In just a few short hours I will be in a jet plane over the Atlantic Ocean con destino a Berlin. Yes: I’m going to IFA. And truth be told, one of the biggest things to come out of the show will be the Samsung tablet, the Galaxy Tab. Here’s what we know so far.

By now, we’ve learned the Japanese have found a number of creative ways to use the iPad. And today we can show you a new one: the iPad as the basis of a sophisticated, yet low-cost point of sale cash register system. Dubbed FLAVIUS [JP], the system is actually being used by several business across Japan already.

Shanzai performed some decidedly sober analysis of the tablet market and came away with one simple conclusion: no matter how much LG boasts, no matter how much Samsung leaks, no matter how many Notion Inks ship, the tablet market is sewn up this year. Why? Because no one will have product in pipeline for the holidays and thus the only things selling in the slate form factor will be the Kindle, Nook, and iPad, in that order, and you’ll note that two of those items aren’t tablets.

Japan not only loves the iPad, it also finds creative ways to use it. Now Sharp (of all companies) is testing a self-ordering system for Izakaya, Japanese-style restaurants, that’s based on the device. The idea is to do away with the usual hardcopy menus and make it possible for customers to choose and directly order what they like through an iPad.

You’re Apple. You’re selling millions of iPhones, millions of iPads, and millions of notebooks. The App Store is printing money, but conversion rates aren’t fast enough for your liking. How do you get more people hooked on your mobile and touch platform? Easy: convert all your devices into iOS devices. iOS convertibles, to be precise.

A patent filing by Apple describes a pair of devices with the plain object of providing the user with both OS X and iOS on demand. The iMac Touch (not an official term, but good enough) would lean over and tilt up, providing a tablet-like surface on which to browse or play games. The MacBook Touch would feature a swiveling, flipping screen much like existing laptop-tablet convertibles. I don’t know about you, but I think they sound great. And expensive.

While the value of this information is fairly dubious and fraught with hidden factors, it seems that the Kindle store is outselling the iBooks store (on iPad) by 60 to 1. First, let’s look at the source of this information and then discuss why ebooks are winning and, more specifically, the Kindle store won.

A young man name J.A. Konrath, who seems to write mysteries, noted that he sells many, many ebooks, commenting that the Kindle store is literally making all of his boat payments for him. However, the iBook store is garbage. He writes:

That leaves Apple, and according to my numbers Apple is a very small part of the ebook market. I sell 200 ebooks a day on Kindle. On iPad, I sell 100 a month.

You know what? The LG Marketing VP should get a raise. Stating the LG Optimus Tablet will be better than the iPad to the Wall Street Journal won the Internet today. It is without a doubt one of the most talked about tech stories of the day, which means the VP of Marketing simply did his job.

Our post on the tablet is today’s most commented story across the entire TechCrunch network. It’s Engadget’s second most commented post of the day and one of the highest visited posts on Gizmodo so far today. It even occupied the top spot on Techmeme for most of the day with 25 blogs joining in on the conversation. All because of a silly little quote.

Lunascape, the company behind the eponymous triple-engine browser for desktop PCs, has just released its first browser created specifically for the iPad. Dubbed iLunascape, the browser is available for free in the App Store, and it’s a more than solid alternative to Safari on the iPad.

Most importantly, iLunascape allows for desktop-like tabbed browsing on the iPad (a first for a free app). Up to six tabs can be opened at the same time, and users can switch between them easily via thumb taps. Tabbed browsing works great (and fast), especially because iLunascape comes with a iPad-specific UI that takes into account how most people actually hold and use the device.

Read the rest on TechCrunch.

The iPad is many things and Apple is happy to point out most of its positive characteristics in the latest ad spot: delicious, current, learning, playful, literary, artful, friendly, productive, scientific, and magical. Fair enough. I can get on board with those. I’m just looking forward to the spoof version that will likely drop before the end of the day proclaim all the negative sides too: closed, limited, novelty, restricted, safe, censored and boring — you know, a video that tells the whole story, not just paint a rosy picture. Anyway, click through for the new video. It’s clever.

Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronic components manufacturer that makes products like certain Dell computers and Apple‘s iPad and iPhone devices, was – as widely reported – hit by a string of suicides among its workers earlier this year.

Apparently, this hasn’t had much effect on their growth rate (surprise): according to Bloomberg, the company plans to hire as many as 400,000 workers in China in the next twelve months.

Mobile ad network Millennial Media is releasing its monthly mobile mix report today. According to Nielsen, Millennial’s ads reach 63 million of a total of 77 million mobile web users in the U.S., or 81% of the U.S. mobile web. In July, Android OS grew at a faster clip than in June, with requests increasing by 47 percent, compared to a 23 percent growth in the previous month. Since January, Android OS requests have grown 690 percent. Android has also surpassed RIM to became the number two OS on the Millennial network (surpassing RIM).

Apple ad requests increased 24 percent month-over-month, but are actually down 15% since January. However, iPad requests continue to show massive growth, rising 327 percent in July. RIM ad requests increased 18 percent month-over-month, rising 66 percent since January.

Telecom giant China Unicom, which exclusively carries the iPhone in China today, will be selling Apple’s iPad in the world’s largest mobile market starting very soon, an unnamed company insider told Chinese media company Caixin.

That is in line with earlier reports, which foresaw an August launch for the tablet computer in China, although admittedly a definitive launch date for the iPad in China has not been announced yet.

Ah, the 7-inch iPad rumor. It’s been circling around for quite some time. This time, though, the Chinese news outlet Economic Daily News is reporting that the smaller iPad might hit retailer’s shelves before Christmas and, well, the source could be correct. They have a great track record and accurately reported the iPad‘s launch well before the Stevenote. However, the smaller iPad would need to launch rather soon for it to see successful holiday sales. Perhaps during the iPod touch Facetime event that’s rumored to be right around the corner.

The B&N eReader iPad, iPhone, and PC apps are no more. Instead, B&N now has brand new apps, complete with updated features, but more importantly, new branding. From here on out, it will be called Nook for iPad, Nook for iPhone and lastly, Nook for PC. See what they’re doing there? Replacing the B&N branding with that of the Nook just like on the Nook for Android app. Here’s a pic of the previous iPad version. Clever, eh?