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Has the success of Netflix and its video streaming service inspired Amazon to offer its own competitor? Something that appeared briefly on the Amazon site seems to suggest they’re planning to bring something new to your iPad.

A sharp-eyed Amazon Prime member found something very interesting on the site Saturday morning. At the bottom of a Video-on-Demand movie was this: “Your Amazon Prime membership now includes unlimited, commercial-free, instant streaming of 5,000 movies and TV shows at no additional cost.” This sounds like a pretty good deal, since an Amazon Prime membership is $79 per year, while the same period on Netflix Watch Instantly will run you $95.88.

But don’t get excited about being able to switch over just yet, since the mysterious message has since disappeared from the Amazon site. The Watch Instantly service has certainly attracted more customers to Netflix, which saw its membership increase by 7.7 million last year, and a third of new subscribers are choosing the streaming-only option for $7.99 per month.

The market looks prime for a competitor, and Amazon seems to have what it takes to deliver. Rumors have been swirling that Amazon was interested in purchasing Netflix or starting is own video streaming service, and this info, as briefly as it appeared, would seem to confirm the speculation.

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We just came across a neat little iOS app called AirView which, as you can probably tell from the name, transforms your iOS devices into AirPlay video receivers. It’s dead easy to use, find out how it works after the break.

This free app allows you to turn your device into a streaming media player, drawing its material from another iPhone or iPad, or from your PC or Mac. It’s a little unstable and probably won’t last long in the App Store, but it’s also free and has some great functionality when it works.

Fire up your AirPlay app on the device you want to watch on, and load a video on another device, like iTunes. In the video window, you should see an AirPlay icon — click it, and the program automatically detects your receiving device and streams the video over a local Wi-Fi network to the other device. AirPlay seems to work best for YouTube and downloaded videos. It doesn’t support music or photos yet, but app developer Clement Vasseur has written that he plans to add other media types. That is, if Apple doesn’t bounce this highly functional but free app from the App Store before then.

And since iOS can also output video via AirPlay, this means you can use AirView to either grab AirPlay streams from your computer’s iTunes, or you can stream videos from one iOS device to another (provided that they are both running iOS 4.2 and above, of course).

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Most of us will have to wait a couple of months to actually try out iOS 4.3 for ourselves, but here’s a video test-drive of the cool new features for the iPad.

The beta version of Apple’s upcoming upgrade iOS 4.3 was released yesterday, and MacRumors took it out for a test drive. This video shows how differently we’ll be using our iPads later this year, as tapping, touching and buttons give way to swiping and pinching. Watch carefully to see how four or five fingers can pinch to return to the home screen, which pretty much eliminates the need for a home button. Will it be missing from the iPad 2.0 and iPhone 5?

These changes would seem to indicate a new iPad that will be even more intuitive and user friendly than the existing one, where the user will relate to the device in ways that make computers seem more than ever like relics from the past. The finger gestures seem to interact seamlessly with the user’s apps and make multitasking fast and effortless.

See the video after the jump.

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