Nearly half of all American adults (47%) say they get at least some local news and information on their cell phone or tablet computer, according to a new study. But mobile applications are not yet playing a major part in that consumption -- only one in 10 use apps for local news and only 1% pay for those apps. 

When it comes to the type of local content people are looking for, it's typically practical and real-time: 42% of mobile users get weather updates and 37% get material about restaurants or other local businesses on their phones or tablets. Fewer get news about local traffic and transportation, general news alerts or other local topics.

The findings come from a survey of 2,251 conducted in January by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project and Project for Excellence in Journalism, in partnership with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

A tablet OS that I might use. :) Though I'm not all that interested in a portable device that doesn't fit in my pocket.

Getty Images

Research In Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry PlayBook, the tablet designed to compete with the iPad from Steve Jobs’s Apple Inc., is winning corporate customers months before its debut.

Insurer Sun Life Financial Inc. has agreed to buy as many as 1,000 PlayBooks, and the Canadian banking unit of ING Groep NV says it is also committed to purchasing the device. Companies including Manulife Financial Corp. are testing the product, set to go on sale next quarter.

RIM first found success selling its BlackBerry smartphone to companies and is counting on such endorsements as it tries to challenge Apple’s dominance of the booming tablet market.

The Hanvon Windows 7 tablet is expected to be released by Microsoft by the end of this year as a means to compete with the iPad. It's got a lot of cool stuff and looks pretty fast (actually beats out the iPad in speed tests) but I think Microsoft still has a bit more work to do. What do you think? Watch the video see the battle of the touch screen tablets

With the popularity of the iPad is continuously increasing. It is safe to say that there is a huge market for tablets and handheld devices of the sort but what has happened to the iPad alternatives?

Here's some more info about AIR Mobile.

Also, I'd like to make a correction to my previous link: Apparently that "AIR Mobile on iPad" article yesterday was slightly incorrect. (And the URL below the video does not go to the article I had intended it to: http://mashable.com/2010/02/16/wired-magazine-ipad-demo/ Sorry for not double checking it.)

That was AIR Mobile on an unidentified mobile device, though I'm told it was probably one running Android, not the iPad. The article on Mashable does claim that "AIR is apparently the technology behind the iPad application’s rich-text, imagery, animation and interactivity functionality." Your guess is as good as mine as to how valid that statement is.