[M]ake a distinction between “formats” and “forms.” A hardback, a paperback, an audiobook, and many an ebook simply represent different forms of the same work. New formats, on the other hand, represent deeper changes in how authors develop content and readers consume it. (more…)

This design discontent with magazine apps is not an odd-ball view, most/many good magazine designers are disappointed by the way that magazine iPad apps have been designed so far. My hunch is that the user experience and pleasure in magazine apps will improve as designers and publishers realise that magazine design and book design has to move to a more holistic and a more abstract level (more…)

So when I hear that Forbes.com, notorious den of high-pressure churnalism, has found religion, I’m not surprised that it’s no less calculating than what came before.

It’s not that I think this operation will fail; It’s that I’m afraid it will succeed. (more…)

But right now there is only one electronic device that can genuinely be said to support a news organisation. It has two large screens, its own keyboard layout and it takes a fortnight to learn to use properly. It’s called a Bloomberg terminal.

via Can apps save news journalism? | Adrian Monck | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.

There might be a grain of truth when we say that this is “an experimental year” for publishing on the iPad, yes. But that doesn’t mean we also need to repeat the same mistakes that we made when Flash promised that we could make Web sites flip pages like print magazines, or when the Web was still so new that the only model we had to understand it with was print publishing, or when CD-ROMs tried their best to recreate magazines in ‘multimedia’ form. Those lessons have been learned already.

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“I was observing what was going on with mobile devices, and I realized I could read an entire book on my iPhone,” Edmiston said. “The more I thought about it, I really felt like there was something transformative going on here. And at the same time, there’s a huge pool of talented people who can create high quality content that people will pay for.”

(more…)

This also points to the need for new platforms that allow these media companies to syndicate their content.  Proliferation of individual apps or channels is not the new model. Google/Yahoo news isn’t the new model – they’ve been surpassed by Facebook already. Community sites like Digg and Reddit are not even in the running.

(more…)

Here’s a basic list of questions to consider when selecting a vendor:

As the founder of the Hacks/Hackers network, which brings together programmers and journalists to share skills on projects, Herman hopes Storify will marry the best from the worlds of technology and journalism to create “a future content management system for social media”.

via Laura Oliver, ‘Why are we just doing static things?’: Burt Herman talks dynamic storytelling with Storify, journalism.co.uk.

Storify demo from Burt Herman on Vimeo.