If I had time, I’d write a post that would reflect on what Patricio Robles says here and what Khoi Vinh said here.

Short version (and, with apologies, some inside baseball): Condé Nast’s most successful magazine iPad app is the New Yorker — which eschews all the bells and whistles the company jammed into its other magazine apps. Add to that, the news that Facebook acqhired Mike Matas by purchasing his iPad publishing app, Push Pop Press (unless it was Al Gore they were acqhiring) and somewhere in there, there’s a wanna-be trend story bubbling up about magazine publishers discovering that iPad publishing may not be all about bells and whistles, but may be about good writing and the ability for readers to read it.

Who knew?

That was a rhetorical question. I know the answer: the 12 readers of this blog knew. (And the thousands who read Khoi’s.)

Starting with the first time I saw something called an iPad magazine app, I’ve been saying over and over and way-over, that simplicity and readability make for a great reading experience on a device people use for reading.

Yes, the iPad does all those bells and whistles splendidly. I use it for watching videos and playing games, and many other things. But that doesn’t mean that when I’m reading, I want videos and games in the middle of what I’m reading — nor the bandwidth required to download them. (Context, I could use more of, but that’s another post.)

Over time, publishers will learn that bells and whistles are stuff on the edge — not at the core —  of what makes a magazine (or any medium that, for a couple of centuries has been associated with that sub-set of “content” related to words arranged in sentences and paragraphs) app great.

Great writing. That’s the core stuff. Making it easy to download and read. That’s more core stuff.

The bells and whistles are best left to bells and whistles makers. At least for a while.

[Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.]

When I read this Ad Age interview with Jann Wenner, I thought of all the iconic photography of him from the late 1960s and early 1970s, much of it shot by Annie Leiboviz.

Click on that photo of he and Hunter Thompson and you’ll see him in 1976 — nearly a decade after he’d started Rolling Stone. Changing journalism — including the gonzo variety. Changing publishing. Chronicling the changing world. But already wearing a business suit — a decade and a lifetime after that 1967 photo on the left was shot, when Wenner was 20 and Rolling Stone was just starting.

Back then, Rolling Stone was new media and the launch pad of new journalism. But one decade after it started, Wenner and Hunter Thompson were together in that photo on the right, at a party Rolling Stone was throwing for Jimmy Carter’s campaign staff. Really.

It doesn’t seem that long ago, just four decades or so.

The reason I thought of those photos was because after reading the AdAge interview I started wondering how, if that young Jann Werner were around today, he would react to the old Jann Werner using the interview to slam the big magazine companies he competes with, for obsessing over the iPad, describing such obsession as “just sheer insanity and insecurity and fear.” Print magazines, he says, are not going the way of the CD.

Sample:

“So I think that they’re prematurely rushing and showing little confidence and faith in what they’ve really got, their real asset, which is the magazine itself, which is still a great commodity. It’s a small additive; it’s not the new business…(On how long it will take for there to be a shift from print to iPad-like devices)…Not months. Decades, probably. People’s habits will shift, they’ll make improvements in the delivery system, the screen will change, it will get lighter, whatever, and new people growing up will find that as a habit. But you’re talking about a generation at least, maybe two generations, before the shift is decisive.”

That, from a guy who went from a $6,000 startup in San Francisco to throwing parties for campaign staffs of nominees for President of the United States in less than a decade.

Ironically (as I’m someone who blogs an awful lot about iPads and digital devices), I tend to agree with Wenner. A lot about how big magazine companies are obsessed with the iPad seems a bit insane to me. But then, when you are as old as he is (which I’ll point out, is a decade older than me) you think change takes longer than change did when you were in your 20s.

[via: Poynter.org]

During the next week, I’ll be with a group of journalists and a group of publishers who, in different ways, are exploring a similar topic: What are media creators and users learning about what works (and doesn’t) when content is delivered via small-screen mobile devices during this era when such devices have gone from being perpetually-predicted publishing platforms to real-world opportunities?

This Friday, April 1 (no fooling), I’ll be leading a session at a conference at the John Seigenthaler Center at Vanderbilt University. Called, “The Mobile Migration,” the one-day conference is co-sponsored by the Online News Association and the Freedom Forum’s Diversity Institute with underwriting from the Scripps Howard Foundation. You can learn more about the conference, and how to register, on the blog of its ever-vigilant organizer, Jack Lail, multi-media editor of the Knoxville News Sentinnel.

My session is called: “The Reader Decides: How Magazines are Learning What Screen Publishing is All About” and is described like this: “From multi-million dollar mega-apps to dorm-room developed content reading apps, the iPad is proving to be both a launch pad of opportunity and a landing pad for humbling crashes. What has year one of the iPad taught magazine publishers that helps predict the future of screen-based media?”

This is my second time to speak at this conference that is attended by the journalists at legacy media companies — newspapers and broadcasters — who are embracing the tools and approaches of new media (even when some of their bosses don’t quite get it). It’s a great group. It’s the kind of group I thought about when I read the recent tweet by John Paton [@jxpaxton], the CEO of a regional newspaper business, whose advice is to “stop listening to print people and put the digital people in charge – of everything.”

Next Monday, April 4, I’ll be in New York where I’ll be moderating the Annual Digital Magazine Symposium that’s held in conjunction with the Publishing Business Conference & Expo. I’m looking forward to this as I’ve been able to work with the conference organizers at Publishing Executive and Book Business magazines, Noelle Skodzinski and James Sturdivant to develop a 2 1/2 hour program that includes discussions with the developers of some most ambitious magazine-related apps and other publishers who have found success in keeping their strategy focused on content rather than developing their own technology. Likewise — and this will be no surprise to readers of this blog — I’ve also invited former NYTimes.com creative director and usability rock star Khoi Vihn to review some lessons in usability from early iPad apps, and what they might suggest for the future.

Here’s something I used to care about, but don’t anymore: the word “magazine.”

I still care about magazines (both professionally and personally), it’s the word I don’t care about anymore: what it is, what it means, on what one can hang the label.

I’ve chosen to become a latter-day, big-tent guy when it comes to the word magazine — or, for that matter, any media or marketing label.

I’m tired of debates over what the definitions may, or may not be, of lots of words like blog, micro-blog, TV, radio, podcasting, news, journalism, journalists, social-media, big, small, bubble, bust, opened, closed, paid, free, 2.0, 3.0, i-, e-, cool, dead, or, for that matter, the difference between the words hipster and scenester. Do I need to go on?

But let me get back to the word “magazine.”

I knew it was time to throw in the towel when even the Magazine Publishers of America gave up on defining the term magazine, so they officially changed their name to just the letters MPA, but then, in a slap in the face of acronym-lovers everywhere, added the tag line: “The Association of Magazine Media.” (Which begs the intentionally double-meaning question for someone else to answer, “What does MPA stand for?”)

In the early days of this blog, I used to argue the use of the word “magazine” to describe something on the web was a train wreck in the making. I used to believe that when words start being used to describe anything, they end up meaning nothing. I used to believe it was helpful that when, as a communication medium and publishing format, the word magazine referred to a recurring printed product. That way, people of any age could agree what “a magazine” is. While I’m sure some news-reel company or radio show used the word before them, I believe it was 60 Minutes that most convincingly established the precedent for using the word magazine as a metaphor that can leap to non-print formats.

And that’s exactly what happened when the browser-based web appeared in the mid-1990s.

There are scholars and philosophers who have spent entire careers pondering the various roles of metaphor in our lives, so I won’t try to simplify why the decision by someone 15 years ago to label the website Slate.com a magazine would one day lead to it winning a National Magazine Award in a category where the nominees included The Daily Beast, which, to my knowledge, has never described itself explicitly as a magazine, but, ironically(?), was created by one of the most talented and influential magazine editors of the past quarter-century. The fact is, the word “magazine” has always been, when it comes to information and art assembled and distributed in a recurring fashion, a metaphor.

So it should come as no surprise to me, or anyone else, that, upon seeing a something that waddled and quacked like a magazine, that the something would be called a magazine by the early creators of websites, that were, as they were told by the creators of those browsers, comprised of “web pages.”

That Slate magazine is now owned by a company that used to own Newsweek magazine but who sold(?) it to, in a round-about-way, the Daily Beast, whose editor now also serves as editor of Newsweek, should convince even the most strident defender of the word magazine being, somehow, a paper thing, to give up the fight.

I know I gave up the fight.

When works of art are mere content and anyone who re-tweets URLs is a curator, why should I care about what the label magazine is applied to?

I guess you’ve heard: I don’t.

But I have decided what I am: I’m a publisher. You know, publishing — it’s the word the MPA dropped like some hot lead type, even though they kept the “M” word.

I’m a print publisher. And I’m a screen publisher. I love all you content and media creators — and for real-world business, marketing and SEO purposes, I’ll keep using words like “content marketing” and “media” to describe what my company and I do. (I’m more a pragmatist and entrepreneur than an idealist and linguist.)

But I’m sticking with publisher when I describe who I am — to the mirror.

[To be continued...]

Regular readers of this blog know of my decade-long knee-jerk reactions to any notion that media intended to directly connect sellers and buyers is somehow: 1. Something new 2. Obviously unethical 3. Misleading to the audience. Today, the New York Times has such a boiler-plate story that, in the past, would cause my knee to jerk in such a fashion.

Quote:

“The Web site Thrillist publishes daily e-mails aimed at a young, male audience, with tips about activities in various cities. But along with that content, it offers separate e-mails selling clothes and deals at local businesses, melding commerce and content in ways that have long made traditional publications bristle. For Thrillist, the so-called Chinese wall that publications have between the editorial and advertising sides of the business is more of a bridge. It can be hard to tell the difference among reviews, ads and sales, in part because it calls its sponsored posts “allied e-mail” instead of ads and has sold deals for restaurants it has also reviewed. “That’s a very old media way of thinking about things,” said Ben Lerer, 29, co-founder and chief executive of Thrillist. “This is not a digital magazine that sells some stuff. This is the beginning of what a new media company looks like.”

I am, with this post and at least for this day, choosing to ignore that the notion of delivering coupons in the context of sponsored editorial is anything new can be dispelled by looking down at the blow-in cards on your lap, the next time you open a magazine.

And I’m not here to police anything Ben calls “new” that I know has been around for at least 150 years old.

Rather, I’m here to surrender and join in the chorus that editorial designed with an explicit and transparent goal of helping connect buyers and sellers is, indeed, what a new media company looks like.

Media that’s transparently focused on connecting buyers and sellers is new. There. I’ve said it.

Now, I want to announce what the “next, new” media company is going to look like. (And no, even though I can point to hundreds of existing examples, I’ll pretend that “next, new” is out there in the future.)

The “next, new” media company will disintermediate all these “current, new” media companies by demonstrating the common-sense and obvious fact that continues to elude otherwise smart people: Today, all companies have the power to be media companies.

Moreover, any new media company that is created on the old notion that they sit between sellers and buyers is only temporarily new. They’ll be gone faster than you can say, “Speedy Alka-Seltzer.”

So, enjoy your day, all you new media companies that send out daily deals to people who are in constant search of a better deal on a day spa. One day, those day spas will figure out how they’re a new media company themselves and will figure out what they really need is to invest in media that helps keep those customers coming back, instead of becoming itinerant day-spa-ists.

[Disclosure: For 20 years, the company that has clandestinely sponsored this blog has been helping companies and associations become "next new" media companies who communicate with their customers in print and on screens -- without the intermediation of old or new media theories.]

If you depend on email to send or receive newsletters, credit card statements, marketing announcements, or notices from social media sites or forums, you may want to take note of this announcement on Google’s Gmail Blog.

Today, Gmail is rolling out a new feature called Smart Labels that are like its Priority Inbox (an algorithmic-based filtering system that predicts which messages are most important to the recipient — and displays them atop the inbox queue). However, in the case of Smart Labels, the automated predictions will filter “bulk mail” or “any kind of mass mailing,” according to the announcement.

This filtering has nothing to do with spam, which is, technically speaking, “unsolicited” email. Gmail (including the paid version Google offers to businesses and organizations) does a great job filtering such unsolicited bulk email.

What Smart Labels is all about is email the recipient has actually chosen to receive — subscribe to, opt-into, or any other term indicating a desire to receive and permission to send.

As a recipient of email (aren’t we all?), I find this feature immediately lovable. However, as a media and marketing person obsessed with metrics that measure consumers’ reactions to and interactions with media and content, I feel I can safely predict this is not going to be the greatest of news for those of us who generate email-delivered content, even when that content follows all the best practices of permission-based marketing.

First, a disclosure: My company assists several clients in creating and distributing opt-in email newsletters. We even send a monthly newsletter ourselves (subscribe, it’s free and awesome). We are proud of our email-distributed newsletters a we have the research to demonstrate they are effective in engaging readers when the people who choose to receive them, open them.

Second, another disclosure: Yesterday, I was chatting with a friend of mine who is a very senior executive at a media company that sends tens of thousands emails each month that contain one of the following: a newsletter or a link to some type of digital publication or web-based content. Every piece of this email mail is opt-in. No one is receiving it who didn’t subscribe. The company’s opt-out rate is very small. In other words, this is email that the recipient has chosen to receive and choose not to turn off.

Yet despite all of this self-selection and permission, the open-rate (percentage of email distributed that is opened by recipients) of this email is lower than 20%. In other words, only two in ten subscribers to this email-delivered content actually open a specific mailing.

Bottomline: One of the lesser discussed issues by those who promote email marketing is this open rate problem. The promise of all those saved trees when everything is converted to digital media runs straight into the reality that a small percentage of people open such email — even from sources they request to receive such information from.

There are many reasons one can speculate when pondering that only 20% of people open such email to which they subscribe. Who knows? Maybe people only open 20% of the print publications to which they subscribe. Maybe 20% is a good open rate. I steadfastly refuse that notion (he said, looking over at the rapidly filling inbox on his desk).

I believe if we gathered up all of the reasons for such anemic open rates, we could classify them generally under one heading called, “We get too much email, so we delete or file away the ones we know we won’t read — but wish we could if we had the time.”

One way I personally participate in the “permission-based email that deteriorates open-rate metrics” phenomenon is to create inbox filters that divert certain types of subscribed email into labeled folders which I later review. Or, that is my intention. Anyone who does this knows those folders can often grow too deep with dated material and about once a month, a bulk delete is the way they become “managed.”

This “out of sight out of mind” approach may be a good “getting things done by filing them in the ‘read/review’ folder” approach, but those folders can too easily turn an email newsletter purgatory into hell for email marketers.

Good intentions (I’m going to read this newsletter one day) may under-estimate the number of ghost opt-outs a newsletter has (I’m not going to opt out because next week, I’ll have time to review it.)

For those who don’t, as I do, set up filters, Gmail’s Smart Labels will automagically start doing it for you if you choose that option.

I predict lots of people will choose that option (maybe not now, when it is a “lab” feature, but later, when it gets rolled out as a standard feature).

I predict this will result in lower open rates among Smart Labels users (out of sight, out of mind).

I predict email marketers will yell, “foul,” and argue that it is equivalent to being placed on a black list.

I predict Google will ignore them or point out that its an option users much choose.

This morning, I spent an hour chatting with Dave Winer on Rebooting the News the weekly podcast he typically records with NYU Professor Jay Rosen. To me, getting invited to spend an hour with Dave Winer on a podcast is like getting to spend an hour with Guglielmo Marconi on a radio show. (If I have to explain it, this 2009 RexBlog post may help connect the dots. Short version for my non-tech friends reading this: Dave is one of the founding pioneers of much of the technology and approaches we today call blogging, podcasting and social media.) (I would have mentioned RSS, but that was for my non-tech friends.)

You can listen to the Podcast here:

http://mp3.morningcoffeenotes.com/reboot11Feb21.mp3

On the podcast, we discussed these topics:

Why Twitter, the service, is too vital for Twitter, a company, to control exclusively. [Background]

The New York Times rehash of the “death of blogging” story, a meme dating back to a week after people stopped writing the stories about “blogs are never going to be born.” Like Dave, I believe Facebook and Twitter are blogging platforms, so, well, I don’t get it. [A long post about my thoughts regarding online identity. NYTimes story: "Blogs Wane as the Young Drift to Sites Like Twitter"]

Apple’s subscription plan and my outrage at their ban on in-app links to purchasing alternatives available via the browser. [Background on my opinion.]

Why I think magazine publishers are missing the mark on early generation magazine apps — and the real opportunity of the iPad. How the iPad (and Kindle) change notions of what is readable on a screen. [My reviews of The Daily app and Virgin's Project app.]

My opinion on Wikileaks, which I have no link to point to, so, in short it’s this: I’m an advocate of transparency and openness and probably would, if push came to shove, be supportive of Wikileaks. That said, I prefer diplomacy over war and don’t want Wikileaks to be in charge of judging what the consequences of their actions are going to lead to.

Rating: Fairly geekish if you’re not a follower of developments in new media, magazines or are related to me.

One might ask, “Why pay for something that’s free?” If you’ve ever paid 99¢ for an iTunes download, you might know at least one possible answer to that question. There are many others that have to do with convenience, timing, aesthetics, authenticity, experience or habit.

Here are two examples of things I’d potentially pay for that are free in other forms.

I’ve written on this blog before about my love of Instapaper — of how it allows me to save content from most any website to read later on my iPad or iPhone or computer in an ad-free, book-like format. It has really changed my reading habits during the past 18 months. (“I once said it was an app so awesome I can’t believe the anti-awesome police haven’t gone after it.”)

It’s so amazing, that every time I read an article using Instapaper, I think to myself:This can’t last forever. As much as I’m of the “information wants to be free” school, I expect to pay something in “soft” compensation – looking at ads, for example. Instapaper enables free content with no quid-pro-quo, like, say, putting up with the advertising that surrounds copy provided by, say, the New York Times, whose website is one of my favorite sources for Instapaper’d content. I can argue why this is okay once in a while as it introduces me to media sources and brands — but someones gotta pay when I’m partaking of a firehose of premium, unique and valuable content with no ads or other forms of value exchange.

I know when something’s too good to be true, so I’ve been preparing for the day when that Golden Age of Great Reading is going away — when I can no longer merely click on that “Read Later” button and get great writing into a form that actually enables good reading.

Several months ago, via an introduction from Dave Winer, I spoke with Richard Ziade, the developer of another one of my favorite “helps-me-read” services Readability, the open source software that lets you click a browser extension button and turn any web page into an ad-free, easy-to-read document. A real-time, read-it-now rather than later version of what Instapaper does for the time-shifting readers. (If you use Safari, Readability is at the core of Safari Reader, the feature that Apple says will, “allow you to remove annoying ads and visual distrations.”)

Richard told me he was working on a concept that would allow people to continue to enjoy the content displayed with services like Readbility and Instapaper, but that would also compensate the publisher of the content.

I told him I thought that was a great idea that I would sign up for it in a heartbeat on both the reader and the publisher side — but then I sorta drifted into the part of the conversation that said I’d likely be one of the very few people who would — and that it would likely never work because it’s, in effect, the creation of entire industry standard that’s equivalent to the performance rights infrastructure that governs the music industry — something that’s required by federal law and is byzantine in both concept and practice.

But I think he only heard me say the “great idea” and “I’d sign up for it” parts — and I think I was one of the very few people who said that; most probably just said, “Why?” I mean, who in their right mind would say you should pay $5 a month for something you can buy for free.

Fast forward to today: Readability: now has introduced the subscription model. It may not work. But, one day, I predict we’ll pay for unique versions of content we can obtain for free. And I predict it will be more like this model that magazine-by-magazine subscription model. Who knows, maybe there will be ASCAPs and BMIs for content (ugh) one day.

Oh, wait. I was going to mention another kind of content I’d pay for; and it’s even from the New York Times and I now get it free. It’s one of those fulfillments of an internet promise that’s never quite made it to prime time. NYTimes.com now offers a recommendation service that is one of the first uses of collaborative filtering for content recommendations (it’s used in commerce all the time) since we used it a decade ago on SmallBusiness.com (slightly ahead of its time). I would pay for this service — and probably will have to one day. If you’re logged into the NYTimes.com website, you can see your version at http://www.nytimes.com/recommendations. (A screengrab of mine is below.)

So there you have two things I’d pay for that I can get free:

1. An ad free, readable format for long-form articles by great writers.

2. A service that tracks every article I read and from that information filters articles that it knows should interest me, just me, not my friends or the people I follow — just me. (Oh, and another thing: it would need to find articles everywhere, not just the New York Times.)

Addendum: One more thing. Readability, while a click-now-and-read tool, has developed a “powered by Instapaper” app that allows you to “read-later” also. I can speculate (deduce?) that such a relationship between Instapaper and Readability creates an ipso-facto subscription model for Instapaper, as well. Or, I guess I should say, an subscription model as it relates to content that is sourced by one of the cooperating publishers.

Bonus link: Megan Garber has an excellent story based on interviews with the developers of the NYTimes.com’s recommendations project. While they don’t come right and use the term “collaborative filtering,” the way in which they describe the process of developing recommendations comes close. As Amazon, Netflix, Pandora and scores others have demonstrated, the collection and comparison of usage patterns weighs heavily in the effectiveness of personalized recommendations. It makes sense that recommending what story to read next is very similar to recommending what book to read, movie to watch or song to hear.

Related articles

• Will Publishers Embrace a Payment Model That Strips Out Ads? (gigaom.com)
• Readability Intros Subscriptions To Pay Publishers For Focused Readers (paidcontent.org)

Last month, I wrote a post for the blog at Hammock.com about my content marketing predictions for 2011. I’ve picked up a couple of predictions from there, however, most of the following comes from my “one day, blog about this” folder on Evernote.

So, in the form of predictions, here are some thoughts:

Magazine apps will stop being called magazine apps: Okay, I know it. This won’t happen. Magazine is such a convenient and important-sounding metaphor and, for traditional magazine publishers, a brand extension. When a publisher or developer calls something a “magazine,” there’s no need to say, “this is an app that includes big photos and text and the content is updated on a recurring basis.” Unfortunately, big photos, text and content updated on a recurring basis can also describe pretty much any popular media site on the web. Throw in video, audio, slide-shows and what do you have? Pretty much any content-focused app. So what do you have left to hang the word magazine on. Answer: Page flipping. So that’s what it has come down to: Of all the amazing things that can be done with the technology and platform of an iPad, the magazine app is becoming known as the app that has “pages” that “flip.” Geez. I need another prediction, so…

The developers of any app that includes text will discover accelerometer-aided “text scrolling” is better than page-flipping: If you’re a user of Instapaper Pro on the iPhone and you use “tilt scrolling,” you’ve probably wondered, “Why isn’t this on every eBook reader, web browser, etc.?” I mean, you tilt your device a bit forward and the text scrolls down. You wonder, “Isn’t this the way you would do it if you weren’t tied to metaphors like ‘page’ and ‘flip.’”?

Expect an announcement about Flipboard, Twitter and something that sounds a lot like an RSS “newsreader”: Okay, while I just, in a nuanced way, slammed Flipboard, let me admit that nothing I say in these predictions will slow down that juggernaut. So, at least, let me hope them success on something they’ve discovered builds on a foundation already blessed by publishers (rather than trying to convince publishers they are something new — which publishers naturally think is threatening): Making the notion of subscribing to an RSS news feed less geeky. What do I mean? Well, first, a couple of weeks ago, Flipboard CEO Mike McCue told the New York Times that “Twitter is becoming a social RSS reader…You follow certain people who provide a kind of social curation above the level that is likely on a blog.” Right after that, it was announced Mike McCue had joined the board of Twitter. And a couple of days later, there was a release of a Flipboard feature that makes it easy to use Flipboard as an RSS newsreader. And since almost every publisher has dozens of RSS feeds they already know are traffic-builders and, well, Twitter is probably their second source (or first) of traffic, what if Flipboard & Twitter were trying to jointly pitch media companies instead of having two sets of evangelists, biz-dev and sales people doing such pitching? And what if those RSS feeds and Twitter tweets were being presented in “flipping pages” that include advertising, also?

Call those “data points” or “tea leaves” or, what it actually is, “conjecture,” but those are the kind of things that start to happen right before real news occurs.

Questions & Answers will still be questions & answers: There’s this dream use of the internet. It goes something like this. I want to know an answer to something. I go to the internet and ask it. Magically, the answer appears. Oh, and if I’m the owner of this service, all of those answers are provided by experts who do so for free. Now, if you’re a well-funded and connected startup with a new and shiny way of doing this for yet, the hundredth time, you may be able to gain publicity among the techno-taste-makers, but, as Michael Hyatt tweeted the other day, “I need another inbox like I need a hole in the head.”

Apple will mashup features of Keynote and iMovie and create a program called iAnimator: A long time ago, I suggested that all Apple had to do to increase sales of GarageBand was to “re-metaphor-ize” the same features, using podcasting terms rather than music-recording terms. I don’t know if it helped with their sales, but they did shortly thereafter add podcasting metaphors (not because of me, it was a rather obvious opportunity). Here’s another opportunity: Keynote and iMovie features can, together, provide a decent animation platform hack for many how-to and fun uses. (Here’s a Christmas greeting video animation I helped create using a Keynote-iMovie hack. Key tip: Automate all transitions and master the transition, “Magic Move.”)

Designers will discover the key to user-love is simple, minimalist, user interfaces: Technology is often accused of making our lives more complicated. When publishers think that, to be impressive, an iPad app or website needs more bells and whistles, they fall into the trap of doing just that — making things more complicated. However, many of us are attracted to technology that helps us gain efficiency and achieve order — that dampens noise and distraction. Such neo-minimalist new products as the multi-platform product, Instapaper, are gaining a big following among early-adopting tech influencers.

You will publish an e-book: Or, you will if you want to. Two words for 2011: Kindle Singles. Here’s some math that jumped out at me while reading this post: If an author has a traditional contract with a major book publisher, an ebook sold for $9.99 via the Kindle Bookstore earns the author $1.75 per sale. However, if the author sells the book directly to the reader, via the Kindle Bookstore, the author will net slightly below $7. I know writers aren’t always good at math, but stick with me, please. Let’s say, when Kindle Singles launches, the average price of these new, shorter-form, eBooks is $2.99. If an author sells direct, they will generate more net revenue per sale ($2.09) from a short eBook than they could by selling a standard-length book sold by a traditional publisher ($1.75, if priced at $9.99). Draw your own conclusions. (But expect for me to be publishing lots of Singles in 2011.)

You will publish your book in print: Book publishing using print on demand (POD) technology and innovative distribution methods is a concept that has been around since slightly after the Guttenberg press. However, some inside-baseball channel wars and pricing elasticity challenges have prevented its long-hyped potential from matching its reality. I predict 2011 is the year that happens. (Note: I predict this every year.)

You will start thinking the word “social” is so last decade: Maybe this is just wishful thinking, but I’ve been saying the following for about three years: When you start calling everything “social,” then you don’t need the word social. So, if every page on the Internet has “like” buttons and comment boxes and at least two ways to join or see what friends have visited that page, is there really a need to use the word “social” anymore?

Android devices will continue to improve. Apple iOS devices will continue to improve and also get cheaper and more ubiquitous: First off, there is no reason for anyone to make predictions about market share of iPhones until iPhones are sold by Verizon. I know, personally, three people who have been putting off purchasing an Android phone to see if, indeed, that will happen and when. The market of those willing to change to ATT for the iPhone is pretty-much tapped. However, in the meantime, Android phones have improved — perhaps not to parity status, but they’re getting close. And they’re cheaper. Despite conventional wisdom to the contrary, I predict Jobs will compete on price when it comes to the iPhone. I also predict there will be no -killers; this is a case where competition is great for everyone, including those of us who are inclined to use Apple products.

In 2011, I predict I’ll purchase an Android device: Not a phone, but something.

If the instructions for your magazine app looks like this, you shouldn’t call it a magazine.

“It’s pretty similar to most of the other iPad magazine apps you’ve seen so far. Except more confusing–the navigation on all of these things changes from app to app, but this one seems even more random.”

That was nice, compared to Robert Andrews of PaidContent.org, after it took him 2 1/2 hours to download the app.):

“Project‘s UI is all over the place.”

Unfortunately, I can’t judge for myself because, like Robert, I can’t get the current issue to download. Well, I take that back: I got it to download, but then it wouldn’t work. That’s never happened before with any app.

As I’ve been saying since nearly the first day I saw something called a “magazine app” on an iPad, “Why, oh why, do the designers of iPad “magazine” apps think their job involves ignoring the way people have learned to interact with technology over the past 30 years? Why do they ignore three decades of user-interface conventions? Why do they park common sense at the door of their studio? Why do they completely waste an opportunity to do something great and truly revolutionary — and choose instead to be self-indulgent and hostile to their user?

And why do their backers then call the resulting crap “a magazine app”?

I knew magazines. Magazines were friends of mine. Project Magazine, you’re no magazine.

Here’s a suggestion, if you call something a “magazine,” maybe you can imagine (try very, very hard) that some people are attracted to magazines because they want to “read.” If you’re creating something for viewers or listeners or players, maybe use another metaphor than magazine — maybe call it a “media noise-maker app,” if all it does is package up bells and whistles.

Rather than continue this rant, I’ll point to last month’s post by designer-extraordinaire Khoi Vihn, an essay that has become a must-read on the topic of “magazine app” design.

I believe the iPad offers an incredible opportunity to magazine publishers, and would-be publishers. I just don’t think that opportunity has anything to do with what Project is trying to do.

Update: I give. For the second time, after and hour-long download, this is what happened…