The Daily launch at 11am to stream live, News.me coming to compete

It's less than an hour until the NYC launch event for The Daily, News Corp's much-anticipated newspaper for the iPad. If you want to keep up with the event live, it appears that it will be streamed directly from thedaily.com. For those who follow such things, Poynter has sussed out the likely masthead crew for the publication's launch, and it's well stocked with print and new media veterans.

Meanwhile, other publishing behemoths are not standing still while Rupert Murdoch stakes a claim on the touchable territory of daily iPad periodicals. TechCrunch reports that News.me, the New York Times' quasi-answer to The Daily, is being built by Betaworks and will be much more of a social newsreader (think Flipboard on steroids) than a traditional, original-content driven title. The app will include both licensed and free-to-read content that is curated, promoted and passively voted-up by your Twitter friends and followers.

However you like your iPad news -- print-centric, or driven by the titans of broadcast and cable news, or pushed from Internet-only upstarts -- your choices are about to expand.

[hat tips to Macstories & Gizmodo]