Do We Need An Online Twitter Site Like This?

For better or worse, the Internet is largely a visual medium. I would image that just as many images as words make up the web content of the Internet. Images are powerful and they often covey a messages and capture our attention a hundred times faster than words. So this begs the question, which is a better way to view posts on Twitter, the traditional, linear, text-dominate way, like this?:

Or in a more traditional newspaper styled visual and text medium format, like this (from the Flipboard application for the iPad)?:

Or this approach based on http://www.paper.li:

When I browse Twitter updates using the Flipboard, I experience Twitter in a much more pleasing way. While the traditional linear text interface works pretty well on my iPhone, it’s absolutely boring for browsing Twitter on my computer or iPad.

I wish Flipboard could be turned into online website for Twitter and Facebook, as well as for RSS feeds. The multimedia, magazine style of the application is precisely designed for how media should be passed along and consumed.

What do you think? Should there be two types of Twitter sites?

iAnnotate for the iPad

I could easily do an entire website about e-reading devices, and if I did,  iAnnotate PDF would be at the top of my list as the best app for reading and annotating text on the iPad.

Recently, the developers  of iAnnotate put out a press release about how their app is a required iPad program for first-year medical students at Standford. I can certainly understand why. I actually prefer iAnnotate over Apple‘s iBook and Amazon’s Kindle app—the latter two in my view are mainly for reading novels, not books and documents that require lots of annotating.

With iAnnotate, you can wirelessly import PDFs via the developer’s Aji Reader Service app, the file-sharing service, Dropbox, or through a wired connection between iTunes and the iPad. You an also directly download a PDF from within iAnnotate browser itself. I’ve imported and opened PDFs as large a 500 pages without a problem.

Zinio: Reading Magazines on Your iPad and Computer

When I walk into my local book stores I sometimes cringe when I see the number of magazines on shelves—un-read and un-purchased, but yet so well designed and full of great information. I’ve asked store clerks more than a few times what happens to the magazines that they don’t sell. Each has said the same thing: they’re boxed back up and shipped off for recycling.

It’s great that so much expensive paper is recycled, but in the age of the iPad I long to see a lot less paper magazines on magazine stands and a lot more available to subscribers using the iPad and other forthcoming tablet devices.

As it stands now, Zinio Magazine & Reader (iTunes Store link) app is the most useful digital magazine publication app for the iPad. Zinio has been around for a while as a computer magazine reader. It distributes thousands of full-color magazines, from RollingStone, Car and Driver, to Time Magazine. Many of the most popular magazines that you see on newsstands can be downloaded from Zinio. Most of the publications are not free, but the Zinio apps, both the mobile and desktop versions are very much free.