Devices like the Kindle, the Nook (the top part of the screen that displays books) and popular e-readers from Sony use a technology called e-paper. It simulates the look of an actual printed page and does not emit light. That means, unlike the iPad, you can effectively read in direct sunlight. (Beach, anyone?)

The iPad, however, contains a touchscreen liquid-crystal display that, like computer screens and television sets, emits light. On the plus side, you can sneak the device under the covers while your significant other sleeps beside you and flip through a couple pages of a book without a flashlight.

But staring at the screen before bed could leave you lying awake. That’s because direct exposure to such abnormal light sources inhibits the body’s secretion of melatonin, say several sleep experts.

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The surprising fact, however, is that according to Chitika Research, about 50% of iPad owners have a Windows computer in their home.

Chitika checked the IP addresses of iPads that used the Chitika network and searched out what other devices came from the same addresses. They limited the results to IP addresses with 5 or less devices seen. The results are based on a sample of over 74 thousand iPads.

Does this mean more Windows users are willing to give Apple a chance, or is this true just when it comes to sexy products like the iPad? And what will happen when Windows-based tablets start appearing in the market?

In the mean time, Apple’s stocks continue to rise, after an impressive quarterly report, and the story about the “lost” iPhone prototype continues to attract interest. The headlines are all Apple these days – and I guess they’ll continue to be this way for a while.

Jim Greer, CEO and co-founder of Kongregate, did an AMA (Ask Me Anything) session on Reddit. It was extremely interesting and Greer supplied some fascinating facts. Here are the highlights from the chat:

First, the stats

Kongregate has 8.5 million unique visitors per month and logs 21 million hours played per month. The site’s 95% peak bandwidth usage from the datacenter is 75Mbps, but that’s just for html. All of the site’s assets are delivered through an Akamai CDN.

As for money matters, Greer says the site is breaking even, and should become profitable this year:

We’ve done 3 rounds of funding totalling $9M. The first was an angel round led by Reid Hoffman, who is the founder of LinkedIn and investor in Facebook, Flickr, Last.FM, among others. Then an VC firm called Greylock invested $5M – they are also investors in Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, Pandora, Zipcar, Redfin, Redhat, etc. A then Jeff Bezos put in $3M. This was his personal money, not Amazon’s…

Kongregate currently employs 21 people.

The Man Behind the Site

Greer, 39, was a game developer, then web game developer, then web site developer. He worked at Origin, Shockwave.com, and Pogo. You can see his read his resume here. He also co-designed and programmed an RTS called Netstorm. His favorite games on Kongregate are:

• Fancy Pants 1 & 2
• Remnants of Skystone
• The Company of Myself
• Particles (simple!)
• The Bloons series
• Portal the Flash Version

The Feminine Side

As a woman and a gamer (not necessarily in that order…) I was very interested about the status of female gamers on Kongregate. Greer answered my question and reported that only 10% of the registered users in Kongregate are female. Their favorite games are:

• GemCraft chapter 0
• Music Catch 2
• GemCraft
• Bloons Tower Defense 4
• Bloons Tower Defense 3
• Desktop Tower Defense 1.5
• Zilch
• Protector III
• Factory Balls 2
• Desktop TD Pro

This is very interesting, since you can see that women don’t play only “casual” games, but go for more hardcore types, such as tower defense games.

Game Developers

When asked if game developers can actually make a living off of the games in the site, Greer said:

Some of the virtual goods games are on track to do $500K-$1M total revenue this year. Among single player games there are lots of developers making tens of thousands of dollars in their share of ad revenue. And that’s just on Kongregate – definitely possible to make a living on flash games, though not easy.

iPad and Flash

Greer obviously isn’t happy with the lack of Flash support on the iPad. He explains that HTML 5 is great for video and it’s easy to convert a Flash video, but it’s not easy to convert a Flash game or app into javascript.

This is great if you’re trying to, say, sell games in an app store. It sucks if you are a game player or Flash game developer (of which there are many). I’m all for new formats, like Unity, but it sucks to shut out so much great stuff.

Can’t make up your mind? Here’s a flowchart that might help you out:

(Source)