The Newspaper Tablet Concepts – (by @baekdal)

The newspaper industry is falling over themselves in the fight to come up with a ever more impressive newspaper tablet. The problem is that they miss the point completely (as I wrote about in "The Future of News, Tablets, and Business Models").

The future of news is not a fancy interactive versions of each newspaper. It's a more engaging and information friendly personal news aggregator. Or a personal, augmented, social RSS reader on steroids. One that is about news and not newspapers.

We are all waiting for the mythical Apple tablet, but I actually think that you should be watching Amazon instead. All they need to do is to create a personal RSS reader, for the Kindle, and combine that with a little layout magic.

But all these concepts are really pretty. Just take a look below:

Mag+

The Mag+ concept is created by Berg, for Bonnier Magazines. Looks good, except that they are only using a very small part of the screen for the actual text. It's not very scalable in that format.

Sports Illustrated tablet

Again, very pretty - but too focused on just a single news source. This would not work with news for many different sources. The layout controls the content, not the other way around.

Wired Tablet

Not as pretty as the other ones. mainly because it is merely the print layout on a tablet. They are not using the power of the screen or touch. And they apparently asked the CEO's 12 year old nephew to play some music...

Microsoft "Courier" tablet

Not exactly a newspaper tablet, but Microsoft's concept comes much closer to what the future of tablet will really be like.

The Sun Tablet

Of course, this article wouldn't be complete without the Sun tablet... :)

Mag+: The magazine’s digital future

Mag+ is an investigation of the future of periodicals in digital media. A collaboration between design consultancy Berg and the R+D department of magazine publisher Bonnier, this study is particularly relevant after the sad announcement earlier this week that I.D. magazine would be ceasing publication. It might also be considered another unofficial response to "The Future of Digital Reading, our 1 Hour Design Challenge produced with Portigal Consulting.

In this e-reader proposal, Berg and Bonnier consider the magazine's particular way of parceling out content. Unlike the endless RSS feeds we are now all accustomed to, magazines give people a "sense that they've consumed an editorial package," something finite and episodic. At the same time, the flexible format of the e-reader allows periodicals to continue to art direct, with pull quotes, flexible layouts and pagination.

Also refreshing is the insight that a mock page flip as a means of navigation doesn't actually work, and that the most successful e-reading experiences (emails, blogs, online newspapers) rely simply on scrolling.

Get all the background information and see the compelling visualization in the video above.

SOY on FWA

My vote went to: http://soytuaire.labuat.com/