We have trawled the net to come up with the top five demos of how ebooks and games can be adapted for use on tomorrows tablet devices. Most of the demos are for the iPad, mainly due to the hype surrounding its announcement but also because of Apples reputation as a ‘game-changer’. Take heart though, Microsoft fans (there must be at least a few of you), there is no doubt some cool tricks coming to the courier, just as soon as it gets finished.
So here they are, in no particular order, the top five eBook and magazine, tablet based, demos:
1) Penguin Books, ‘iPad iMageneering’
In this three and a half minute video Penguin demo no less than six book ideas, for all ages and with all kinds of interactive elements, a great example of the power of touch technology. They have come up with some great ideas, from coloring to playing games, the books look fun, simple to use and most importantly, given their target audience, educational.
2) Alexx Henry Photography, ‘iPad Magic’
In this series of clips Alexx Henry demos concepts for two different types of magazine, showing how everything from a regular article right through to the front cover can be customized for the new digital format. They have also posted a couple of short clips showing how the demos where made, illustrating just how much work would need to go into an interactive eBook.
3) Wired Magazine, ‘The Wired Tablet App: A Video Demonstration’
Excuse the first one minute four seconds of sales pitch (you may even want to skip ahead to 1:04), but Wired magazine have made a fantastic attempt at utilizing Adobe’s AIR platform in order to allow users to interact with their magazine across multiple tablet platforms, with 360° product views and video reviews this looks set to be a killer app, good work guys!
4) Sport Illustrated ‘Tablet Demo 1.5′
Sports Illustrated have made a fantastic demo of just how interactive magazines displayed on a tablet device can be, with everything from game footage, custom layouts, images galleries and even elements to allow interaction with the game, they really have covered all the bases with this one. The highlight of the whole video however, has to be the image galleries and videos inserted into the articles, combining static text and dynamic content to allow readers to properly interact with the magazine.
5) Marie Claire, ‘iPad concept powered by Ceros’
Not quite the most inspiring of the line up, Marie Claire does however bring some nice features to the table, there is the ability to scroll between multiple editions and select which one to read (or, presumably purchase), as well the showing multiple viewing options and video of a photo shoot, not a bad attempt from Ceros and if anything, possibly a more realistic version of what we will actually see, given the time taken to produce full length video clips and the huge amount of disk space some of the other magazines and eBooks would undoubtably take up.
So there you have it, the top five ebook and magazine interactive demos on the net, hopefully it won’t be too long before we start to see some of them in real life, but until then, watch this space!
