tablet

Those are the words said by Phil Schiller, Senior Vice President World Wide Product Marketing over at Apple when speaking about the new Apple iPad. It pretty much sums up what I thing after having followed the keynote given by Steve Jobs today.

The new iPad is a game-changer and I need one now! (you too!)

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This last year, 2009 has been a blast in many ways. Almost every day I’ve received interesting news from friends, other bloggers and my RSS feeds. Even thought we’ve seen one of the most severe economical downturns this year it seems advertising, communication and technology has been the business to be in.

Brands seem to have learned from the history and brand spend has rather gone up than down for a lot of brands. We’ve also seen Twitter and Facebook continue to grown faster than anything else on the planet and social media and open technologies has prospered due to that fact. The iPhone has continued to grow and Android is picking up it’s pace. Google has released lots of new cool products even though the Wave didn’t really become the clean double over head a lot of us expected.

Most brands have been looking for one-offs and as I look back at the 2009 Cannes Lions winners it strikes me that I can’t really remember one single campaign that stood out and changed the world of advertising. We’re slowly moving away from bought space to earned space, this is most certainly the reason why my brain plays these tricks with me.

I’m not gonna spend more of this post summing up 2009. Other people, papers, bloggers and personalities has done a great job doing this already. Instead let’s move on to 2010.

Click for a larger image

Here are the Brand and communication predictions for 2010 by Johan Ronnestam

REAL

This is more of a change in how we live, consume, work, advertise and communicate. We will of course use all technology available to become more real but we will strive to make things more realistic, true [click to continue…]

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A couple of hours ago the New York Times launched an update of the skimmer interface I wrote about earlier this year. It’s an alternative way to browser their online magazine. They call it The Times Skimmer. The new interface let’s you navigate between different sections of their paper by only using the arrows on your keyboard. The GUI also lets you switch fast between articles and once you’re done reading one you can easily move on to the next.

nytimes_skimmer_interface

Times Skimmer features the following seven display options:

  • Stories displayed in a grid
  • Content displayed based on editorial ranked feeds
  • Headlines displayed in a list
  • Content presented in the classic typeface Helvetica
  • Content displayed against a black background
  • Headlines and brief summaries displayed in a wrap-around format
  • Headlines, bylines and brief summaries displayed in a design similar to word magnets for refrigerators

After I’ve been spending a couple of minutes with this updated interface I’m struck by what now seems obvious. Isn’t this interface perfectly adapted to be read of a 16:9 touch screen. Of course it resizes as you scale your browser, but that only means it will support a rotation.

apple_table_nytimes

Is The New York Times preparing for an Apple Tablet or maybe a reading device of their own?

Every time Apple has launched a new gadget they’ve made sure they gained some support by a selection of leading brands already tuned into their new shit. Well, in that case – could the Skimmer interface from The Times be exactly such a partner. If so…will we finally see an Apple Tablet in the near future?

Well. I’m sure about one thing. I’ll get my hands on one asap!

Update!

It seems more mags than The Times are preparing. I spotted this one this morning yesterday on YouTube. It’s Sports Illustrated’s version of a tablet prepared digital mag.

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Last week rumors started to surface regarding a new tablet about to be launched by Microsoft. The name was Courier and the rumor was a video containing a demonstration of the user interface. At first I thought it was more of an interface bonanza than an actual usable product.

But today I ran into yet another video, this time putting the Courier more into perspective of how it could be used for real. And let me tell you – I WANT THIS THING NOW!.

Courier User Interface from Gizmodo on Vimeo.

Isn’t it amazing. Microsoft has been all about Windows, Office and a whole lot of back end functions. Then suddenly they start putting the dollars behind innovation and new shit that makes you go wow. Slowly they’re turning their brand around. Apple better speed up their development of their rumored tablet or else we’ll turn to Microsoft! The war is on!

One last thing I want you all to note – we’re moving beyond OS and interfaces that are integrated over many platforms to instead having OS and interfaces that are optimized for every gadget. This will be the end of Windows Mobile as we know it.

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