Amazon Prime today continues its battle with Netflix and Redbox Instant, in a fight to get control of that monthly fee you lay out in the name of entertainment. This time the retail giant strikes with a new agreement between it and the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio to expand availability of content.

The company brought the hit series Vikings to its British and German viewers through LOVEFiLM back in May, but those who failed to watch season one in the US can now also catch up with Ragnor and his crew.

When you spend a sizable amount of money on a device, it's understandable that you wish to have a bit of insurance on your investment, and a fair amount of us do that by purchasing a protective case. Apple is no stranger to the accessory market and today pushes it a bit further, announcing new offerings for its latest iPad devices.

These protective wombs for your tablet are available in a range of colors. The Smart Covers for iPad Air and iPad mini with Retina display will retail for $39, and hit the market in a choice of blue, green, pink, yellow, black and red.

Despite being billed in the press as an iPad event, Apple announced much more than just the iPad Air and new iPad mini today. As well as improved hardware it revealed its OS update Mavericks would be free, and the giveaways didn’t stop there.

Its iWork productivity apps -- Pages, Numbers and Keynote -- and its iLife creativity apps -- iPhoto, iMovie and GarageBand -- have been redesigned to take full advantage of OS X Mavericks and iOS 7, updated to 64-bit, integrated with iCloud and made entirely free. They’ll come bundled with new Macs or iOS devices. If you’re an existing user, and running Mavericks or iOS 7, you’ll be able to update to the new versions. Not planning on buying new hardware and not an existing user? You’ll still need to pay to get them, I’m afraid.

It was a feature-packed morning of announcements where it seems as though Apple was going to give away everything for free. Sadly the freebies are limited to software and the new range of hardware has to be purchased in the regular way. The big news for tablet fans is the iPad Air. Borrowing its name -- in part at least -- from the MacBook Air range, thinner and faster are the adjectives of the day.

Phil Schiller said: "Thinner, lighter, more powerful than ever before, and incredibly, excitingly new that it deserves a new name: iPad Air". Boasting the same A7 processor as the recently announced iPhone 5s, the iPad Air is just 7.5mm thick and weighs 1 pound -- compare this to 9.4mm and 1.4 pounds for the previous model. Despite the thinner design and smaller battery size, we can still expect 10 hours of usage from the tablet which offers up to eight times the performance of the original iPad, and up to 72 times the GPU performance.

Starting today, Mac users are able to officially upgrade to OS X 10.9 Mavericks. However, instead of charging its customers for the newest Mac operating system, like the company did before, Apple is giving it away for free. If that sounds familiar, it's because it is. Microsoft is doing the same thing with Windows 8.1, which is also available as a free upgrade to all Windows 8 users.

"Mavericks is an incredible release, which introduces significant new apps and features, while also improving the performance and battery life of your Mac", says Apple senior vice president of Software Engineering Craig Federighi. "We want every Mac user to experience the latest features, the most advanced technologies, and the strongest security. We believe the best way to do this is to begin a new era of personal computing software where OS upgrades are free". Therefore, it should not come as a surprise if Apple chooses to adopt the same strategy for the next release of OS X, which will likely arrive next year.

BlackBerry has relaunched BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) for Android and iOS, almost a month after its previous attempt was derailed by a leaked edition.

This time the company appears to be keeping more control over events, in particular by making some users wait for an official notification email before they can use the app.

The jury is out on stylus input on mobile devices, though many people likely are happy if the option is there, even if it goes unused. Drawing or writing on a screen may not be for everyone, but it has its place in the market, and today Google adds support for your handwriting to both Gmail and Google Docs.

"Whether you’re a student trying to include a foreign phrase in your paper or an international consultant hoping to begin your message with a friendly local greeting, now you’ll be able to use your own handwriting to input words directly into Gmail and Google Docs with your mouse or trackpad", states Google Product Manage Xiangye Xiao.

It's only a matter of weeks since the last big Apple event at which the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c were announced. Today we have another event to look forward to and while we're not absolutely certain of what's going to be unveiled, the clever money is on the iPad 5, a new iPad mini, new Mac and release details for Mavericks.

Who knows… maybe there'll even be "one more thing"!

Migrating existing applications to the cloud can be a major headache for companies. Extensive testing is needed to ensure everything works as it should and without it the process becomes something of a leap in the dark. In a bid to help with this Boston based Cloud Technology Partners has produced its PaaSLane product, released today as a free public beta.

The idea behind PaaSLane is a simple one, automatically analyzing the code of an application before migration in order to cut down the amount of manual effort required. Out of the box the software is tuned generically to work with all cloud platforms, so it's compatible with Azure, Google and Amazon Web Services. However, users can define their own rule sets to take account of special requirements or non-public clouds.

A new study by Juniper Research finds that a combination of increased use of analytics along with new advertising formats and buying mechanisms will push mobile ad spending close to $40 billion by 2018.

Targeted in-app advertising is seen as offering a major opportunity and the report notes the way Facebook has used ads in its native apps over the past year as an example of the technique's success. Mobile now makes up 41 percent of Facebook's overall advertising revenue and the company recently announced it's to start rolling out video ads in a bid to boost performance with more media-rich content.

When a big tech company live streams a launch event, we usually embed it here for readers to sit back and enjoy. Apple likes to make things difficult though. At last month’s iPhone event it didn’t bother providing a live stream, and you can only watch today’s iPad event if you’re one of the Apple faithful.

To be fair, the restrictions on today’s live stream should surprise no one. It’s exactly the same deal as the iPad reveal last year -- you need to be watching on Apple TV or using Safari 4 on Mac OS X 10.6 or later, or iOS 4.3 or later.

In a bad economy, using a product for more than one thing is a necessity. In bad times, women have been known to reuse pantyhose as coffee filters. Today, my family reuses plastic Chinese-food containers as refrigerator food storage. Sadly, this is not always the case with technology -- electronics have become disposable due to low prices and a culture of always wanting the newest thing.

Today, accessory manufacturer ROCCAT bucks that trend and announces a public beta of its Power-Grid technology. This software allows a user to control games and other programs on their Windows PC with an iOS or Android device. In other words, it allows consumers to reuse existing technology for new purposes. Awesome.

My friend Dave Taht, who battles bufferbloat for us all, pointed me today to a document from the Wireless Internet Service Provider Association. It’s the WISPA CALEA Compliance Guide, which details most of the rules that wireless ISPs are required to follow by CALEA -- the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1994. These rules, variants of which apply to all telcos and to ISPs of all kinds (not just wireless), say what those companies are required to do to comply with the law. More directly, it specifies how they can be required to intercept customer communications and relay that content to law enforcement agencies.

Read it if you have a moment. The document, which is chilling, explains a lot both in what it says and what it doesn’t say.

Alongside the new Lumia 1520 and Lumia 1320 Windows Phone 8 phablets and the Lumia 2520 Windows RT 8.1 slate, Nokia also announces a number of popular apps and games that are set to launch on Microsoft's tiled smartphone operating system.

Undoubtedly, the most popular new title to grace Windows Phone Store is Instagram. The photo-sharing social network will finally launch its offering "in the coming weeks", roughly a year after Microsoft introduced its latest smartphone operating system.

In a bid to foil plans to create a backup of the site, isoHunt closes its doors ahead of its planned shutdown. On 16 October, isoHunt founder Gary Fung struck a deal with the MPAA, bringing to an end a series of court battles that have waged for several years.

Fung agreed to pay damages of $110 million and to shut down isoHunt -- along with TorrentBox, www.podtropolis.com and www.ed2k-it.com -- within seven days.