Updated Tuesday, June 1, at 7:01 EST
TAKEAWAY: With fourteen days to go before the opening of Poynter’s The Power of the Tablet conference, I turn over the blog to our Garcia Media intern Reed Reibstein, who will also be blogging live from the conference. Reed’s idea is to “warm up” to the conference with daily postings of essential articles that will help everyone understand the tablet as a new journalistic platform. PLUS: Samples from the Bild Zeitung iPad app
Countdown to the Conference
In two weeks I will have the privilege of coming to you live on this blog from the “Power of the Tablet” conference. As a teaser for conference attendees and interested onlookers, each day until then I will be pointing out an essential article or blog post for understanding journalism on the tablet. (It should be a good warm-up for me, too, as I prepare for some heavy-duty blogging.) Even with a few bonus links, this countdown will omit many wonderful pieces. To compensate, I’m asking readers to send in their favorite tablet-related links, and the day before the conference, I will post those that I receive. Please submit your links either in the comments below or tweet them to @rreibstein . With introductions out of the way, let’s get started!
John-Henry Barac on Space & Touch in Digital News Design
A month and a half before the iPad’s release, Joshua Benton of the Nieman Journalism Lab interviewed John-Henry Barac , the designer of the best-of-breed Guardian iPhone app. Barac’s thoughts on news design for the tablet screen are particularly insightful, grounded in his previous app development experience. Some of what he says, such as bringing in multiple elements from print design, is commonly espoused, but certain of his ideas—connecting the reader to other relevant content, multiple entry points, constantly updating secondary content—remain largely unexplored in the current crop of news apps. Even if you’ve read it before, it’s well worth another look.
About Reed Reibstein:
Reed Reibstein, a rising senior at Yale University, is starting his third consecutive Garcia Media internship this summer . Reed , an art history major, also works closely with Mario Sr. during the year on a variety of projects.
When the iPad app gets a FAIL rating
It has happened to The Australian, which has received less than glowing marks from those who have seen it so far.
Writer David Richards quoted dissatisfied app-store customers who called the app a “pathetic joke”, “Incomplete” and “not a great iPad app”.
Main criticism about the app, which costs $4.95 to download is its “intrusive advertising” and pop up ads.
Bild Zeitung’s iPad app samples
Following are sample pages from Germany’s Bild Zeitung iPad app sent to me by Frank Deville who is enjoying reading these stories on his iPad. Notice that Bild’s philosophy apparently is to basically duplicate its printed page here. Rather than creating an iPad edition with its special characteristics, what we see here is the actual page that we are accustomed to, except that the stories lend themselves to more of a multimedia approach.
Double page profile of an author
Boris Becker’s new baby son
Scenes from the oil spill in the US
Story of a football player NOT chosen to play with the German team in the World Cup 2011