Asus has demonstrated its new EEE tablet at Computex, showing off a device that takes input from a stylus, something that’s increasingly rare in the tablet market.

The new device is a far cry from some of the concept images...

For the moment, there’s relatively little information about the whole affair, but what we do know is very interesting indeed. According to the folks at TrustedReviews, the EEE tablet has a touch resolution 2450 DPI display and should give users the ability to take notes on top of anything they happen to be reading. Of course, the big let-down for many will be the fact that the device boasts an E-ink display, rather than a full-colour affair, making it something of a cross between an ebook reader and a full-on tablet.

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Amazon is to release an application to allow Android-based smartphone and tablet device owners to get in on its Kindle services at some stage during this summer.

If nothing else, we'll be curious to see how well it does...

At the moment, there are Kindle applications available for both Windows and Mac OS X, as well as Apple’s iPhone OS and BlackBerry. As with all of the above, the version of Amazon’s Kindle set to be made available for Android is to include Amazon’s much touted Whispersync, which allows for bookmarks to remain synchronised across multiple devices – should you read on your notebook and then pick up your phone, you should be able to pick up at exactly the same point.

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It seems that Amazon’s Kindle might not be quite the godsend to students that it’s been built up to be.

It's certainly the nicer of the Kindles, but it seems it's still not up to snuff

Amazon had been pushing its line of ebook readers as a replacement for the usual mountain of books and papers that students might need to carry around. While Amazon was quick to publicise the trial at the beginning of the academic year that would see university students replacing their various paper-based texts with its larger form ebook reader, the Kindle DX. Unfortunately, it seems that that trial hasn’t gone down too well with those students with a specific interest in using the device for academic reasons, rather than simply reading for pleasure.

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It seems that Amazon has taken to heart negative comments about the web browser bundled with its Kindle ebook reader line, and is now looking for people to develop a new version of the browser.

A new browser would only make the Kindle a more attractive prospect...

The word of the new development on Amazon’s Kindle browser comes via Amazon’s own job listing for developers, who it’s hoping will be able to develop “an innovative embedded web browser” for a piece of consumer electronics. Certainly, that description makes it sound very much like the Kindle is looking for a new web developer.

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It seems that Sony, no longer content with just sitting back and watching itself be eaten alive, has determined that now is the time to launch a smartphone tied into the PlayStation brand.

Admittedly, Mylo was always an absolutely grotesque affair...

Rumours of a PlayStation phone have been around a very long time indeed, with many surfacing shortly after the launch of the PlayStation Portable, which seems to have failed to gain quite as much traction as Sony might have hoped. Four years ago, when it seemed all but inevitable that there was a device shaping up to be a PlayStation phone under development in Sony, the eventual device wasn’t quite what people had hoped for, turning out to be a phone (called Mylo) that just happened to have some design features in common with the PSP.

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Adobe are nervously apologising to users after being forced today to patch what’s described as a “critical vulnerability” in the Windows utility used to download both Adobe Reader and Flash (ahhhhhhhhhhh) Player.

Giving out a little more detail, Adobe acknowledged that the bug, “potentially allow[s] an attacker to download and install unauthorized software onto a user’s system.” This is the second time in the last six weeks that Adobe fixed a flaw in Download Manager, the program it installs on PCs when customers download Reader or Flash Player. Continue Reading

It seems that, regardless of who’s responsible for the devices themselves, 2010 could well be shaping up to be the year of the tablet, with companies showing off lots of new tablet devices at the Mobile World Congress.

I'll be the first to admit I have a soft spot for Archos

With all eyes on Apple and its upcoming iPad to see just how well the market will tolerate an expensive tablet device that doesn’t have the same functionality as netbooks, its curious to see other tablets start cropping up. Word comes via Venturebeat (who managed to get their hands on one) of the other big tablets we can expect to see in the coming months as shown off at MWC.

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It seems that Apple’s upcoming iPad tablet won’t be shipping with the company’s iBooks software, one of the main talking points of the device.

Not bundling iBooks seems a strange move

It seems that Daring Fireball’s John Gruber has applied some fairly close reading to Apple’s description of its upcoming tablet device. Apparently, when it comes to time to list the various bits and pieces that the iPad has to offer its users, Apple describes the iBooks app by saying that,

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With the trend started by the Amazon MacMillan spat, towards ebooks costing as much (if not a little more) than their physical counterparts, is being more firmly cemented over time, it’s interesting to see statistics from iTunes pricing model.

Looks like these bad boys will be sticking around for a while yet

According to MediaMemo, it seems that Apple gave music publishers the ability to raise the price of their music on its iTunes service early last year, which resulted in some record labels bumping the prices of some songs upwards, while others took the opportunity to drop the prices of certain tracks. The overall result has been an interesting one.

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It seems that Amazon’s ability to offer ebooks at a lower price than Apple’s announced iBook shop is being eroded more quickly than even dire predictions had supposed it might.

Looks like physical books could turn out to be cheaper...

Word comes from Gizmodo that more of Amazon’s “big six” publishers have been pushing prices up to the higher price point for “hardcover bestsellers,” which is an interesting term to use in an entirely data environment. After MacMillan’s move on Monday to see prices bumped to the $15 mark on certain titles, it seems that other publishers have come pouring in with similar requests to make of Amazon’s Kindle Store.

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It seems that those of us who have already mode the move to electronic books are very well served indeed by them, apparently regardless of the hardware options.

Indeed, word comes via RegHardware of a survey from industry analysts NPD that those who’ve sprung for ebook reading hardware are very pleased indeed with their purchases. Apparently, 93% of those who’ve picked up an ebook reader fall into either the “very satisfied” or “somewhat satisfied” camps in NPD’s research. Perhaps more interesting still is the fact that only 2% of those surveyed actually said that they weren’t satisfied with their devices.

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It seems that the running spat between Amazon and publisher Macmillan has come to something of a close, with Amazon announcing that it will allow the books to be sold for the price Macmillan had requested.

When I was your age, Pluto was a planet and we used to argue about the prices of REAL books...

The issue arose when Macmillan attempted to price digital versions of its books at $15, which is fully 150% of the usual amount for ebooks available through Amazon’s Kindle Store. Macmillan weighed in with the fairly heavy threat that, unless Amazon allowed the heftier pricing, it would not be distributing new books to Amazon on release.

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