Apple To Copy Boring Kindle? Nope. Introducing “Vooks”, Hybridized Content

It was just yesterday that iLounge reported that the upcoming Apple tablet will be designed as a possible replacement for newspapers and magazines. What I thought, of course, is e-reading capability.

But a report from Gizmodo suggests Apple is looking far beyond that. They are redefining print. Apple wants more book, magazine, and newspaper publishers developing hybridized content – text with intermittent video and audio clips. The only goal of the Kindle and other e-readers was that they relocated text from paper to digital formats. This new hybridized content will allow readers to read a passage or a chapter and then view a short video clip to better imagine the story line and the characters. Incidentally, the New York Times today published a piece about these “vooks”, which are mashups of text, video and web features. These vooks are already out and can be viewed on any web browser based computer as well as the iPhone, which might suggest that Apple is working to be the main distributor of this format.

Dozens of net tablets exist on the market now that can perform the same functions; media, web, and e-reading. What has been rumored for the past year is that the Apple tablet will be more like a larger iPhone. But just making a device larger in size isn’t Apple-like behavior. Besides, if it is true that Steve Jobs has been working on this for many years while killing the project several times, it is hard to believe all this attentiveness and hard work is only about increasing the size of a device.

Gizmodo also says Apple is working with publishers of textbooks in order to sell them on iTunes. In addition, they say the New York Times was approached by Apple about putting the paper on a “new device.” This throws more light on NYT’s Times Reader, a desktop application running on top of Adobe Air for viewing the news similar to its print addition.

Image from sitepoint.

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