Branson beat Murdoch on the iPad only media draw, but will either be a viable solution to the revenue challenges print media has faced from the internet?

Along with all those magazines, there have been rumblings as of late concerning Rupert Murdoch’s latest publication, a newspaper built specifically for the iPad. The publication will be called The Daily, and will be just that, a daily newspaper for the iPad. To set it apart from other excellent papers on the iPad, The Daily will only be available on the iPad, no print or web version at all. Murdoch’s News Corp has been spending a lot of time putting the publication together, getting about 100 journalists including a few big names to work on the project. {Electronista}

Not to be outdone by Murdoch, however, Virgin CEO Richard Branson started his own publication, Project, an iPad-only magazine. Branson’s Project was just launched today with a free app with one issue that costs $2.99. While the Project magazine is iPad-only, there is a blog that is available on the web as well as through the app. The magazine even cheekily tells reader to think of the blog s a “Project Daily.” The magazine itself will be monthly as opposed to the daily issues of Murdoch’s approach. {Project}

These publications aren’t the first to come out for the iPad, and certainly won’t be the last. What makes this perceived battle between Murdoch and Branson interesting is that it will test just how viable the iPad is as a means of publication (and other tablets, as well, though the iPad is the most popular and uniform at the moment). Neither approach gives up-to-the minute content you’d expect from a blog or online news source, but the rich media lends itself well to the iPad. It could turn out that both or neither publication is successful, but that lacks the drama of the Branson vs Murdoch fight we’d love to see play out.

Virgin Galactic CEO, Richard Branson, holding a spacecraft model. From the Daily Mail.

Lucky for us, Virgin’s eccentric CEO, Richard Branson, is making our dreams come true. For the past five years, Virgin Galactic has been working on commercial space travel (instead of spending millions to fly to a space station, you spend hundreds of thousands to float around suborbitally) and just unveiled its first mothership, the Enterprise, last week in Nevada.

And who will be the first to make sweet sweet intergalactic music? 80s group Spandau Ballet - who’ll be playing one of their hit singles to a massive audience of one (hey, they’re playing in space! So what if you can only fit one audience goer in the spacecraft!).

That’s one ticket that would make a killer Christmas present…

Read More {The Daily Mail}

Read More {Gadling}

Read More {Jaunted}

Read More {Gizmodo}