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NOTE: This post is part of our “The 10 Best iPad Applications for News” series. Do check back and view the latest reviews.

The Financial Times seem to be  leading the pack in terms of  downloads so far, with  MobileMarketing reporting that the  newspaper group’s iPad app has  been downloaded 130,000 times in  its first two weeks. Their marketing  strategy is interesting: thanks to  sponsorship from Swiss  watchmaker Hublot , the app is free  until the end of July, by which time,  FT purports, users would have had  enough of a sample dabble around  to realize the investment in paying  for unlimited, instant access on the  tablet, (current subscribers will  continue to get content). There is a lovely familiarity in using the app, with the recognisable FT branding and style, page design and layout.

We have spent the last couple of weeks playing with testing a myriad of different iPad applications – paying particular attention to those that deliver news. Some publishers seem to be viewing the iPad as a license to continue believing their old business model still works. Some are using it as a great opportunity to get some incremental revenue. And others are driving for reach, with free apps. And of course, there are a few upstarts that are creating nice curated/aggregated news sites.

Following on from our series “The 10 Best iPad Applications for News“, we decided to do the same for magazines. Glossies lend themselves so well to the iPad format, with its superb and shiny user experience, and we have played with some superb offerings.

This post is long overdue. As so many magazine publishers are seizing on the iPhone as the saviour of their falling-circulation-and-advertising-revenue woes, a roundup of the various magazines using the iPhone is definitely in order.

If you haven't already heard, then the big news this week is Google fusing Google+ into their search results with 'Search, Plus Your World.' The roll out began on the 10th of January; however it is only for those signed into Google.com and searching in English.

In a nutshell Google search results are going to be automatically personalised for each user, these results will then show alongside 'normal' search results.