tool twist newsletter 2010

In This Issue

- Web Typography

- ToolTwist: When used on Software Development

- What’s New in ToolTwist v7

- Do You Need a Mobile Strategy?

- HR’s Role in Promoting Corporate Social Responsibility

- My iPad Magazine Stand

ToolTwist Newslet ter / / Issue No.1 / / December 2010

history

This article discusses how web browsers support fonts and how using several techniques modern web browsers can be more flexible in the support of more traditional fonts that print media are comfortable with.

The first edition of web browsers in the early nineties had minimal support for fonts. Web browsers then controlled the fonts by their own settings. Later on in the mid-nineties, browser enabled support for a <font> html tag allowed webmasters and publishers to control the font that web pages would display. However, either the font in question had to have been already installed on the computer; or a standard fall back font as supplied by that computer ’s operating system.

In the late nineties, the concept of a ‘web-safe’ font was widely discussed. These were the fonts that were more l ikely to be present on a wide range of computer systems. At the same time, Microsoft started core fonts for the web init iative that saw a standard pack of fonts released to be used by all web browsers and operating systems. These standard packs of ten fonts were widely adopted and licensed by various manufacturers.

In the last few years, CSS2 (Cascading Style Sheets version2) added support for a technique that allowed the downloading of remote fonts as supplied by the server

(publisher) along-with the web page. This technique is widely referred to as the @font-face rule. This technique is controversial, as l icensing issues are prevalent. The font l icensing terms had not caught up with the fact that they can be downloaded and used over the web. This issue is slowly being corrected by the major font foundries modifying the l icensing schemes to allow webfonts distribution schemes.

Typography arT by Wob2ler

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WOFF Web Open FOnt FOrmatA recent init iative, this is a font format developed by the World Wide Web consortium and has very good support among the major font foundries and new-age browsers. This is basically an OpenType font with enhanced meta-data.

traditional workarounds of yesteryears

For more than the past decade, webmasters and publishers have had to get around the l imitations mentioned above of using only a standard set of fonts on webpages. The most common ways to get around this is by using images of fonts, using Adobe Flash embeddables (sIFR) and Javascript techniques to display custom fonts. All of them come with various l imitations and performance issues.

ImagesThe easiest way to put custom fonts on a webpage. Take Photoshop, put your custom font in as a text box, save it as an image and put it up. The limitations are that images take much longer to download to a web page, and while this technique is good for a heading or so, large swathes of text cannot be done this way. It also breaks the whole publishing cycle by switching

TTF/OTF trUe tYpe Or Open tYpeA scalable computer font, originally l icensed from Apple by Microsoft, but further developed by both Adobe and Microsoft. Most of the medium-age browsers have support for them. A medium-age browser is 2 to 3 years old.

Glossary

eOT embedded OpentYpeA form of OpenType font designed by Microsoft for use as embedded fonts on web pages. It is supported by Internet Explorer and unfortunately not widely support by other browsers.

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between images and text.Implementing this technique means it breaks regular text selection and copy and paste.

sIFR - scalable Inman Flash ReplacemenTThis is a dynamic web fonts implementation that enables replacement of text elements of web pages with Flash equivalents. It is widely used by brochure ware sites and a lot of design companies favor this approach. This approach does have the same faults as the images technique, though publishing has been made easier with some tools. Lately with the wide adoption of Apple iPhone and iPad devices which don’t support Flash, this technique is now completely unworkable across these devices.


status of webfontsnow and the futureWebfonts as mentioned above are the future of fonts in web pages. These are font f i les that can be embedded onto webpages in websites using the @font-face rule. Since 2007 and 2008, most of the newer browser from Safari, Firefox, Chrome, Opera and to a certain extent IE now support this technique. It is actually being widely used again.

This brings the question, of how would you use commercial fonts embedded in a website as they are publicly available to everyone and get around the l icensing issues. Generally you would need to check the l icensing agreements of the fonts from the font vendor to see if i t is ok to embed the font and make it available publicly on a web server. There are l ist of public fonts and commercial fonts that allow being embedded on a website.

The other option is to subscribe to a cloud-based font service that for a small fee allows hundreds of fonts to be embedded on to a website. Some popular webfont services are: These services allow the fonts to be

served from a distributed CDN (Content Distribution Network) and thus offer the advantages of being cacheable across websites etc. Thus, if one is looking to use this service, research needs to be done on the number of fonts supported. Plus, how popular the service is among the peers,

Typek I Thttp://typekit.com/

FOnTsl Ive http://www.fontslive.com/

gOOgle FOnT D IRecTORy http://code.google.com/webfonts

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cuFOnThis is a technique that seeks to be an alternative to sIFR. It uses Javascript and Vector Markup Language (VML) to convert the font using a font generator into a Javascript friendly fi le that is rendered using Javascript code on the web browser.

It is to be noted that all three techniques above suffer from various performance issues as well as they don’t support regular text selection and copy and paste.

FOnTDeckhttp://fontdeck.com/

FOnTspR Inghttp://www.fontspring.com/

TypeFROnThttp://typefront.com/

WebTypehttp://www.webtype.com/

TypOThequehttp://www.typotheque.com/

Web Inkh t t p : / / w w w . e x t e n s i s . c o m / e n /WebINK/

JusT anOTheR FOunDRyhttp:// justanotherfoundry.com/

keRnesThttp://kernest.com/

http://typekit.com/

http://www.fontslive.com/

http://code.google.com/webfonts

http://fontdeck.com/

http://www.fontspring.com/

http://typefront.com/

http://www.webtype.com/

http://www.typotheque.com/

http://www.extensis.com/en/WebINK/

http://www.extensis.com/en/WebINK/

http://justanotherfoundry.com/

http://kernest.com/


how does tooltwistadvance this for the publisher

conclusion

ToolTwist offers a variety of support to make it easy for the publisher to deliver pages with support for custom fonts. Widgets for most of the popular webfont services are freely available, plus the abil ity to embed custom licensed fonts directly on to the web server. More importantly, ToolTwist has the abil ity to fallback to more traditional means if i t detects that a browser does not have the abil ity to support webfonts.

ToolTwist routing modules can automatically detect the device and browser type and allows for fallback fonts to ensure that pages are read on older devices. In certain extreme cases, publishes do have the opportunity to present completely different layouts depending on support for older and modern browsers and what the requirements for website consumption is.

While ToolTwist offers a wide range of functionality for the publisher to embed custom fonts on to the webpage and their websites, the following considerations should be taken into account when the requirements are drawn up.

• What are the requirements for compatibil ity of the website, business-wise. Targetingmodern browsers only?• What are the requirements for fallback if targeting all browsers.• Font l icensing considerations.• If using a webfonts service, check if their l ist does support all the fonts you may need.• Think about the potential for layout changes as fallback options are considered.

Typography arT by douglas Wilson

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ToolTwistas used forSoftware Development


As a software development tool, ToolTwist provides a development environment that accelerates application development, by extending the capabil it ies of regular Java.

Why extend Java? While Java is a rock-solid platform for enterprise-level applications, it is not itself an application. Like with .NET, Visual Basic, and other popular development tools, Java is a language and software development platform – if you want an application, then you need to write the program yourself.

In most traditional software development environments, tools are provided upon which to write applications. These tools are generic in nature, and provide a way to program (the IDE), provide basic underlying functionality and access to the operating system (APIs), and provide a way to debug applications.Products such as .NET, Java and VB6 however need to be generic in nature, as they are required to be able to be used to build any type of application. As a result, they are intended to provide a foundation

upon which to develop an application – they don’t form part of the application.

There are many types of application, and there are many possible parts of an application. However, applications such as those in use at a typical enterprise wil l typically have the following parts:

1. A User Interface. In the past this has been a windows interface, but for cost and reliabil i ty reasons, applications are increasingly being built with a web browser based interface and run over the Internet.

2. Application specific logic. These are the calculations such as stock updates, stock calculations, benefit calculations, processing eftpos and pos calculations, totall ing and even day-to-day reports calculations such as summaries and totals.


3. Communications logic to transfer data between various entit ies.

4. Data Manipulation code, to handle various types of information – products, sales statistics, invoices etc.

5. Database Access code that instructs the program how to get to data in the database.

With these traditional development tools, developers must build all these parts of the application themselves, a process of labor intensive manual coding. This work requires a high level of skil l , and is therefore very expensive. It is also the point where bugs are introduced.

Use of these traditional tools is part of the reason why a typical Enterprise’s IT costs are high, and why development output is low.

ToolTwist builds upon this traditional model, to build a specific type of application:- Web browser based.- Requires manipulation of varying data types.- Distributed environment.- Stores data in a relational database.

For this specific type of application, ToolTwist is able to provide pre-formed parts of the application, and provide tools that generate other parts of the application, as shown in figure below.

For each type of application logic, ToolTwist specifically provides a way to speed up development.

The following sections explain how ToolTwist handles each type of logic, and

removes the need for developers to write software.

The result is faster development times, low costs, and more reliable systems.

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USer inTerface

In the 1980s, the user interface was green screen CRTs and/or DOS based systems, while in the 90s a Windows interface was most common. For the past ten years however, the preferred interface has been to use a web browser, even for applications that do not need to run over the Internet. The reason for this is that users are familiar with web pages, with their nice layouts, pretty images, and hyperlinks. These users are easily trained as this is what they use in their normal day-to-day l ives.

Browser based interfaces also have the advantage that it is not necessary to install software to use the application – it can be accessed over local area network, or over the Internet. It can also be easily skinned, (i.e.) the same application having multiple different skins over it to present different faces of it to different users. This allows the users to retain familiarity with a type of interface.

There are two trends that wil l increase the benefits of browser based applications: the steadily increasing speed and reliabil i ty of the Internet and the arrival of mobile devices. While the iPad is currently being positioned as a consumer product, this

is just the start. Increasingly tablets and other portable devices wil l be used as Point Of Sale devices, and wil l be used in retail settings.

Different people access these systems in a variety of ways, for varying purposes. In many cases, the technologies used, and the need to have “programmers”, reduce the effective use of these systems.

As an i l lustration… a typical enterprise has brochures produced by graphic artists, it has a corporate website created by web designers, and it has software in the Pharmacies developed by programmers. The separation in skil ls (graphic art, web design, and programming) has prevented work in one area flowing into other areas resulting in:

The corporate website is grossly out • of date.

Marketing messages and product • features included in the The software provides the end users and clients with no relevancy to their day to day task at hand.

Programmers producing the • software and the marketing message are disjoint.

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What’s New in

ToolTwistver7

Deploym ent i m provem entsThe ToolTwist controller has been adapted to do seamless application deployment to the Cloud, Enterprise Server, off-the-shelf Virtual machines and other machine configurations. Once setup, application deployment becomes a click-and-go process that can be programmed for continuous Integration Builds as well as Production control handovers of Production releases.

Design er Ch ecki n/Ch eckoutPages can be checked in and out of the controller with locking at the controller level to handle version changes and version differences. A diff tool helps the designers to work out differences between their copy and the copy on the controller.

CDn deploym entStatic assets on a web page such as images, css stylesheet files, javascript code can be automatically deployed to the CDN. CDN's supported are RackSpace/LimeLight CDN and CacheFly CDN. More CDN's to be supported as demand is present.

n ew wi dgetsBlog widget• VideoJS widgets for HTML5 video fallback.• FusionCharts widget• Multiple menu widgets• Payment gateway plugins for Authorize.NET• Multiple mapping widgets for Google •

Maps, Bing Maps with layering and polygon functionality.


Domai n shardi ngToolTwist can automatically send static assets to multiple static domain sites, so as to improve the parallel performance of downloading to a web browser. A web browser normally downloads anywhere between 2 to 8 assets from a single domain depending on the browser version. By separating your static assets to multiple domains, more assets can be downloaded in parallel. In addition, by making these domains cookie-free, the overhead of transmitting cookies for each http request can be avoided.

Wpo h i nts for progressive r en deri ngWPO, Web Performance Optimisation is the hot topic of the year. ToolTwist provides most of the capabilities to produce the fastest site possible within the constraints of the design and the artwork. With Version 7, more control is given to the marketer to place markers where the visible portion of the page ends, and the ToolTwist generator will optimise to put all blocking and time-consuming assets below the marker to ensure that the visible portion renders as fast as possible.

mobi le Design erThe Designer has a template and supporting libraries for the mobile web. Need we say more!

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Let me provide you some statistics first…

there are 1.5 billion Internet connections on the world today

the world’s population is 6.8 billion

the number of folks in the world having mobile devices are 3.4 billion (@50%)

of these people, the number of potential mobile internet users are 1.3 billion

The rate of growth of smart mobile devices is astounding. Already people who own mobile devices are more l ikely to use their mobile to browse the internet rather than their desktop. This figure is as high as 40% now. This figure wil l be more skewed as tablet adoption becomes more universal.

So, what does an enterprising CIO do?Develop an app!

Apple with their iOS strategy have successfully ‘appified’ the market space. Apps are a great way to experience the richness of the mobile device with some beautiful games and applications turning the simple mobile device effectively into a mobile computer.

But, is that the strategy?

You have employed some Objective-C gurus to turn out great looking apps. You may have invested in cross-compiler platforms such as Titanium or PhoneGap to deliver products to the iOS and Android markepaces. Or you may be large enough to run separate teams with different skil ls to do Objective-C on iOS, Java on Android, Sliverlight/XNA/C++ on Windows Mobile 7, and the various other different languages and SDK’s on Symbian, Maemo, Palm webOS, Blackberry and so on.

But, the important thing to consider is:Safari is the most popular app on the iPhone!

Don’t assume customers have downloaded your app.

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Irrespective of if your strategy is to build an app or not, expect that people wil l use a mobile browser, a small format device to visit your website. They are mobile, out and about. They hear about your business, or a promotion on your website and wil l use their mobile device to visit your website. Or as it is more common now, people use Google to search for your name to visit your website. (i.e.) no one enters a URL anymore.

When that happens… think about it, are you presenting content appropriate to that small screen. Is your website downloading megabytes of content and images down a slow 3G network with high latency down to a customer ’s device who may be struggling with reception issues and desperate to get the page up and fast? Are you forcing your customers to pinch and zoom to view content and press appropriate l inks and buttons to navigate between pages? A customer who is l ikely to use a mobile device to locate a bricks and mortar store wil l experience diff iculty to find store locations and operating hours if you are not presenting information on your website tailored to the mobile format.

Thus, irrespective of your mobile applications strategy….…. Don’t ignore the mobile web.Why? In a year ’s time by the end of 2011, there won’t be a mobile web strategy anymore, it wil l be the only strategy!

ToolTwist can help you present screens appropriate to the device format the customer visits your website with. It is not black magic, but by simply making it easy for marketing teams to design mobile web pages for the mobile web, you can provide the optimum experience to your customers rather than trying to shoe-horn a desktop web experience to a mobile user.

In conclusion, let me leave you with these thoughts…. What about the other end of the scale? Large format screens. GoogleTV for example. You need to optimize your website for 40 to 50” screen with the viewer 10 feet away. Do you have a strategy for that? Anticipate that in 2 years time, every TV wil l be able to access the Internet.


The world is a smaller place thanks to the Internet, global trading and new communication and technology advances such as the iPad and applications. More companies are becoming global by expanding overseas, and now manage a global workforce that has unique benefits, rules/laws, and different languages and currencies. With this global expansion comes a “responsibil i ty.”

When companies are global, an important challenge in garnering success is to respect other cultures and workforce environments and start forming a global profi le or social consciousness. Recognising these differences with a sound Corporate Social Responsibil i ty (CSR) plan can simultaneously increase shareholder value, boost employee engagement and increase employer brand recognition.

Human Resource Departments play a crit ical role in ensuring that the company adopts Corporate Social Responsibil i ty programs. Furthermore, HR can manage the CSR plan implementation and monitor its adoption proactively, while documenting (and celebrating) its success throughout the company. Human Resources technology can help with a Corporate Social Responsibil i ty program, including reducing the company’s carbon footprint to benefit the planet. Start with these areas:

Implement and encourage green • practices.

Implement green practices to assist in environmental waste reduction, while promoting and encouraging stewardship growth, better corporate ethics and long-lasting practices that promote both personal and corporate accountabil ity. The value inherent in embracing green aspects of corporate responsibil i ty is clearly understood, given the direct impact that rising energy and uti l i ty costs has on employees’ pocketbooks. Conservation has become an accepted means of making our planet healthier. Reducing each employee’s carbon footprint is a great way of getting energy conservation and recycling waste init iatives off the ground. Here are suggestions to start:

Recycle paper, cans and bottles • in the office; recognize departmental efforts.

implemenT anD encoUrage greenpracTiceS for corporaTeSocial reSponSibiliTy

Foster a culture of social • responsibil i ty.

Celebrate successes.• Share and communicate the value •

of corporate social responsibil i ty to employees and the community.


foSTer a cUlTUreof corporaTeSocial reSponSibiliTy

Collect food and donations for • victims of f loods, hurricanes and other natural disasters around the globe.

Encourage reduced energy • consumption; subsidize transit passes, make it easy for employees to car pool, encourage staggered staffing to allow after rush hour transit, and permit telecommuting to the degree possible.

Encourage shutting off l ights, • computers and printers after work hours and on weekends for further energy reductions.

Work with IT to switch to laptops • over desktop computers. (Laptops consume up to 90% less power.)

Increase the use of teleconferencing, • rather than on-site meetings and trips.

Promote brown-bagging in the • office to help employees reduce fat and calories to l ive healthier l ives and reduce packaging waste, too.

Creating a culture of change and responsibil i ty starts with HR. Getting the younger employees, who are already environmentally conscious, excited about fresh Corporate Social Responsibil i ty init iatives is a great way to begin. A committed set of employees who infuse enthusiasm for such programs would enable friendly competit ion and recognition programs.

Over the past few years, major news organizations have reported on large, trusted companies that have failed employees, shareholders and the public (i.e. Enron, Lehman, WaMu). These failures created a culture of mistrust in the corporate world. All too often, employees

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and employers at all levels, who competed for advancement and recognition in harsh workplaces, were forced to accept corporate misconduct and waste as “business as usual.”

Social and community connections that are encouraged by employers give employees permission to involve their companies in meaningful ways with the community. Employers can connect with their employees and the community through:

Company matches to employee • charitable contributions;

Community programs and volunteer • days;

Corporate sponsorship of community • events; and

Encouraging employees to • participate in walkathons, food banks, and so forth.

Celebrating success is important to sustain the momentum of any CSR program. Involving company leaders, and praising the success of these init iatives, gives the program real meaning. In the rapidly expanding global workplace, the celebration of these successes not only drives the implementation of Corporate Social Responsibil i ty init iatives, but also allows sound corporate HR practices to enable them.

Additionally the publicity about these successes creates a mutual understanding of the cultures within each region that the company serves. The local population knows that, in addition to providing jobs, the company takes an active interest in, and participates in, local issues.

celebraTe corporaTeSocial reSponSibiliTySUcceSSeS


Focusing on three key areas for Corporate Social Responsibil i ty can help create a cohesive map for the present and future:

Community Relations,•

Training and Development, and•

A Cohesive Corporate Social • Responsibil i ty Platform

Encouraging Community Relations through your HR team includes implementing reward programs, charitable contributions and encouraging community involvement and practices. Examples of these programs include sending emails and company newsletters to staff members that highlight employees and managers involved in community relations or creating monthly reward programs to recognize efforts by individuals within the company.

Training and Development programs that explain the connection between the company’s core products or services and the society at large, their value to the local community and ways in which employees can get involved in appropriate CSR projects would sustain and direct these init iatives.

Three Key areaS ofcorporaTe Social reSponSibiliTy

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Because I recently left a job at one of the most prominent publications in the world, people often ask me about my opinions on the cavalcade of publications rushing to the iPad — those apps designed and developed by newspapers and magazines principally to deliver their print content — and the chances I see for their success. So here it is.

To start, I think it’s too early to say anything definitive about whether these apps will become lasting delivery mechanisms for print content and brands. There’s still a lot that we don’t know about the iPad and its forthcoming

My iPad Magazine StandAuthor: Khoi Vinh

competition, particularly about how user behavior will evolve as these devices become more integrated into daily life. So while I may use some definitive language in this admittedly very long blog post, I freely grant that the future is a mystery to me as much as anyone.

Actually, in conversations with people I know at various publications, I’ve been quite surprised by stories of strong advertiser interest in these apps. Anecdotally, publishers report heavy demand for advertising space, and in some cases apps have sold out of their ad inventory through the end of the year or even further.

That’s an encouraging indicator, but I think it may be more a sign of a bubble than the creation of a real market for publishers’ apps. According to Advertising Age, the initial enthusiasm for many of these apps has dwindled down to as little as one percent of print circulation in the cases of some magazines.

photo credits toWired.com

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READING HABITSGranted, this situation could change significantly when the iPad and tablet market expands further — it’s logical to assume that the customers who eventually commit to tablets after this first year will bring a greater diversity of interests than the generally technology-centric early adopters. If we see a continuing influx of customers in that former category, it might brighten the prospects for, say, Vanity Fair’s iPad app. That, combined with the possibility of Apple adding a digital newsstand to the App Store to help customers browse periodical content in a centralized place (hunting for publications amid software brands is suboptimal, to say the least) could further brighten their prospects.

Maybe.

I just don’t see it, though. For sure, I’m confident that many, many more people will be buying tablets within the next

few years, and so there will be a much richer market for a more diverse crop of content. But even with an Apple-operated newsstand, I’m just not sure I believe these people will turn to publishers’ apps to occupy their tablet time. It’s certainly possible that a small number of these apps will succeed, but if publishers continue to pursue the print-centric strategies they’re focused on today, I’m willing to bet that most of them will fail.

Let’s set aside the issue of news apps for the time being, because they are really a beast of a different sort, and with their own unique challenges. There is a real use case for news apps (regardless of whether not not any players are executing well in this space). Magazine apps, on the other hand, are a different story.

photo credits tohttp://mediamemo.

allthingsd.com/

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OKAY HERE IT ISMy opinion about iPad-based magazines is that they run counter to how people use tablets today and, unless something changes, will remain at odds with the way people will use tablets as the medium matures. They’re bloated, user-unfriendly and map to a tired pattern of mass media brands trying vainly to establish beachheads on new platforms without really understanding the platforms at all.

The fact of the matter is that the mode of reading that a magazine represents is a mode that people are decreasingly interested in, that is making less and less sense as we forge further into this century, and that makes almost no sense on a tablet. As usual, these publishers require users to dive into environments that only negligibly acknowledge the world outside of their brand, if at all — a problem that’s abetted and exacerbated by the full-screen, single-window posture of all iPad software. In a media world that looks increasingly like the busy downtown heart of a city — with innumerable activities, events and alternative sources of distraction around you — these apps demand that you confine yourself to a remote, suburban cul-de-sac.

THICK ISSUESTake the recent release of the iPad app version of The New Yorker. Please. I downloaded an issue a few weeks ago and greatly enjoyed every single word of every article that I read (whatever the product experience, the journalism remains a notch above). But I hated everything else about it: it took way too long to download, cost me US$4.99 over and above the annual subscription fee that I already pay for the

print edition and, as a content experience, was an impediment to my normal content consumption habits. I couldn’t email, blog, tweet or quote from the app, to say nothing of linking away to other sources — for magazine apps like these, the world outside is just a rumor to be denied. And when I plugged my iPad back into my Mac, the enormous digital heft of these magazines brought the synching process to a crawl.

My understanding is that a lot of these apps are being actively encouraged and even partially funded by the folks at Adobe, who are pushing a tablet publishing solution that, unsurprisingly, builds off of the software franchise that they won over the print publishing world with. In fact, Conde Nast has turned over technical operations for all of their apps to Adobe, which says a lot about how they’re thinking about their tablet strategy.

The Adobe promise, as I understand it, is that publications can design for one medium and, with minimal effort, have their work product viably running on tablets and other media. It says: what works in print, with some slight modifications and some new software purchases, will work in new media. It’s a promise that we’ve heard again and again from many different software vendors with the rise of every new publishing platform, but it has never come to pass. And it never will.

In my personal opinion, Adobe is doing a tremendous disservice to the publishing industry by encouraging these ineptly literal translations of print publications

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into iPad apps. They’ve fostered a preoccupation with the sort of monolithic, overbearing apps represented by The New Yorker, Wired and Popular Science. Meanwhile, what publishers should really be focusing on is clever, nimble, entertaining apps like EW’s Must List or Gourmet Live. Neither of those are perfect, but both actively understand that they must translate their print editions into a utilitarian complement to their users’ content consumption habits.

IF NOT THIS, THEN WHAT?Of course, small, nimble apps won’t necessarily solve the long-term revenue problems of major magazines. So is there a bigger solution for magazines, one that will bring in significant revenue along the lines of what they saw in the pre-digital world?

This is an incredibly difficult question and I’ve stopped trying to pretend I have any response to it other than “I don’t know,” or, in less sanguine moments, “Probably not.” There are no easy answers for content publishers right now, which is why in some ways they can hardly be blamed for their iPad enthusiasm — at the very least, they aren’t ignoring the sea change that

tablets represent. Perhaps like many of us, they need to fail their way to success. That’s a legitimate strategy, and if they’re nimble enough to recover from these wild miscalculations before it’s too late, then I applaud them for it.

More likely, they will waste too many cycles on this chimerical vision of resuscitating lost glories. And as they do, the concept of a magazine will be replaced in the mind — and attention span — of consumers by something along the lines of Flipboard. If you ask me, the trajectory of content consumption favors apps like these that are more of a window to the world at large than a cul-de-sac of denial. Social media, if it’s not already obvious to everyone, is going to continue to change everything — including publishing. And it’s a no-brainer to me that content consumption is going to be intimately if not inextricably linked with your social graph. Combine Flipboard or whatever comes along and improves upon it with the real innovation in recommendation technology that we’ll almost undoubtedly see in the next few years, and I can’t see how the 20th Century concept of a magazine can survive, even if it does look great on a tablet.

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tool twist newsletter 2010

Technology