How The iPad Could Change PSFK

After the release of the iPad by Apple today, I’ve put together some initial thoughts on the impact of the device on our publishing business. The iPad is a touch screen device that’s designed to fit somewhere between the iPhone and the laptop with all the subtle design by taking all the user-interface and functionality cues from the former plus the processing power and size of the latter.

Apple is calling the technology revolutionary but how much impact will it have for an online publisher? Here are some initial thoughts on how PSFK could work with this new device.

Mobile Browser Experience
The larger screen size has been designed to make sites readable in the format they were designed for. Right now, many mobile sites reformat their look and feel to accommodate the reduced size and alternative functionality of the mobile device, often stripping out a lot of peripheral content to make them very purpose driven. We played with a iPhone version of PSFK for a short while but we didn’t quite understand the point and scrapped it. The iPad will allow PSFK to continue to concentrate delivering content in the same way we deliver desktop functionality.

Encouraging users to add a shortcut link on their home-screen will drive traffic and 3G users will be able to read PSFK while on their regular commute. In terms of functionality, the ability to play video within the Safari browser will bring our stories to life. Maybe we can hack that so that we can show a 3 second pre-roll to all video clicks to get more advertising revenue. And we wonder how might Safari work with apps to bring a more “magical” reader (or advertiser) experience.

Mail & Photos
The iPad’s mail service integrates with the photo app. Maybe there’s a way to encourage the emailing of images we use. With a click of an image, readers can send friends summaries of stories and their accompanying image together with a link back to the site to encourage more traffic.

Video & YouTube
With the iPad’s HD screen and better YouTube functionality, PSFK readers should be able to more easily find and watch video content from our talks, conferences and interviews. What this will probably mean is that we’d have to invest in our shoot quality more – and maybe re-process our previous videos for the format. Nevertheless, this presents an exciting opportunity for PSFK to move beyond ‘print’ into moving image – and back again.

iBook
Apple have announced a new retail service that offers books to buy. They say that the high-resolution, LED-backlit screen displays everything in sharp, rich, color making it easy to read even in low light. The immediate opportunity here is to sell our books like Good Ideas for 2010 and the Brooklyn guide without having to put our readers through the high cost from printing through a click to print service like Blurb. Instead of selling a relatively low number at $60-80, we can sell probably quite a few digital books for a price of 9.99. Also, we’ll wait to see if the service offers subscription fees so we could consider generating a monthly e-zine.

App Store & Maps
Apps is an area where there’s a real opportunity here that PSFK hasn’t taken advantage of. We could create informational apps that are dictionaries of trends for example or we can provide other resources. If an app could work with the mapping service then we could actually create live ‘guides’ to cities. App users could pull up stories around specific locations, even add their own personal comments and hey, maybe ‘check-in’ to those locations.

Overall, probably the most interesting aspect of the service is the apps aspect. A large screen device that can link to the database of 20,000 idea posts we have through an Apple iPad interface (rather than HTML).

Would you agree, readers? What apps or site developments would you like us to consider?