Article: More on Going Digital

"The magazine - a few pieces of paper glued together - isn't going to be what you're doing in a few years time." ... reiterates futurologist Ian Pearson.

He cited methods such as incorporating URLs into magazines that link direct to your TV screen and using EInk technologies (prototype large scale newspaper shown in the accompanying pic) by which readers can connect to personalised internet content directly from the magazine. These kinds of technology advances would mean magazine production becomes more of a two-way system, of personalised interaction between the reader and the magazine beyond the traditional means of communication, the letters page.
"You can make a much clearer link between you and the customer because of the artificial intelligence which knows who I am, where I am and what information I need right now," he told the BBC Magazines conference and reported in the British media trade magazine, the Press Gazette.

Pearson warned that reputation alone would not carry companies through to the technological revolution, but that the brand value combined with keeping pace with the digital advances would. He added that convergence would mean magazine publishers would face competition from non-traditional publishers, also selling content. "You'll be competing against everybody,"

Adds Michael Harvey, editor of British TOP GEAR magazine: "Any society that's putting PCs at its centre is extremely relevant to a company that's just selling magazines — it's going to happen here because it's purely determined by the level of penetration and the speed of the broadband there."

Article Source: Press Gazette Online
Read full article" Futurologist: publishers must embrace digital age!