WIRED Magazine and Adobe has teamed up to develop a digital-based form of the magazine that is much more than a simple website. It is suppose to combine the best from both of the print and web worlds. Using Adobe Air and tablet technology, this video shows a live demo of what could be the future of magazine.
More details and information of this product demo can be read in this Adobe’s blog post
Almost a year ago, in an interview with the New York Times, Chris Anderson, WIRED’s editor in chief, hinted on the print magazine’s need for a brand new direction in this digital age. “‘We need to do something that doesn’t exist online, and do it in a superior way. Otherwise we should just do it online,’” said Anderson, who is not part of the magazine’s website operation in any way.
Certainly, this kind of tablet-magazine does not exist, YET. While the tablet technology has been around for a while, rich media content has not been available to truly take full advantage of it. Not so anymore! So, will this really be the future of magazines, print or otherwise? How soon will this become reality? Consider what it will take for the already financially-strapped news media to begin an industry-wide development with this platform; and how fast consumer adoption of the technology would reach a critical mass?
No matter. The driver of this kind of rich media tablet experience (like iPad) will most likely not be the news media (ha! you wish!) but by personal entertainment like movies, music and games. It is certainly good to see a new way of imagining the future of magazines in this seemingly new platform. It is also great to see the news media (at least one of them) leading the development and use of a new platform rather than always trying to play catch-up with technology.
However, the most important and unanswered question - will people be more inclined to pay for a digital news product this way? Perhaps, this recent study, “Changing Models: A Global Perspective on Paying for Content Online,” by the Nielsen Company could shed some light on what consumers now consider worth springing a buck for.
I love lists. I love magazine covers. Hence this blog post.
It’s no surprise that more than a few of these Top 10 covers are of or about Barack Obama.
Top 10 Magazine Covers from Time.com’s The Top 10 Everything of 2008 Lists
The lists mostly picked covers with strong, clean and “less is more” designs. Such as this Rolling Stone July cover:
and this Economist February cover:
However, this is the most innovative cover design in my opinion. It’s different. It illustrates the topic of the cover story. And it definitely catches your eye.
Los Angeles magazine, September issue.
Also check out these Times.com’s Top 10 lists. Oh, just for fun.
Top 10 TV Ads, Top 10 Election Photos, and Top 10 Scandals.
The first Presidential debate is over. Watching it on TV was not the most exciting thing. Watching it while twittering, however, was a hoot. It was like being in a big debate party (the beer also helped).
There were lots of news organizations using twitter last Friday to present/cover the debate. The application I found most interesting was CurrenTV’s “Hack the Debate” - live streaming of (some) tweets from tweeps on its TV channels and online. (I suppose there’s a level of vanity to see my own tweets show up on TV.)
The tweets were from updates on Election.Twitter.com and updates with hash tags #current and #debate08. Of course, not all tweets were shown. Looked like some editorial judgments were used.
Really must know more? Hear from CurrentTV themselves.
I wonder what Current TV viewers thought about this?
Another channel that is doing extensive online debate coverage is C-Span with its Debate Hub. This C-Span mini site had live streaming of the debate (with embeddable video clips for anyone to use), twitter feeds and blogsphere coverage. One very useful tool is the live debate timeline that serves as a navigation tool to transcript texts and video clips.
Can’t wait for the VP debate - now, THAT will be entertainment.
Buyouts, firing and threatened shutdowns.
My, my, the traditional newspaper industry is just coming out with great news these days. After the somewhat hopeful-feeling ONA08 last week, this definitely brings me back down to earth a bit.
‘Star-Ledger’ Publisher Threatens January 2009 Shutdown
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