WE HAVE A TAPPLEBLET. Or, more accurately, we have an iPad. After months of speculation, rumor, innuendo, denials and Photoshopped fake photos, the real thing was officially unveiled by Steve Jobs today. It's got a 10-inch screen, it will come in 16- and 64-gig versions and it will run existing apps from the App Store (so speculation that it will be a big iPhone seems to be on target). This thing will touch nearly every corner of the geekonomy – publishing (they're putting a big emphasis on its reader capabilities), web tech (it's supposed to deliver "the best browsing experience ever"), music, streaming video, you name it. And the imitators are about to follow, in droves.

On to today's other news  . . .

Job Market

What Am I Worth on the Open Market?: Guidelines on determining freelance fees from someone who's been there.

Economics/Geekonomics

Japanese Exports Expand For First Time Since Crisis: Encouraging news, since the Japanese economy is a big cog in the world economy wheel, not to mention what it means for the geekonomy.

Web Tech/Computers/Technology

Canon Boats Best Earnings Increase in a Decade: A boom in camera sales is to thank for this – so much for the theory that smartphone cameras would make the conventional ones obsolete. We do suspect that a big driver behind this is the enormous popularity of upload-your-own-streaming-video sites.

Yahoo Fourth Quarter Profits Beat Expectations: Rather surprising, given the site's struggling fortunes as of late, but I still wouldn't put them back on the resume list for now.

LG Profits Increase Fourfold: They're best known as a phone manfacturer, but it's their televisons that drove their profits. LG is a solid company that, unlike Yahoo, is a safe resume bet.

Video Games

Marvelous Executives Taking Pay Cuts: The company has also sold its stake in a couple other game firms, so they're definitely not one to approach for employment right now. 

Ubisoft Tightens Anti-Piracy Security: The plan involves product activations, online authentication and saved games that will be stored remotely on Ubi.com servers. Expect to see other companies doing this, so game security may be a good field to specialize in. 

Smartphones

Is "Project Pink" A Zune Phone?: A Windows blogger who analyzed the coding for the next generation of Zune found what seems to be phone drivers in there. It's all speculation right now, but it would make a lot of sense to convert the floundering music player into a multimedia powerhouse. The question is if it would be able to hold its own against the established iPhone and Android – but it's one more thing for software developers to keep an eye on.

Verizon Cutting 13,000 Jobs: This doesn't mean you shouldn't seek a position in the Droid area of the company, though, since nearly all the cuts are coming from its traditional wired services, showing its increasing emphasis on being a wireless carrier.

E-Readers

Acer Throws Its Hat in the Ring: Given that its primary netbook rival, Asus, already announced a reader, it's no surprise Acer is getting into that game as well.

Anime/Manga

Funimation Offers Anime Rentals via YouTube: And this may replace the DVD as the future of most anime releases, folks. It's also interesting to see YouTube getting increasingly involved in streaming rentals – this comes right on the heels of their partnership with the Sundance Film Festival, under which users could pay to watch entries from this and last year.

Publishing

Fourth Quarter Newspaper Results Better than Expected: This according to a survey from JP Morgan of major publishers. Right now, it's more a tiny glimmer of hope than a "yay, the crisis is over," though.

Newsday Online Subscriber Program a Flop: The Long Island newspaper so far has only 35 subscribers for its online content, which was put behind a "paywall" last fall. The newspaper says they're okay with that (which we have a difficult time believing), but it definitely does not bode well for the concept of entirely-online newspapers with print counterparts.

Amazon Publishing Imprint Putting Out Four Original Titles: AmazonEncore was originally founded to reprint out-of-print works, but it's now printing works by winners of its Breakthrough Novel Award contest. Sounds like a great thing for new writers to get involved in – keep an eye out for the next one.  

QUESTION OF THE DAY: Given that readers are transitional and tablets about to catch fire (hello, there, iPad!), are Asus and Acer making a mistake by getting into E-readers?   

- Bonnie