In Monday, Sprint Nextel Corp. announced it has made a multiyear contract with a startup called Skiff for a thin electronic book reader that operates over Sprint’s high speed 3G network as well as Wi-Fi.

The Skiff Reader will have an 11.5 inch screen, larger than those on competing devices including Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle, Sony Corp.’s Reader and Barnes & Noble Inc.’s Nook.

Sprint and Skiff as the thinnest device to date, just over one quarter of an inch thick. The reader’s entire page will be a touch screen, unlike the Kindle, which uses physical buttons for navigation, or the corner that has a small built-in touch screen separate from the book page.

The Skiff Reader will connect to store their own content online. Skiff said it also is working with manufacturers of other electronic to put its technology into a variety of devices.

The companies are planning to demonstrate the device this week at the International Consumer  Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Its price and availability date were not disclosed. 

SEATTLE – Also Monday, that Apple Inc. soon will unveil a tablet-style gadget for consuming music, films, books and other media.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple plans to make a device unveiled this month and will begin shipping in March.

That jibes with several online reports that the company has an event scheduled for January 26 or January 27 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, one of Apple’s customary spaces for product launches.

The gadget, which online pundits have at different times christened the iTablet and the iSlate, is to have a 10 inch to 11 inch touch screen, slightly smaller than those on Apple’s MacBook laptops but larger than the iPhone’s, said the Journal, citing unnamed people briefed on the matter.

Apple’s Steve Dowling, a spokesman said the company does not comment on rumors and speculation.

Apple, headquartered in Cupertino, California, so far has remained out of the “netbook” category of small laptops with relatively weak processors and sub-$500 price tags. The company has said it does not know how to make a good computer for under $500 but has indicated it has been considering alternative ideas for that space.

Analysts expect Apple’s new gadget could cost anywhere from $500 to $1,000, with or without a cellular data plan included.

One of the biggest gripes we have heard references to the developers of iPhone in 2009, is that it took forever to make their apps through the approval process iTunes App Store . Often apps would be disapproved for seemingly illogical reasons after a long wait in the approval queue, and TUAW heard from more than one developer that had just given up.

iTunes Connect, the portal through which developers submit iPhone apps and check sales, was down between December 23 to 28, 2009. Since then, TUAW has received a number of positive emails from iPhone developers indicating that Apple iPhone has taken a decision to increase Apps in 2010.

How fast are few apps making it through the process? Take developer Aaron Douglas’s free Migraine Diary [iTunes Link]; he submitted it on 28 December at 9 PM CT and received notice of the approval a 4 PM CT on the 31 December — that’s less than three days.

But this is quite slow compared to what Yuri, a developer at Atomic Cactus, experienced:

I am a developer who is behind Atomic Cactus, we have 3 games currently in the app store, and they all took approximately 2-3 weeks to get approved. Today at 4:00 am I submitted for approval our latest app, which is not exactly a “fart app” (it’s a pretty polished puzzle game with OpenFeint). As of 1:30 pm today, the app is in the app store.

It is nine and a half hours, guys! This is a small sampling of the many emails we’ve received from developers since just after Christmas.

If this is due to a New Year’s resolution, competition from the Android platform, or a new back-end system for processing apps, it is a welcome change for iPhone developers and users alike.