Later this year Netflix will be expanding their Watch Instantly streaming video service, making it available to Canadian residents.

In addition to being the first service offered by the home video rental giant outside the US, it will also mark the first time they have offered streaming by itself. To date their streaming video offering has been an add on to their popular rent by mail DVD and Blu-ray service.

That's not likely to be changing any time soon for US customers. When the plan for streaming outside the US was first mentioned last October, CEO Reed Hastings was clear that it was purely due to the logistical issues of shipping discs internationally.

And selling the exclusively online service to Canadians isn't a sure winner either. Although Netflix has made some headway in licensing new releases and increasing their selection of recent TV episodes for streaming, such arrangements are still the exception.

Canadians interested in the service can go to www.netflix.ca and sign up for email notification when the service launches.

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Wired has written a very interesting exposé this week on the relationship between AT&T and its star player in the smartphone market, Apple, with the site claiming Apple actively considered pulling the iPhone from the carrier at least five times.

In 2007, with the launch of the original iPhone, AT&T asked Apple to start limiting use of the YouTube app via 3G, asking them to limit it to only Wi-Fi. Apple refused, saying it would not "gimp" its device to help the overburdened network.

That fight was the first of many, and allegedly Apple CEO Steve Jobs began looking into a jump to Verizon at that point, very early into the relationship.

While the company looked into Verizon "seriously," the move would have required developers to build the smartphone "from scratch" all over again, moving from GSM to CDMA. There was also, of course, the exclusivity pact with AT&T.

Additionally, there were other battles, such as over tethering, where AT&T wanted to charge, and Apple wanted it included in the monthly data plan. The ability to tether now costs $20 extra per month.

There is a lot more to the story. Finish it here: Bad Connection: Inside the iPhone Network Meltdown

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Amazon has said today that Kindle e-reader sales have tripled since the e-tailer dropped the price of the device last month.

E-books sales now out pace that of physical books, as well, adds the giant e-tailer.

The Kindle dropped in price from $250 to $190, and Amazon also released an updated Kindle DX for $379, a steep price drop off the first-generation device which sold for $489.

As has been policy, Amazon did not release any specific numbers on how many units were sold.

Rival Barnes & Noble last month also lowered the price of the popular Nook e-reader.

"In addition, even while our hardcover sales continue to grow, the Kindle format has now overtaken the hardcover format," added CEO Jeff Bezos. "Amazon.com customers now purchase more Kindle books than hardcover books -- astonishing when you consider that we've been selling hardcover books for 15 years, and Kindle books for 33 months."

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If Apple continues its trend of strong revenue growth for the upcoming quarter, the company will surpass Microsoft in overall revenue, for the first time ever.

Apple is expected to report a massive $14.62 billion in revenue for the quarter, but some analysts expect revenue as high as $15.74 billion. Microsoft, on the other hand is expected to report $15.25 billion in revenue with a high estimate of $15.73 billion.

Microsoft dominates the personal computing world, with Windows found on 90 percent of computers worldwide and Office or Works found on nearly all computers that require a word processing suite.

Apple, on the other hand, completely dominates the MP3 player market with the iPod, the tablet market with the iPad and a decent chunk of the smartphone market, with the iPhone.

In April, Apple reported that revenue jumped to $13.50 billion, thanks to strong Mac computer and iPhone sales.

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If you are an active Twitter user, you have undoubtedly used or seen the URL shortener bit.ly.

Gigaom is reporting today that Yahoo is actively considering acquiring the shortening service, with interest growing over the past two months.

Bit.ly is said to have raised up to $5 million in venture capital since its launch in early 2009.

Although unconfirmed, Bit.ly was reportedly asking for up to $100 million in a sale to Google.

Says the source: "What Yahoo wants to do is aggregate its users' activities from around the web. The Facebook Connect integration is the first in a string of coming deals with other social sites… And now, at the center of Yahoo's new open social strategy, is a product called Yahoo Updates, which consists of activity streams shown in Yahoo Mail, on its front page, in Yahoo Messenger clients and on its toolbars."

The larger question remains, however, whether Bit.ly, which tracks the click-performance of the shortened URLs, and any conversations linked to that URL, is worth the multi-million dollar valuation.

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Apple has confirmed today that the popular iPad will be launched in Austria, Belgium, Hong Kong, Ireland, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand and Singapore starting this Friday.

All 3G and Wi-Fi models of the tablet will be available in each nation.

As of today, the tablet is available in the U.S., UK, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain and Switzerland.

In the United States, the device retails for between $499 and $829, depending on the model.

Apple announced in late June that they had sold 3 million units of the iPad, in just 80 days.

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HP has filed for a trademark application for the term PalmPad, which has led many observers to suggest that the company will name their upcoming WebOS tablet by the name.

Even on the simplest level, the name implies use of WebOS, which was created by Palm on a tablet, although everything is speculation at this point.

Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P applied for the trademark.

In April, HP purchased Palm for $1.2 billion, after outbidding RIM, Apple and Lenovo.

With the acquisition, the company also acquired all of Palm's patents and its WebOS mobile operating system.

HP has promised to use the operating system on tablets, printers and other non-computing devices, as well.

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