The six top iOS and Android tablet stories in the world today

Feed me some pills, man. Tablets of any flavour always prove the most delicious and irresistible link bait for the Google Spiders. 

They are most beloved by readers, and thus also by tech and business publishers of all persuasions. Apple's iOS and Google's Android are the IT equivalent of Tom and Katie's divorce - guaranteed rolled gold page impression pump primers.

Let's get started: First up today, Google's Nexus 7 burst onto the charts barely a fortnight ago and has held it audience fascinated.

Computing in the UK reports on what it calls "teardown" by research outfit IHS which suggests that Google is turning a $7.50 manufacturing cost gap between high and low end unit specs into a $50 margin gap at the cash register. In other words that's 550 per cent leverage.

The article cleverly breaks down the component costs and says that Google, "seems to be using the decision not to include SD card support on the machine to its distinct advantage".

Meanwhile Mashable reports that HTC is working on a unique new tablet (their emphasis not ours.) The story notes that this will be third time lucky for HTC (or maybe not) which has tried and failed twice already with the Flyer and the Jetstream.

Like all good link bait offerings, Mashable didn't actually uncover the story itself but sourced it from another title, in this case the UK edition of PC Advisor.

TechCrunch managed to flatter and provoke both Fanboy camps with a piece called "An iPad Lover's take on the Nexus 7". 

The story by noted writer MG Siegler leads in with, " ... brace yourselves. You may want small children to leave the room. I’m about to do something I don’t do often — something I always said I’d do if the product deserved it. Something some people seem to think I’m incapable of: praise a Google product — an Android-based Google product, no less." 

Actually in fairness to Siegler, pretty much anything he writes stands a good chance of making it onto the winner's podium at TechCrunch so the story's popularity is more a reflection of his standing in the tech community than any rapaciousness by his (usually rapacious) publisher - not that Adriana Huffington is complaining.

Back in Terra Nullius, Computerworld Australia scored a double whammy - firstly with a story about retailers (in the US) struggling to keep up with demand, and then with a similar piece republished from sister web Network World called "Google Nexus 7 buyers miffed retailers selling Android tablets's first". 

In other words nobody's happy which of course is the perfect journalistic outcome - and if Computerworld wins from having two tablet stories in its top 5 - well that's just grist for the mill.

And finally, never let it be said we at CRN don't know a good grift when we (or our readers) spot one. Hence, a story on iPhone 5, iPad Mini samples caught on camera was still sitting in the top 5 a ful four days after it was originally posted.

Click Whoring 101

Finally, in each blog we'll identify the three of the day's most egregious examples of Click Whoring from the business and tech press.

Let's see if you can spot the IT angle in each, (or frankly any) of these stories - all of which registered on the most read sections of their respective sites.

In third place, but only because there's still a slither of legitimacy in the topic we've put Business Insider's link to its own report entitled, "The Secret Lives of Teenagers online".

It had generated just over half a million views when we last looked - which at a conservative advertising yield of $6 per thousand makes it a $30,000 story. Here's a hint why - porn.

Notice how we worked the word porn into the story...twice.

In second place - because try as we might there's just nothing to qualify this as tech news - was Mashable's evidently popular decision to run a four minute preview clip of the zombie apocalypse TV series "Walking Dead."

But for sheer and unadulterated shamelessness we simply couldn't go beyond specialist UK tech site The Register's most popular story of the moment - "Naked Scarlett Johansson pic snatch 'is worth 6 years' porridge".

Seriously, you can't make this stuff up. Aye Carumba!

Andrew Birmingham is a Sydney based dotcom entrepreneur and occasional commentator. Follow him on Twitter @ag_birmingham.