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The official Twitter app for iPad has been released today, with a host of new features to keep Twitter fiends happily poking away at their Apple tablet's screen for the foreseeable future.

Twitter's official iPad app is far more than a mere expanded version of the iPhone app, offering an entirely new-looking interface which lets users see links to webpages, pictures and videos from tweets almost immediately in a new pane on the screen.

"Panes" and "Gestures"

Twitter for iPad also makes really good use of the iPad's multitouch interface.

For example, you can pinch outwards to get more information on a particular user whose witty tweets you might be reading at any given time or you can swipe down with two fingers to reveal the whole conversation.

"Today we are bringing Tweets to a device that really lets content shine - the iPad", says Twitter on the company's blog.

"Twitter for iPadtakes advantage of the iPad's fluid touch interface, letting you move lots of information around smoothly and quickly - without needing to open and close windows or click buttons".

Twitter for iPad is available worldwide from the App Store. Grab it now over on iTunes

Apple's jewel in its iPod crown is, without a shadow of a doubt, the new fourth-generation iPod touch, revealed earlier today by the company's charismatic CEO, Steve Jobs.

That said, the new iPod touch 4G was perhaps the least surprising of this week's announcements from Apple.

The good old Apple rumour mill had been suggesting that the latest touchscreen media player would get front and back-facing cameras and Apple's Retina screen for weeks.

iPod touch 4G: An impressive upgrade to Apple's flagship iPod

Which is exactly what it did get. It is essentially an iPhone 4, minus the phone and SMS functions. Jobs himself stated this in no uncertain words in his presentation.

"No contract," said the Apple CEO, while demonstrating the new iPod touch 4G, with the words "no contract" written in large letters on the big-screen slideshow behind him, at which point some elements in the assembled industry and media crowd tittered, as if Jobs had made some kind of naughty joke at the expense of O2 or AT&T.

Yet the new iPod really does have to be seen and played with to be fully appreciated. If you have yet to feast your eyes on the iPhone's 3.5-inch, 960 x 640 pixel resolution 'Retina' display, then you have yet to appreciate the vibrancy and quality of the images that are now available on the new iPod touch.

iPod FaceTime: Sure to be a hit with students and teens

In terms of the overall form factor, Apple has stuck with the curved stainless steel back of the previous model, although has managed to shave around 15 per cent off the thickness and weight, so the new iPod touch is noticeably thinner and lighter when sat in the palm of the hand. We had, we have to admit, suspected Apple might go the whole hog and follow the boxier design of the iPhone 4. But after a very quick hands on play with the new iPod touch, we are more than glad they didn't.

Of course, the main beneficiaries of a slightly slimmer iPod touch are going to be the peripherals companies, with reps from all of the well-known brands out in force at today's Apple launch. And we can be sure to expect a slew of new cases and peripheral product announcements from all of them in the coming days and weeks.

Aside from the massively improved screen, the next biggest new feature on the new iPod touch is the introduction of two cameras, which allow 720p HD video recording and also allow you to use Apple's FaceTime video-calling app, to talk to your mates and family with iPhones (or new iPod touches).

This is sure to be a massive boon to students and younger users that either don't want (or, more likely, are not financially able) to get tied into long-term mobile contracts, yet still want to use their iPod touch for instant messaging and video calling. It is, as we heard more than one punter mumble at today's London showcase, a potential game-changer. Although whether or not it will cannibalise the demand for Apple's iPhone 4 remains to be seen.

iPod touch 4G: Around 15 per cent thinner and lighter

It is also worth remembering that there are a slew of genuinely brilliant camera apps already available to download on Apple's App Store, along with numerous fun photo-manipulation apps that let you make your friends into zombies, ghouls, avatars and fatties. All of which have to date been limited to iPhone users.

The introduction of a camera into the iPod touch mix opens up access to these great camera apps to a whole new audience. Which is also great news for the many third party app developers out there, as well as Apple. All we can hope is that the growth of the market can only continue to drive innovation and creativity in photo and camera app development.Gameloft's NOVA: One of the most accomplished mobile phone games to date

In terms of the actual resolution of the video recording, from the brief demonstration we were given by an Apple rep, the recording quality does seem to be impressively clear. However, whether or not this is going to be completely satisfactory as your primary video-recording device when you are away on holidays or travelling remains to be seen. We'll be sure to put that through the test when we receive our review unit to put through its paces.

The one thing that really left us wanting the new Apple iPod touch more than anything else was spending a few minutes playing Gameloft's superb gyroscope controlled first person shooter, NOVA, one of the best iPhone 4 games developed to date. It is the closest you can get to that feeling of the accuracy of a mouse and keyboard control scheme with a traditional PC fps on a mobile device. Which is why Steve Jobs made a point of bringing the guys from Epic Games on the stage to show off their new title, codenamed 'Project Sword' and due for release later this year.

iPod touch 4G: The world's best selling gaming handheld just got better

Apple is determined to build upon the huge success it has already had in the gaming market with the iPod touch and the iPhone. And the fact that the new iPod touch 4G will fully support Apple's new Game Center which is a key part of iOS 4.1, is proof positive that the company (and its triple-A game development partners) have the hardcore gaming market clearly in their sights.

So, to recap, Apple's new iPod touch packs in a lot of notably-improved tech and new features, including the Retina Display, the speedier A4 chip, FaceTime Video Calling, HD video recording, that 3-axis gyro, and the multiplayer goodness and more that is part of Apple's new Game Center.

On top of all that, it's marginally thinner and lighter than the last gen iPod touch and Apple claims that the battery will let you listen to up to 40 hours of music on a single charge. Impressive, if that turns out to be anywhere near the truth. Again, we'll put that to the test in our full review, to follow very soon.

You will be able to pick up Apple's new iPod touch within the next week for of £189 for the8GB model, £249 for the 32GB model and £329.00 for the 64GB model via www.apple.com/uk.

Sony is set to reveal its next-generation range of Reader e-books at IFA in Berlin later this week.

Sony's new electronic readers are set to be slimmer than previous models, with a range of new features, including touchscreen control.

We expect to get some hands on time with the three new versions of the Sony Reader set to be revealed at IFA, with Sony claiming that it has made improvements to the screen to offer better clarity for readers.

Dictionaries, reader reviews, mobile apps

While Sony was first to market with its e-book range, it is now facing stiff competition from market leader Amazon, whose new Kindle e-reader recently launched in the UK, at £109 for the basic Wi-Fi only version.

Apple is also making serious inroads into the e-book market with the iPad, with apps such as iBooks (and Amazon's own Kindle app) proving to be popular on Apple's new tablet device.

Steve Haber, president of Sony's digital reading unit, told Reuters: "Lowering prices to get cheaper and cheaper -- that's not our direction. Our plan is not to race to the bottom."

Haber noted that Sony sold more of its higher-priced touchscreen Reader last Christmas than it did the cheaper, non-touchscreen version.

"People stepped up and spent another $100 to buy touch," said the Sony Reader boss.

Sony's new pocket version Reader will retail about $179 (£116) in the US, while Sony's larger 6-inch screen version with extra memory will cost US readers $229 (£149).

Sony is also planning to launch a $299.99 (£195) "Daily Edition" Reader later in November, which will feature 3G connectivity and a larger screen.

Sony will also offer dictionaries in its new Readers and, in addition to adding new titles to its e-book store, plans to include reader reviews via a partnership with social network site GoodReads.

Sony will also launch iPhone and Android Reader applications later in the year.

Motorola is teaming up with Verizon to develop a tablet TV device set to rival Apple's popular iPad.

The Financial Times reports this week that the fruits of the new partnership will be devices that allow users to watch television on the move.

The device may launch as early as this coming autumn in the US, although there has been no official announcement from Verizon or Motorola to date.

Pay-TV on the move

The new tablet TV is expected to run on Google's Android OS and be tied in to Verizon's FiOS digital pay TV service.

Motorola and Verizon's tablet TV will have a ten-inch screen and will also feature two cameras, plus it will be able to share its Wi-Fi connectivity with other devices, according to unnamed sources close to the project.

It will also support Adobe's Flash software, which is something that the Apple iPad doesn't offer users, with Apple backing the HTML 5 standard on iPhone and iPad.

Verizon Wireless owns a 25 per cent share of the US TV market and a 29 per cent share of the US broadband market.

Sanjay Jha, Chief Executive of Motorola's mobile devices business, said back in May of this year: "We're very focused on participating in this convergence between mobility and home, and I actually think you will see some products from us in a very short period of time."

Sharp has demonstrated its new range of e-reader devices in Japan this week, with a clear design nod to the Apple iPad.

The Japanese electronics giant has also launched a new software format for multimedia capable e-books, calling it the 'next gen' XMDF format.

iPad-a-like reader unveiled

Sharp has been demonstrating two prototype readers at its Japanese event this week, a pocket-sized reader measuring 5.5-inch and an iPad-lookalike reader measuring 10.8-inch.

XMDF, which stands for ever-eXtending Mobile Document Format (like, duh, obv!) enables video and animations to be mixed in with your text.

From Sharp's Japanese press release: "Sharp Corporation has developed XMDF, a next-generation e-book format (hereinafter "Next-generation XMDF") with advanced features that allow users to enjoy video and audio content, in addition to current features such as texts and still images.

"With next-generation XMDF as a core technology, Sharp will within this year provide digital platform to promote e-book distribution service and launch compatible reader devices to enter the e-book market. Various publishing houses (newspaper, magazines, catalogs), printing and agent companies in Japan and overseas market will be supporting Sharp to launch this e-book business.

"Sharp's next-generation XMDF is an advanced version of the current XMDF format. The current XMDF format has been commercialized in 2001 and is used in e-book contents including Japanese novels and manga comics. The next-generation XMDF enables easy viewing of digital contents including video and audio, and allows automatic adjustment of the layout to match and meet publishers' needs."

So it is essentially very much like XHTML but with better quality and more-readable text for settling down and reading a full novel on your new Sharp e-book.

Whether or not Sharp's multimedia e-readers will be priced competitively enough to seriously make a dent in Apple's iPad market remains to be seen.

Sharp's longer-term plan is to be able to offer every kind of e-book to every kind of device, including TVs, set top boxes, gaming consoles and more.

Japan's Sharp Corp has indicated that it plans to enter the booming electronic reader market.

E-readers and e-books have gained a considerable amount of positive PR in recent months, following the launch of Apple's iPad and Amazon's Kindle apps for devices including the iPhone, Android and iPad.

E-books versus print

Many industry commentators and analysts are predicting that sales of e-books will outstrip sales of ALL printed books within the next five to ten years.

Sharp is planning on developing its own e-book distribution service to compete with Amazon.com and Apple's iBooks, in addition to a range of compatible e-book devices later in 2010.

Sharp's new e-books will feature video playback and audio features, although details on exact plans and device specs are scarce right now. TechRadar has put a call in to Sharp's UK office for further information on the new e-reader plans.

Sharp has said that it already has the backing of a number of publishers in Japan and worldwide. Again, no further details on which publishers are backing the initiative have yet been made public.

Other e-book manufacturers such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Sony have all cut the prices of their e-readers since the Apple iPad launched in the US back in April and in the UK in May.

Google also has plans to launch a new e-book service at some point soon.

Amazon has announced a significant tipping point in e-book sales, with Kindle books now outselling hardback books on Amazon.com

Amazon has sold 143 Kindle books for every 100 hardbacks sold online over the last three months.

Tipping point for booksellers

Over the last month, Kindle e-books have been outselling hardback books by a 180-to-100 margin, accelerating the trend.

Pricing is clearly key, with Amazon US selling most new hardback books at $9.99, which is significantly less than the cost of a hardback.

However, it should also be noted that paperback book sales still make up the vast majority of Amazon's sales, yet the online retailer has made no announcements about how e-book sales compare with that business. Amazon has 630,000 Kindle books available to buy online, which is only a small proportion of the millions of paperbacks available.

There are also over 1.8 million free Kindle books available that were originally published before 1923 (and, as such, are out of copyright).

Fewer books in print

Amazon cut the cost of its Kindle reader in the US last month from $259 to $189 last month, although the company has still to reveal how many units of the hardware it has sold to date.

Mike Shatzkin, founder of the Idea Logical Company, which advises book publishers on digital strategy and e-publishing said of Amazon's latest announcement: "This was a day that was going to come, a day that had to com."

The e-book analyst predicts that less than a quarter of books will be sold in print versions within the next ten years.

Amazon also recently launched mobile Kindle apps for iPhones, iPads, BlackBerrys and Android phones.

Youssef H. Squali, MD at Jefferies & Company in charge of Internet and new media research said that: "Amazon's latest sales figures are "clearly an indication that the iPad is complementary to the Kindle, not a replacement."

iRiver has announced a WiFi update to its Story ebook reader.

The Linux-based device now supports WiFi (802.11b/g), which allows the Story to connect to and download ebooks from the WHSmith online book store.

The Story – its full name is WiFi Story EB03 – retains its stylish white looks and ultra-thin design. Measuring just 10mm thick, it's smaller than any paperback, yet can hold thousands of books on its 2GB internal memory – expandable to 32GB via an SDHC card slot.

Other than WiFi, the Story remains unchanged with a 600x800 resolution 6-inch screen using 16 levels of grey, as well as a speaker and headphone port for MP3 playback and microphone for recording voice memos.

File formats

The Story offers a comprehensive list of compatible file formats, including EPub, PDF, TXT, FB2 and DJVU; as well as support for Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint and Word documents.

As with all e-ink screens and their lack of a backlight, the Story offers impressive battery life, offering up to 9,000 page turns per charge.

The WiFi Story EB03 will be sold at WHSmith stores, as well as other leading retailers, with a UK release date of 'soon'.

Pricing for the WiFi Story is £250. In the wake of a recent price cut to $189 for the Amazon Kindle, and its 3G connection, the Story could well struggle to match the Kindle's market share.

Sony has claimed that ebook sales will overtake print sales within five years, although publishing industry reps are already questioning the ebook manufacturer's bullish predictions.

Sony predicts that ebook sales will follow the same pattern that has been seen in the music and photographic industries, although traditional print publishers are still unsure that this will happen.

E-book sales predictions

Steve Haber, president of Sony's digital reading business division, told The Telegraph: "Within five years there will be more digital content sold than physical content. Three years ago, I said within ten years but I realised that was wrong - it's within five."

"Of course you have to take this news with a pinch of salt," Catherine Neilan, Senior Reporter on the Bookseller magazine informed TechRadar, "coming as it does from an e-book manufacturer."

Neilan adds: "I'd be surprised if it were true. The most optimistic forecast we've had from a range of sources have not suggested that this is the case.

"So it's unlikely, but not impossible, as estimates keep changing and the tipping point keeps being brought closer."

"Right now ebook sales are less than 1 per cent in the UK. Yes, ebook sales are growing very rapidly, but they are growing from a very small base."

Sony sponsors Dylan Thomas Prize

Sony is sponsoring a new category in this year's Dylan Thomas Prize - the Sony Reader Award for Unpublished Writers, which will be awarded this December to an unpublished novelist under 30 years old.

Sony's Steve Haber says: "I have multiple meetings with publishers and tell them paradigm shifts happen. You can say fortunately or unfortunately you haven't had a paradigm shift in, what, hundreds of years."

"We in the consumer electronics area have a paradigm shift every year or two."

Asus has launched another tablet device at Computex 2010, following the announcement of the new Asus Eee Pad, with the new Eee Tablet from the Taiwanese computing firm promising to reinvent the e-book.

Asus new Eee Tablet has a 2450 dpi touch resolution screen and is being marketed as a highly accurate and sensitive digital note taking device that will let you make real-time text annotations on its e-ink screen.

Like writing on paper

It feels very much like writing on paper, according to Asus reps at Computex. The Eee Tablet also features a built-in 2 megapixel camera that captures detailed images, designed for students who might want to snap lecture slides and then be able to write notes on them.

You can sync the device with your PC via USB or Micro SD. Asus claims that the new Eee Tablet will offer up to 10-hours of battery life, and double up as a a media player and e-reader.

Finally, Asus is keen to stress that the pages on the Eee Tablet take only 0.1 seconds to refresh, solving one of the major bugbears many users had with older e-book devices.

No word on a UK launch or pricing yet, but Asus said the Eee Tablet will cost $199 when it's released in the US later this summer.

LG Display is predicting rapid growth in the market for electronic books this year, which is set to be boosted by the recent launch of the Apple iPad.

LG predicts the market for electronic books will grow by almost 80 per cent in 2010.

And while the iPad and other new tablet PCs are proving popular for reading e-books, in addition to all of their other multimedia functions, LG is also sure that dedicated electronic-readers with limited multimedia features will still sell to readers.

Research group DisplaySearch notes that e-paper display shipments increased five-fold to 5 million units last year, boosted by the popularity of devices such as the Sony Reader and the Amazon Kindle.

iPad not a threat to e-books

LG is seemingly not at all concerned by the impact of the new tablet PC market.

"I think the iPad won't be a threat, but will actually have a positive impact on e-reader market," said M.B. Choi, VP of LG Display's electronic paper division.

"With iPad, Apple will boost consumer awareness of e-readers and boost digital content, which will help the market's overall growth.

"iPad is a multimedia gadget that also has digital reading. Pure e-readers, however, have their own advantages. They consume much less power, weigh less and are easy to read among other things. They simply target a different customer segment, like those seeking a serious reading experience," said Choi.

3D is beginning to make an impact on the TV industry and home gaming industry, and now it also looks like some new electronic reading tech from South Korea could also see us reading 3D eBooks in the near future.

South Korean scientists have developed 3D tech for books that makes characters appear to jump right off the page in front of your eyes.

3D reading specs

The tech arrives hot on the heels of the runaway successes of recent 3D blockbusters coming out of Hollywood, including Avatar and Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland.

3D TVs start to go on sale in April and the computer games industry looks set to lead the march of 3D into our homes, with a firmware update for PS3 promised soon that will enable 3D games on your new TV.

South Korea's Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology has used new 3D technology to animate two children's books of Korean folk tales, featuring traditional dragons and heroes jumping over mountains.

Pictures in the books have cues that trigger the 3D animations, with readers having to wear 3D glasses.

"It took us about three years to develop the software for this," said Kim Sang-cheol, the team leader of the project.

"It will take a while to market this technology to the general public," Kim added, who is sure that the tech will be affordable enough to be mass market.

Whether the Apple Tablet is launched tomorrow or not, it has achieved one extraordinary thing: it has shown that a lot of people have a really big problem with the current state of the art. That's pretty impressive for what is, at time of writing, still vapourware.

Either there's a lot of wishful thinking going on, or computing genuinely has stagnated and is ripe for a kick up the arse.

Here's a few examples. Add any more you've seen, in the comments.

Sad state of affair: Rubbish e-book readers

They are slow, ugly and inflexible. Worse, Amazon gets most of the loot from e-book sales. And they are useless for multimedia, magazines and newsprint. The iSlate will hopefully save all those industries thanks to the money siphoning power of iTunes, although nobody really knows how. And let's not mention the likely DRM.

Sad state of affair: the death of newspapers

Listen to the hype and many of the most fervent voices come from newspaper columnists worried about their futures.

Then google 'Apple tablet saviour' and you'll get over 40,000 results. Many of the top ones are concerned with the well-publicised problems surrounding the newspaper business and how the Tablet's physical interface will help readers re-engage with digital print. But can the iTablet really solve all these problems, let alone persuade people to cough up? I'm sceptical myself but it would be nice to think so.

Sad state of affair: the broken desktop metaphor

Even after Windows 7, the PC desktop/GUI metaphor is fundamentally exhausted and the iSlate must fix it, says Gizmodo, by extending the iPhone's multitouch, programmable interface further. Slate.com agrees, citing the usual gripe about how PCs are still too hard for mum. Therefore the iSlate can save computing by making it simple again. Just don't tell the jailbreakers.

Sad state of affair: Dull, un-innovative PCs

…Connected to the above, this view sees the iSlate as the Omega to the Mac's Alpha, the discovery of the Holy Grail of computing, the fabled 'information appliance', completing the job the Macintosh began. How? By finally delivering on Jeff Raskin's/Larry Ellison's visions: something so flexible yet simple, a baby could use it. But surely Natal/Surface have similar potential and nobody hyperventilated about those.

Sad state of affair: the entire internet

"The silos are getting crunched together", says Newsweek. "Somewhere out there, the Orson Welles of the digital age is in grade school, or maybe high school. Soon he or she will be inventing a new language for telling stories." The iTablet will apparently be the medium that ushers in "phase two of the Internet", gushes the author.

Sad state of affair: too many separate pieces of tech

Even with phones and laptops, gadgets proliferate, with separate e-readers, movie players, netbooks, TVs - whatever. Bring them together into one device and let's be done with it, say the pundits - hard to disagree with.

Sad state of affair: our kids' rubbish education

Amazon have had real problems making Kindle work for textbooks, given how students like to annotate and highlight key passages. The wonders of the iSlate's multi touch interface can address this too, if they can get the keyboard right. And if students don't crack the DRM and share everything first.

So there you have it: a tower of hope tottering on top of one little device. Good luck with this one, Apple.

Samsung's new eBook reader is certainly an interesting prospect, not least because of the tie-up with Google Books. The key boon of the Samsung E6 and E101 devices is the touchscreen, so it's also a note-taking device, too.

The 6-inch model is set to cost $399 and the 10-inch model $699.

Just as we have all pretty much had our fill of eBook technology news, along comes Ray 'Singularity' Kurzweil with a new colour electronic-reader platform called Blio.

Kurzweil predicts that the 'singularity' will occur sometime around 2045, which is the point at which machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence.

Luckily then, that gives us another 35 years yet to enjoy the world's literature in glorious technicolour on Ray's new Blio reader.

Download it for iPhone or PC

Blio is described as a "platform" that could run on any device. Blio software is free and will be made available at CES 2010 as a download for PCs, iPod Touch and the iPhone.

"Everyone who has seen it acknowledges that it is head and shoulders above others," says Kurzweil. "We have high-quality graphics and animated features. Other e-readers are very primitive."

Blio will be shown to the crowds at CES in Las Vegas next week. Colour us intrigued.

Kurzweil Technologies and the US National Federation of the Blind have launched a joint venture called knfb Reading Technology, which is the company that has created Blio.

"We can take a PDF and an audio book and merge the two to get a combination such that you can hear the audio book and see the words highlighted on the PDF at the same time," explains Peter Chapman, an exec at Kurzweil Technologies.

In spite of an armada of competitors sailing into the e-book reader waters, Amazon's Kindle has apparently had its best month ever in terms of sales, or so the company says.

With December not yet into its fourth week, Amazon announced that the Kindle was its most popular product across the entire range of its catalogue. Many attribute the sales surge to the company's offer of free shipping in the US.

Bigging it up

However, in the absence of hard numbers, cynics might suggest Amazon is talking the Kindle up in a bid to raise its profile as competitors like Barnes & Noble's Nook hove into view.

Nonetheless, that may not even be necessary, as it turns out B&N is in a spot of bother with its supply chain and has been offering $100 (£62) gift certificates to anyone whose Nook doesn't arrive in time for Christmas. Ho, ho, ho.

To Kindle, Sony Reader and Nook, we can now add the name nReader, after Taiwanese firm BenQ revealed its own e-book reader this week.

The nReader will go on sale in Taiwan and China next month for the equivalent of around £170 and will be based around a six-inch touchscreen.

Like the market-leading Kindle, the nReader will allow users to download books wirelessly using either a 3G connection or a Wi-Fi network.

Online store too

BenQ says the device's 2GB of flash memory will be enough for 4,000 books and that it can be expanded using a microSD card.

Most significantly, perhaps, the multilingual (English, Chinese and Japanese) e-book will launch with a new online store offering the usual mix of books, magazines and newspapers.