“Last month, Condé Nast played show-and-tell with its concept of a digitized magazine. Today it’s Time Inc.’s turn: The publisher is demoing a concept version of Sports Illustrated it says will be able to run on whatever tablet Apple or any else has up their sleeves,” Peter Kafka reports for AllThingsD. “Eventually, the publisher imagines that it will port all its titles into the new format, which it says will be ready for primetime by the middle of next year or sooner.”
Direct link to video via YouTube here.
Full article here.
Why even do this when they are just essentially rearranging their website? I don’t think this will be enough to save the media industry.
Tebow, Beeeotches!
I watched this video last night and thought of how cool Zinio Reader would be on a tablet for old publications.
This could also be the saving grace for a lot of dailies to add local content and become a mixture of print/video (the only logical path) and for news outlets to merge content such as ABC/ NY Times, CBS/Washington Post, and FOX/Huffington Post…..
Now that’s what we are talking about!
@Tiger Leopard
This is, sadly, something I’ve seen on other blogs. The best way for trolls and pro-MS astroturfers to discredit a blogger is to vandalize their posts with comments that drive the discussion away from the positive things Apple is doing and onto something irrelevant and annoying (eg: politics). Readers get frustrated and stop checking the posts and in this way the astroturfers drive eyeballs away from positive stories about Apple.
As I see it, this means that MDN is doing something right. The MS trolls that appear hear from time to time come here because the site is working and spreading a message MS doesn’t like.
Sadly MDN’s own politics, and that of some readers (naming no names, pointing no fingers), can sometimes play into their hands.
Let’s keep this about Apple folks.
Respectfully from,
Daily Reader…a reader who doesn’t feel whole unless he’s checked MDN at least twice before starting his day’s work. MDN, don’t start your day without it.
@Tiger Leopard
A product like this can incorporate many technologies and programming tricks not do-able on a web site. Plus it doesn’t have the limitation of needing to be connected to the internet, other than to download a given issue. There are many reasons.
Tiger Leopard..and any others who question the potential of this.
This is NOT rearranging their website. If you look at how advertising and display is often handled in print vs the web, text heavy pages simply don’t have room to display advertising in a contextually savvy way. The physics of vision play a part here. Look at the ads on the right side of MDN here. There’s only so much room. As visual and tactile beings we respond to the things we get stronger visual impressions from. The tablet format, really brought to life in a migrated, update of what has existed in print for years makes a huge difference in the way information is presented. Show me a website that functions like a magazine right now. There might be some that exist…but none with the brand recognition of Sports Illustrated. This is a very powerful demonstration of where print could migrate to rather quickly. If the rumors about the lower price point for the Apple device are true the pace of migration will be stunning. Old media is not just going to curl up and die, anymore than radio went away when television came along. It will evolve and become something better, more targeted and work in ways that current websites do not.
So they want to release a new peice of hardware you have to buy, so you can what? sign up to subscribe to this “special package” of magazine content, which is already available via a website?
Im sorry but the days of “monthly” published media are over. And So is paying for a subscription.
These days, almost no news is “exclusive” and even enthusiaste magazines like Road & Track have MORE information on their website with videos, and message boards… If they packaged that into somthing you have to pay for, they would lose out on a lot of ad revenue…
I have seen the future of media and it’s name is iPad.
(Paraphrased from Jon Landau)
Take that video and make it into a school book with lab videos, speeches, interactive time lines, educational games, … Now, dump those back backs out young students!
Teachers, it’s a whole new world coming soon! This generation will get an education like no other in history!
@bad idea,
Up to now stories, news, photos and more have been a bit like Napster was…everything is unregulated…everything is free.
This is going to change.
There’s not enough money in web based advertising (compared to print revenues), and we have yet to see the chain of lawsuits that are going to be filed.
A LOT of content will be changed to admission fee only…no internal linking or reproduction permitted. Think this can’t happen? Then you don’t understand the chilling effect a lawsuit can have on bloggers.
Let’s say you see an article you like. You are a blogger and you copy it and paste it or take even an image from the site. You post it on your own site, it gets indexed by Google. The copyright owner sends you a note saying that you are in violation of the terms of service of their site and NO WARNING…you are now being sued. I suspect you’d avoid doing that again.
Digital watermarking for photos exists now and even if you did a screen capture and reproduced a photo…once you give it a textual ID it can and will be found by the owner.
The free for all days are coming to an end.
General news may well be excluded from this since public sources can be tapped by anyone…but for publications like Sports Illustrated that is essentially a feature based publication offering analysis, exclusive photography, video, and more…this makes tremendous sense.
Those stiff hands give me the creeps
If I am able to manage my iPhoto library and update my iWeb site on the fabled TabletMac… I will sell my MacBook Air and be the first in line to buy. I hope this presentation is the future of online media. Companies have to find a way to make money and America needs to take back journalism from the bloggers. I would gladly pay to read the local newspaper on my TabletMac or pay a subscription fee to read Sports Illustrated and usher in a new era in responsible journalism. Blogs have their place and I enjoy reading them as much as the next person, but blogs are opinion sites and need to be treated as such. Death to TMZ!
@pr,
This was already tried and failed. Even the WSJ couldn’t succeed at paid online subscriptions, and they have financially valuable content for a top tier demographic. Lawsuits are not going to be successful if there was no warning. Most important, just switching to a different piece of hardware isn’t going to make a big difference–only older folks who don’t really understand technology could possibly think that.
isn’t this all just the work of marketing? plus i don’t see any reason why a proper media company like Time Inc. to display their videos in portrait rather than landscape which would showcase the widescreen experience of tablet devices.
Julian @ http://no-spamming/
I think they’ve made some interesting design/interaction decisions. Using video without it becoming overwhelming. It’s a very interesting hybrid of text, video and still images. Very browsable & usable.
This kind of real “multi-media” product could definitely generate actual sales for traditional publishers — especially the ones who already have print, web, television assets. And no printing/distribution costs, other than what iTunes gets.
I think it would work best on a subscription basis.
I’d pay $19.99/ year to get National Geographic like that.
I like it! I’d definitely pay for a subscription, especially if all back issues (I’ve paid for) are accessible too. I have about a million magazines stacked around my house because I like to go back are review past issues. Having them digitized would be so wonderful.
Bring it on, Apple and publishers. I’m ready to pay you.
Back when magazines were in their heyday, people could stomach the subscription costs. At the time, they weren’t paying $50 per month for Internet access, too.
Think about what it will cost to get magazines in the future:
• $200-$500 for the reader
• $20 per year for each subscription
• $50 per per month for a home Internet connection
• $80 per month for mobile data connection
A lot of us are spending money on some of these components now, but this notion that information has become “free” under our current model is pretty bogus. Being plugged in takes some serious dough — thousands per year.
I know that last few $ per month is pretty petty in the grand scheme, but people will draw the line somewhere. They’ll gladly pay $1,500 per year for the data access and then balk when they’ve got to drop $20 more on the subscriptions they’re interested in.
I wonder how much that VO guy cost them?
@MacDust
Same here I couldn’t get past those fleshy meathooks…
@Bad Idea
“Im sorry but the days of “monthly” published media are over. And So is paying for a subscription.” ER
Er, maybe you mean paying for something is over cause one can steal from the net…… Apple is helping the owners see that the old way of viewing content is over….. but stealing will still be handled as wrong.
If done right, then this media concept could be a great leap forward and so far only Apple seems to have the brains to get it even close to right.
We will see…..
Just a thought,
en
@Original Jake,
“ust switching to a different piece of hardware isn’t going to make a big difference–only older folks who don’t really understand technology could possibly think that.”
Its not just the hardware,,, its the software,,, the UI. If Apple can make the specs and system work… who knows.
Just a thought,
en
This concept is user friendly, dynamic and would provide for cheaper and environmentally sustainable delivery of magazine and newspaper subscriptions. It truly looks like the wave of the future.
Right now the magazine industry is a dinosaur. As much as 40 percent of every issue of every printed magazine distributed through retail outlets gets thrown out. Unnecessary tree cutting, unnecessary transport — we’re paying for all that right now. Clearly this is a model for offering more content for a lower price than current magazine and newspaper subscriptions, with the added bonus of reducing environmental impacts.
Add in textbooks, legal records, manuals, and anything Kindle offers, iTunes and seamless wireless linkage to Time Capsule or a desktop computer’s hard drive, and this device becomes a must-have.
The only real question is if the device will also be billed as a laptop alternative. Seems to me it has to have that potential, at least reaching the netbook level of capabilities. Perhaps for occasions when an onscreen keyboard is insufficient, there could be an optional lightweight, very thin, add-on keyboard that snaps over the screen and serves a removable protective cover? The membrane keyboards on the old iBooks were pretty thin, so it could be done….
Original Jake:
“… Lawsuits are not going to be successful if there was no warning…”
The warning is the copyright notice, on the original site. Not knowing that will not prevent the consequence, a ignorance is no excuse for the law.
I hope they can do a better job of synching the audio with the video on their new toy. The sound finished half-way to the video of the swim suit article – which was less than half-way through the entire video. The second quarter was essentially silent.
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And, yeah, I killed it shortly after the models disappeared. What’s your point?
Oh … OT … looks like they got the hardware and software down … maybe it IS a re-branded Apple product! Hmm … what if Apple won’t be selling these to consumers, rather to publishers?
Hmm …