The Kindle Fire tablet computer from Amazon, the much look forward to challenge to iPad, became available in the U.S. on Monday, one day ahead of schedule. The new Kindle is approximately half the size and at $199 more than the price of iPad which retails for $499. The new Fire is much more than an e-book reader; it connects to the Web, streams movies and TV, displays comic books and supports a multitude of apps, which includes ones for Hulu and Netflix, plus emailing and game playing.

Users wont be able to use cellular networks on the Fire has they have been able to do on some of the monochrome Kindle models, but they will be able to accesses the Internet through Wi-Fi.

Barnes & Noble Inc.’s $249 Nook Tablet goes on sale Friday, also a direct competitor in time for the Christmas market, but still higher in price at $249. In creating a challenge to the iPad, Amazon.com Inc. is building on the expectation of succeeding where other businesses have been unsuccessful because the Fire is designed to easily tap into the company’s enormous storehouse of media content. Amazon sells over 1 million e-books, 100,000 movies and television shows, and 17 million songs.

Amazon has not publicised the number of Kindles it has sold, but CEO Jeff Bezos has said that advance orders for the Fire are so high that Amazon is manufacturing “millions more” than first anticipated. Amazon has more Kindle models in the pipeline; the Kindle Touch retailing for $99, which has a monochrome, touch-sensitive screen and is designed only for reading, is available from Tuesday, six days earlier than expected.

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The humble mouse and keyboard will no longer cut it with PC users raised on the touch screen interfaces of the Apple iPad and its kin, states a recent analyst’s report.

Multi-touch has become a mainstay for high-end mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones, and consumers will increasingly expect to be able to use this technology on their PCs, as reported by analyst house Gartner.

“Thin and light mobile PCs with tablet-like features will become mainstream, pushing out some bulkier Computer styles that have been the norm,” Angela McIntyre, research director at Gartner, said in a report.

For an increasing number of people, their first initiation to computing will be on a touch screen device like the ipad, McIntyre said, leading them to expect similar features from other devices they use. As the ipad are much more compact then the computer so the new customer’s first preference is an ipad instead of a computer, also users can more easily carry an ipad with them while they are out and about.

PCs will require comprising Multi-touch interfaces if they are to exploit the growing number of apps that rely on touch screen controls, according to the report.

Multi-touch and other new intuitive user interfaces will also be necessary for computing devices to break into new areas, McIntyre added.

Debate over the whether the desktop PC is now deceased was sparked recently when one of the engineers who created the first IBM PC stated that desktops are on their way out as clients choose tablets instead.

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Björk has been working on her new album Biophilia. Since the launch of the Apple iPad last year Björk has used one to help her compose her music. In her desire to create an album that encompassed not just visuals but also interactive technology Björk contacted Derek Birkett, founder of One Little Indian, the label she has been signed with since 1987 and he put together a team of app designers including Max Whitby and Theodore Grey.

In January 2010 Whitby and Gray turned their book ‘The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe’ into an app called simply ‘The Elements’ featuring 360 degree images and deep level zooms which sold 200,000 copies.

Whitby and Grey met with Björk at her house in Reykjavík, Iceland to discuss the new app’s requirements. Each track would have an individual app for iPad and iPhone, by choosing between modes the user could either just listen to a track and watch the accompanying visuals or interact with the music by making adjustments to tempo and arrangement, which would encourage learning through play. The ‘play ability’ of the app would be intricate and strong enough to actually be used as a musical instrument. What Björk wanted to create was a new musical format, the app album.

It’s not just all about encouraging creativity and innovation, for musicians much of their revenue is lost through free down loads and pirate albums. Some money can be made from ticket sales of live shows, but Björk’s new app album music experience should be a cash creator too.

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