figures show that Android Market has around 70 000 applications, and that the next milestone barrier of 100 000 applications will be reached in the near future. I will not even try  to guess the number of applications that will flood the market, when the App Inventor goes out of the beta stage. It will be stunning. For the first time the company turned not to the developers, but to all users, and provided a tool for creating programs for their phones. This is a truly amasing offering. Below is a video, which explains the process of creating a simple ‘meow-meow’ application. Personally, I am delighted of the number of opportunities that App Inventor opens for Android.

Some Facebook users believe that the company will add a pricing structure to membership in the future despite the fact that the Facebook spokesman Larry Yu stated last month that they have absolutely no plans to charge for the basic service of using the social network.

With this fact in mind, Facebook has modified their sign up form to fight the ongoing speculations that it will charge its users for access.  The front page account sign up form will now read, “It’s free (and always will be)”.

While you may think that those at the company are more concerned with other matters such as privacy, credit implementation and security, the changes to the front page sign up show how strongly Facebook sees the opinions and concerns of its users.

With many users creating their own cyber home on Facebook, uploading photos, activities and keeping in touch easily with far flung friends and family, it’s easy to see why they react strongly to the ‘pay or lose it’ concept.  It is undeniable that Facebook and the social networking sites like it, have become an essential tool for business success and communication.

Over the years we have seen many sorts of anti-payment Facebook groups popping up, calling for boycotts of the site and to cancel accounts if they charge for membership and usage.  Many have died a natural death, but there hardly seems to be a month goes by before you receive yet another panicked join request for a group claiming that Facebook is going to charge you for usage.  Usually in chain letter style, these requests will ask you to pass it on to all of your contacts.

The company clarifies their stance on their page by stating, among other issues, “We are not going to start charging you to use Facebook. So the next time you see a chain letter, chain wall post, or chain anything, report it to our User Operations team, and tell all your friends to ignore it. We could make a joke here about passing this entry on to ten of your friends, but that’s not cool.”

Zynga, the social games giant that includes Farmville, was hit by the same type of trouble back in February when rumors swept the Internet that it would be changing from free to a subscription based entity at the end of March.  The game developer quickly squashed the rumors.



Galaxy S performs much better and smoother compared to the Desire, however there are rumors that Quake 2 might need to be optimised to run properly on Android 2.2… In any event, congratulations to Galaxy S.

Initial explanations received from Apple over the reception problems, stated that the issue with the signal was caused by gripping the iPhone in a particular way, and dubbed the ‘death grip’.  Some users have indicated that iPhone 4 can drop 4 or 5 signal bars when tightly held in a way which covers the black strip in the lower left corner of the metal band.

It then went on to say that upon further investigation it was found that the formula used to calculate signal strength was ‘totally wrong’, displaying 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength.

The ‘fix’ for this was to be a software release within a few weeks that would also incorporate updates for the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G as they use the same formula to calculate signal strength.

Leading consumer magazine, Consumer Reports, tested three iPhone 4s, connecting them to a cell phone emulator inside a radio frequency isolation chamber, which cuts off all outside radio signals.
They also tested an iPhone 3GS and Palm Pre and neither were found to have reception issues, questioning Apples honesty over the issue.

Consumer Reports stated on their blog post, “When your finger or hand touches a spot on the phone’s lower left side—an easy thing, especially for lefties—the signal can significantly degrade enough to cause you to lose your connection altogether if you’re in an area with a weak signal.

Due to this problem, we can’t recommend the iPhone 4.”

Advice for getting around the problem includes putting duct tape or other non conductive tape over the antenna gap which will apparently solve the issue.

With many in the PR world predicting the same nightmare for Apple that Toyota has recently undergone, opinion seems to be that the sooner the recall is issued the better for the company.  It seems of critical importance now that the iPhone brand image is protected and for the company to respond with a more meaningful fix to the situation than a software patch.

At this time there has been no comment from Apple on the recent test findings, but many feel that further delays will have a devastating effect on their reputation.

Distimo is a company that specializes on mobile application market analysis for different platforms. They have recently released interesting statistics on the proportion of free vs. paid applications for the Android Market, AppStore, OVI Store and others. They have also listed top 10 most popular free and paid applications for Android. The results are quite interesting, and in the case of our beloved “Market” entertaining.

First let’s look at the free vs. paid application comparison chart.

It is easy to notice in the above chart that the percentage of free programs on the Android Market is higher than on any other mobile platform – 57%. By the way, not so long ago this value was closer to 50%, so it slightly increased over time. This statistics has its positive and negative aspects. The good news is that free software for Android is thriving. Bad news – the quality of most programs is far from being “good”, many applications just copy each other.

Two interesting tables below are showing us the most popular programs for Android. As you can see, Google Maps and Pandora Radio are the most popular free apps, while Beautiful Widgets is the top paid application.

[via Distimo]

[Android Market image via resnickscity.wordpress.com]

YouTube is one of the major services which Google is thinking about overhauling for display advertising.  The possibility of having the service with greater effectiveness towards display advertisements that catch the eye will be a difficult task when competing with the content of the site (being videos).  Implementation of advertisements into the videos served to users of the site may have a negative impact on the usage of the site.

One of the best things about YouTube is the easy access to the content that you want to watch. 15 or 30 second prerolls at the start of your favorite video ruins the experience and excitement of watching your video. It makes it really hard to share clips and breaks the average users experience and frustrates more advanced users, unless of course they are the ones making the money. The best experience would be a postroll video, but that would be less profitable and less appealing for advertisers, meaning lower advertising rates and probably lower views. It will be interesting to see how the YouTube community does with increased advertisements.

Another service that Google provides is its popular email service, Gmail.  Gmail currently has text based display advertisements which show up on the dynamic (non HTML) interface which provides services such as chatting with online contacts and other services which are not available in the HTML interface.  Users who dislike advertisements can use the HTML interface instead which has limited functionality.  The advertisements currently run off of the AdSense program and are centered on keyword content of emails.

Google Finance is another service which is showing promise with different types of display content for advertising.  This alongside other Google services and upcoming Google labs products may be in line to have changes made to how advertisements are displayed on their interface.  The option to make the services ad free has not been mentioned by Google and implementation of such an option may not be wanted by Google in the first place.

With the release of the Apple iPad, many of the “e-ink” devices have taken a hard hit with price cuts. Sony has also reduced the price of its cheapest e-reader model, the Reader Pocket Edition from US$170 to US$150. This is following a recent US$30 drop which had occurred in April as well. The Touch Edition Reader has dropped in price from US$200 to US$170 as well with the higher end 3G Daily Edition Readers seeing a drop from US$350 to only US$300. Sony has dropped prices in order to compete with other device manufacturers which have also seed a reduction in prices.

Since the Apple iPad has the ability to read e-books and other media easily, its functionality with multiple media types has placed a strain on the markets for dedicated reader devices. Sony selling their e-reader devices for higher prices ended up having to reduce their prices because competitors are doing the same to compete with the iPad. Since the e-readers are not multifunctional, their price tags seem to be heavier for simple devices intended to be used for reading books and viewing textual news on such devices.

Because of this, Sony, along with their biggest competitor the Amazon Kindle, have lowered their prices. It is interesting to see what happens to this niche, if it stays vibrant for those readers who are looking for a device that does one and only one thing (display text content) much like older versions of the iPod. This market has to become as cheap as possible and focus on the bookstores and content to make their money in my opinion.

The hope that reducing the prices will bring for e-readers is still unknown, but it will help to increase the possibility that they can compete with the iPad and other reader devices. The major drawbacks for the iPad are that it is not solely designed to read books, so it does have limited functionality and libraries which it can access whereas devices such as the Sony e-reader, Amazon Kindle and other devices have access to extended libraries of thousands of books and news sources with small subscription service fees which they are designed to work flawlessly with. The main question is whether or not the pricing will affect how well they fare against Apple iPads.