WSJ on iPad for $17.99 a month, magazines to be at or near newsstand prices?

The Wall Street Journal is running a piece that focuses on ad sales for the iPad. Pretty boring stuff except for a few nuggets related to the actual content we crave. Rupert Murdoch already confirmed that his monument to main stream media was coming to the iPad. Hell, they've even been treated to a rare, in-house device to assist with the development of the iPad version of theWall Street Journal. Now it's quoting "a person familiar with the matter" (wink) who says thatThe Journal plans to charge subscribers $17.99 per month for iPad subscriptions -- for comparison, the print version of the WSJ costs $349 for 52 weeks or about $29 per month. Not bad, but you can't roll up an iPad to swat the dog.

Conversely, magazines appear set to offer weekly or monthly editions out of the gate, not annual subscriptions. Sources told the WSJ that the April issue of Hearst's Esquire magazine (no stranger to new media) will arrive in downloadable format without advertisements for $2.99, $2 less than the newsstand price, and will include five music videos (each containing the phrase "somewhere in Mississippi," oddly enough) to take advantage of the device's multimedia capabilities. On the other hand, a full iPad issue ofMen's Health with match the glossy's $4.99 price. Of course, as we heard earlier, publishers will beexperimenting with advertising and pricing models to see what works so expect things to be fluid for quite some time after the April 3rd launch.

Design the iPad Apps You Really Want to See

Seeing what Instapaper is going to look like on the iPad kind of sold me on the entire device. Now I just want to see what more apps will look like on Apple's tablet. Let's design some dream apps!

Mock up either iPad versions of your favorite current apps or any app that you really want to see on the iPad. Send your best entries to me at contests@gizmodo.comwith iPad Apps in the subject line. Save your files as JPGs or GIFs under 800k in size, and use a FirstnameLastname.jpg naming convention using whatever name you want to be credited with. Send your work to me by next Tuesday morning, and I'll pick three top winners and show off the rest of the best in our Gallery of Champions. Get to it!

CBS testing HTML5 iPad video out in the open, sorry Flash

Hey Dan, ever heard of a staging area to do your testing? Apparently not judging by the screenshot above.MacRumors took that "iPad - test - dan config - 3" content from the CBS.com homepage for a spin and discovered what appears to be HTML5 (not Flash) video. A bit more sleuthing reveals several "webkit" (the foundation of the iPad's and iPhone's mobile Safari browser) calls after peeling open the CSS. This suggests that CBS is preparing to serve up parallel HTML5 content with the launch of the notoriouslyFlash-less iPad -- take that Hulu -- becoming yet another high-profile company swayed into providing video and other content in an Apple friendly format. Then again, maybe CBS is just testing a "what if" scenario with no intention of moving this into production any time soon. US netizens can try it themselves by setting your browser to spoof the iPad's user agent and hitting the source below (for as long as it lasts) but you'll need the iPad SDK Simulator to view the actual HTML5 videos.

Opera Submits Browser for iPhone Approval

Opera submitted its Mini smartphone Web browser to the Apple store on Tuesday.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Opera submits its Mini Web browser for the iPhone to Apple
  
• Apple has so far denied apps that duplicate features it already offers on the phone
  
• Norwegian company did a media blitz in advance of the offering
  
• Tech watcher on wait for Apple's decision: "This is going to be good"
  

RELATED TOPICS

• Apple iPhone
• Internet
• Consumer Electronics

(CNN) -- Web browser company Opera has submitted an app for the iPhone that it promises will make surfing on the device faster -- if Apple allows it.

The Norwegian company said Tuesday morning that it has handed over its Mini smartphone browser for consideration by Apple's App Store.

The announcement came after a months-long promotional campaign and will test Apple, whose Safari software is the iPhone's default browser.

Apple has had a widely acknowledged practice of denying apps that compete with features already on the phone.

Opera demonstrated the iPhone app -- which it claims will be up to six times faster than Safari in loading some Web pages -- at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, in February and at the South by Southwest Interactive festival this month in Austin, Texas.

"The Opera Mini for iPhone sneak peek during MWC told us that we have something special," said John von Tetzchner, co-founder of Opera Software, in a written statement.

"Opera has put every effort into creating a customized, stylized, feature-rich and highly responsive browser that masterfully combines iPhone capabilities with Opera's renowned Webexperience, and the result is a high-performing browser for the iPhone."

Apple, located in Cupertino, California, did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment early Tuesday morning.

In the smartphone market, Opera currently is available on BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Palm and Android platforms.

Opera Mini also runs on the Symbian platform and is huge on non-smartphone mobiles, accounting for many of its more than 50 million monthly users worldwide, according to the company.

But the company clearly covets the iPhone's devoted and active user base.

At South by Southwest, Opera spokesman Thomas Ford told CNN that his company's very public rollout hasn't been an effort to pressure Apple into approving the app.

But the company is calling attention to its showdown with Apple over the mobile browser. On Opera's Web site, there's a page with a ticker showing, up to the second, how long it's been since the company submitted its app to Apple.

While the Apple store has never approved a Web browser that renders results without relying on Safari's inner workings, Opera maintains the two are different enough. The company says Safari is better for complicated Web functions, while Opera specializes in quickly opening basic Web pages.

If approved, Opera Mini would not replace Safari on iPhones but would give users who downloaded it a choice between the two browsers. Opera has not announced pricing for the app, although Mini is free on other phones.

Anticipation in the tech world over how the showdown will shake out had already ramped up Tuesday morning.

"Whatever happens, this is going to be good," said writer Thomas Ricker on the tech blog Engadget.

Adobe CS5 Launching April 12

Adobe just put up a new page counting down the seconds until the launch of Creative Suite 5 at 11am EST on April 12. We assume all of you have mastered the intricacies of CS4 and are eager to expand your creative horizons with a new set of features. [CS5 Launch]

What the Supposedly Leaked Apple iBooks Pricing Says About the Great Publishing War

A rumored peek at bestsellers on Apple's iBooks reveals that the $9.99 ebook is very much alive, suggesting Apple does have the power to cut prices on bestsellers, and books publishers sell for less than the average $26 hardcover price.

Matching what the NYT originally reported, that "Apple wants the flexibility to offer lower prices for the hottest books, those on one of the New York Times best-seller lists," AppAdvice says that all of the current top 10 NYT bestsellers are priced at $9.99 in iBooks—in fact 27 of the top 32 are $9.99. The highest priced of the remaining 5, Poor Little Bitch Girl by Jackie Collins, is $12.99. (Previously, it wasn't precisely clear how much influence Apple could have on book pricing in iBooks, given that under their model, which is just like the App Store, publishers set their own book prices, and Apple simply takes 30 percent. The rumored "recommended" pricing was $12.99-$14.99.)

What's interesting is that Poor Little Bitch Girl is $8.83 on Kindle, which suggests that Apple's ability to cut prices isn't directly tied to what competitors are charging. In other words, their deal—at least with MacMillan, who owns the St. Martin's Press imprint that put this particular book out—isn't that if Amazon sells a book for $9.99, it has to be sold on iBooks for the same amount. Which strikes me as more interesting still, because MacMillan's had the most public spat with Amazon, whichwiped their entire catalog off of the site after MacMillan became the first publisher to agitate for change in Amazon's pricing model, so that it was more like Apple's.

Maybe Random House is right, and the industry is in for a massive price war. To the victor go the spoils, but who knows how much loot's going to be left? [App Advice]

Nintendo 3DS: The Details

Nintendo Japan has announced that they will present the newest portable console, the Nintendo 3DS, in June. The new handheld will offer 3D viewing without glasses. Here's all the information we have gathered so far:

• With the announcement slated for E3 in June, Nintendo's shooting a bit early in their Japanese press release by saying it will go on sale sometime between April 2010 - March 2011.

• You won't need to wear 3D glasses to enjoy the 3D effects. This may work likeRittai Kakushi e Attakoreda, the Nintendo DSi game that uses the frontal camera to track the viewer eyes. By tracking the user's eyes—a trick first shown by Johnny Chung Lee's Wii hack—the machine can alter the perspective in the game to make it look as if the player is looking into a 3D virtual space.

• It's unclear if this would be the only 3D element in the console.

• Backwards compatibility will be incorporated for DS and DSi games support.

• It may have an accelerometer for tilt-controls with motion-led gaming, just like the iPhone/iPod Touch.

• The screen might be higher-res than anything we've seen from Nintendo before, maybe reaching 720p—and measuring around the same size as the DS.

• It'll have two screens just like previous portables, but they'll be used in conjunction as one giant screen, according to RPAD.tv, who convinced developers to talk to them at GDC.

• A Tegra chip could be powering it.

• Nintendo might put a 3G sim in, for over-the-air downloads.

• Those over-the-air downloads might include ebooks, something already seen on the DSi XL.

UPDATE

• It'll include two cameras (one backwards-facing, one forward-facing), just like the DSi—for DSi backwards compatibility support.

• The Japanese publication Asahi is claiming it'll use one of Sharp's parallax barrier LCDs.

• 3D control sticks may help with gaming, if Nikkei's report is correct, and the 3DS itself could vibrate like an old Rumble Pak.