Magazine Revolution on the iPad

When I first discovered that there was going to b such a thing as the iPad, I knew right off the top that the print industry has found new life in what was soon to be an extinct genre of media. Print is not Eco friendly and across the world presses are closing, downsizing and searching for life. Introducing the iPad.

I’m actually really excited about this. Not only do we get to enjoy the release of a magazine or comic but also you get it instantly. I’m not one for waiting on things and I believe that in our current economic status this is true across many other mediums.

Here are some things that I am really hoping to see come alive very soon. First off are interactive comics. Stories have multiple endings as well as different versions of the road to get there. Many times you are stuck with the view of one character, waiting to see what’s in stored for that cliffhanger but with live interactions you can really pick and choose where to go.

Secondly, you can really engage an audience with audio and visual cues. So for comic books add in various sound effects or even have someone read the graphic novel to you. For video you can link right out to the different clips you are referencing, you can set up specific animations to help tell your story. For the news papers you can link right to the live stream or already told news. Your images can really come alive and add subtle little motion to stills just to really wow a user.

These few things already create an experience like no other when you have such interaction. I know a lot of people say that they love the feeling of a book and bent corners, dirt and grime… well how about an app that reacts to where you close your book it folds pages. Over the course of time your book sees more and more wear on it. It’s a simple solution for the purest.

It’s interesting to see so many new articles now that detail how the magazine market is on the rise because of the iPad. While I’m sitting here on the plane to LA I peaked over to see some reading on this exact topic. It’s only a taste of what’s to come and the companies that rely on press can move to digital and we should see fewer publications shutting their doors. The iPad is a revolution for the rebirth of what was to be an extinct medium in today’s time.

Drop a note or go over to my contact page to send me an email. Thx for reading.

Google Chrome vs Google Chrome OS

I think that Google has become so common that it may even be a real nerds, child’s first word. I know that I use the phrase, “just google it” at least once a month. Google has become such a powerful and useful tool you can pretty much replace many different apps you use on a daily with the apps they have. Google has created cloud based technology to create word documents, spreadsheets, e-mail, plus many others that are part of your life. I use my gmail account more than my own websites email because its just that easy and fast on my iPhone and in any browser. I being able to share a spreadsheet that auto updates anytime you or the people shared with it use it. So now how will Google Chrome simplify my life? How will Google Chrome OS make the things I do on a computer slick, minimal and almost so easy you really have to be a child to not know how to use it? Most of the tech video’s I saw today were all related to Google Chrome and I think its really starting to make a solid impact on the tech community.

Since I have VM Ware running Vista Ultimate, I can use the browser and really see how it compares to Safari on OSX as well as Firefox. Off the bat its hits really nice for me. The U.I. is delicious. The colors are warm and the typeface that they chose is timeless. Choosing to layout the tabs on top vs. below your typical search and various toolbars is different but welcoming. Its such a perfect flow, the tab is clear, the address/search bar is right under it with your typical forward, back, refresh buttons and below that you have all your bookmarks. For those of you that ran Safari 4 beta you are familiar with this, (I want it back with the official release!). I like the way the taps slide in when you create a new tab and how smooth they are. You can drag them in and out and re-arrange them all by clicking and dragging. There are a few other features such as inconito mode, the advanced downloads and application windows (creates a desktop bookmark and launches the web app or site into Chrome) that really just add that much more dynamic to this simple browser.

With the announcement of Google Chrome OS, it makes me really itch to know more about it. Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba are all working with Google to lead the giant into the operating system realm. All these little and giant companies have low-power chipsets and I wonder if that was a big decision in not adding Dell and Sony to the mix. Since they are partnering with Adobe, is the OS going to be running heavy in Action Script and Flash? (I hope so!) What really intrigues me is that his is going to be a Free OS and its going to be based around their web browser which I think is very interesting. In today’s market you are seeing more apps coming to the cloud like photoshop express, indabamusic.com which is an online music session recording site, googles own spreadsheets and word docs and so many more it really makes sense to have an OS that is not heavy, almost featureless on your desktop and full of everything you need in the cloud. In my opinion this is what Web 3.0 is going to be.