We All Want To Be Young on Devour.com →
Really interesting video on the Internet generation
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I’m here
I almost forgot about Spike Jonze short, never actually got to see it when it launched. Today I finally got to see the whole movie and it’s pretty good. I also discover a great band at the same time ASKA, their single There Are Many of Us is simply beautiful.
http://itunes.apple.com/ca/album/there-are-many-of-us-single/id350290161
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How centralizes system can work
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Vision of digital publishing
Centralization of content
The first thing that got me thinking on digital magazine was how decentralizes things seem to be right now, although I have no knowledge it’s really that way, my experience with the print and web industry tells me that most of the time they are on different timeframe and with different objectives.
Content should live in a centralize area independent of their output, an article can be for a print magazine, a website, a newspaper, etc; it doesn’t matter where a content is schedule to appear, it does matter that a content is available from one central point and is as full featured as possible.
Content and metadata
Content should be able to quickly pulled from a central point and repositioned for the intended medium. As example : an interview can be made available for a print publication, on the web as a video and in a digital magazine extended with additional biographic information all from a single source.
Content tagged with metadata can be reposition more easily. In the previous example the content is tagged with the meta of “interview”, maybe the length of the content, the author, biographical information, etc., media files are attach to the content and can be access at the same time.
Different media demands different output
As the different media will have different specification the content should be adaptable as much as possible, that why a system based on XML (like the DocBook specification) could be adapted to the different output. Articles should be written in an application with automatic metadata creation, the application could have guideline for the different output possible and aid in the creation of the different format to be deployed later on, the application then wouldn’t simply be a word processing app but a “content” creation tool.
By creating one main article with good metadata, it could easily be transform for the different medium, taking as much or as little as desire.
News is relevant in digital magazine
A digital marketing shouldn’t be viewed as a simple version of the print magazine, it’s a different medium and should be treated as such. News should be included in a digital magazine, a news section could contain the latest news pulled from the web all layed out like the rest of the magazine. One could imagine the initial download being feed with the news of the day, subsequent view of the page add’s the latest news.
One magazine with download content
I don’t have a problem with the visual layout of digital magazine right now but with the fact that they are mostly close system without an update mecanism. The digital magazine should be one application with downloadable content, that way an issue is simply more content to be read/viewed. Table of content updates with every download, news or even update on an article get download automatically, graph are build with live data, etc., search is also integrated in the magazine.
Social integration
I should be able to share an article, post a link to the web version on twitter, see what my friends are reading in my magazine even launch a discussion on my blog with a clipping of the article. The digital magazine should be part of my online social life, it shouldn’t live on my iPad only.
Content is king
Content should be at the front of the digital publishing strategies, it’s the content that’s important here, not the pixel perfect layout, not the added video/music but the content.
I hope someone will see that a digital magazine could be the perfect mix of the beautiful static print magazine and the always up to date website, not something to replace the print or web, but a new way to view content.
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State of the digital magazine on the iPad
Reading a post this morning about the state of magazine publishing on the iPad (http://www.subtraction.com/2010/10/27/my-ipad-magazine-stand) got me thinking about how the publishing industry could integrate the digital magazine in a more modern workflow.
There is a problem with trying to simple emulate a print magazine on the iPad, everybody seem to understand that tablets computer are more than simply a photo frame to display content. Thinking of the iPad without thinking of all the other media is at best a wrong idea and at worst a dead end that publisher will have a hard time getting out of.
What the CD-Rom era should have taught us is that a new medium shouldn’t be just a copy of other medium already in place. We already have print magazine and website mostly deconnected from each other, we don’t need to have a third medium disconnected or worst, simply a copy of another medium. Right now, most magazine are almost exact copy of their print counterpart with only a small integration of media - mostly ads. The Time magazine app is one of the only one to integrate actual news from the web, but the integration is more like an after tough than a real integration of content.
Why a digital magazine should be static ? There is no real reason why a digital mag couldn’t have a page dedicated to news that get’s pulled from the web. although some content will live on the web and in the digital mag, the reading habit is different enough from each other as to not cannibalized either medium.
Think of the separate medium as having each a subset of a pool of content, a print magazine have feature article, department articles all with beautiful layout; website have department article, blog post, news, medias (video, audio), snippets of content (weather, traffic, etc.); a digital magazine could have feature article, department articles, medias (video, audio), live news all with beautiful layout.
The digital magazine would then become an hybrid of the print and website, a medium with it’s own personality, something between rich visual content and up-to-the minute news, social sharing abilities and print feel, a real digital experience.
