Web design company Plaveb has created an infographic called, “Tablet vs. Smartphone,” which explores adoption rates of different devices among the different genders and age groups.

According to the graphic, games make up 39 percent of downloads on smartphones, while games make up 67 percent of the apps downloaded on tablets. We’ve embedded the entire infographic after the jump.

Check it out: “Here, we take a look at how different tablets and smartphones are faring in the market. We look at how users use their tablets, what kind of apps they prefer using, what activities they perform through their devices and how smartphones compare to tablets in all these departments.” Read more

iPad Mini

It’s been a busy year for tablet makers. To help you navigate through all of the choices that are available for sale this holiday season, we’ve put together a list of the top 5 tablets that are available this year. Each entry includes the name of the device, the price and some details that summarize the tablet’s features.

1. iPad 4/iPad Mini, $499 16GB/$329 16GB: Apple is back this year with two new choices in iPad — the iPad 4 and the iPad Mini. The iPad 4 has a 9.7-inch LED backlit screen with a resolution of 2048 x 1536. It has two high-def cameras for shooting images and videos (720/1080) and for using Facetime. It runs a dual core A6X chip. The iPad Mini is Apple’s 7.9-inch tablet that runs Apple’s dual-core A5 chip. It comes with a 1024-by-768 resolution screen, two cameras and comes with a lightning to USB cable. Both sell apps through the App Store.

2. Kindle Fire HD (7-inch 16GB $199/8.9-inch 32GB $499): The latest 7-inch Kindle tablet comes with a 1280×800 HD display with an anti-glare filter, a 1.2 Ghz dual-core processor, as well as Dolby speakers, and a camera for shooting photos, videos and using Skype. The 8.9-inch version has a 1920×1200 HD display and a 1.5Ghz dual-core processor. These Android devices can access apps through Amazon’s App Store. Read more

Who didn’t love Reading Rainbow as a kid?  The iconic 80s show used songs, celebrities and video to actually make literature fun. Well, times they do change. And the show’s onetime host, LeVar Burton, says that Reading Rainbow just wouldn’t work on TV today and, furthermore, the days of printed books are also numbered.

“I don’t know what the time frame is, but I do know that at some point, cutting down trees to make books is not sustainable. It’s just one of those things we’re gonna have to get over ourselves about, right? Like oil consumption, it’s just not sustainable,” he explained in our latest Media Beat interview. ”So, we’re looking at a future, whenever it comes, that we’re gonna consume most of the reading that we do on some kind of electronic device or another. We will still have printed books; they’ll never go away. I think our emotional attachment to them is too strong. What it will do, I believe, though is make the books that we own more valuable to us, more precious.”

(And watch the full interview for a freakin’ awesome homage to that beloved RR theme song.)

Part 2: Tuesday, Burton introduces us to the new Reading Rainbow app.
Part 3: Wednesday, we discuss Burton’s role in Roots and how he achieved longevity in Hollywood.

There may be a lot of tablets coming to the tablet, but the iPad is still dominating the scene. According to a new study from Strategy Analytics, 95% of all tablet computer shipments in the third quarter were iPads.

The Wall Street Journal has more: “The Boston-based research firm said the tablet computer shipments rose 26% from the previous quarter. Google Inc.’s Android operating system represented just 2% of global tablet shipments that were made by generic device manufacturers. However, that percentage is expected to rise in the current quarter, as more models, such as Samsung Electronics Co.’s Galaxy Tab, enter the market, the study said.”

Samsung’s Galaxy and Dell’s Streak might help balance things a bit more, but it will take a lot to match the popularity of the iPad. Maybe Blackberry’s new PlayBook, which comes out in January 2011 will help.