The device was described as a larger iPhone, “small enough to carry in a handbag but too big to fit in a pocket.”

This makes the tablet smaller than a breadbox, right? [Apple Insider]

A lot of people are writing up this video of the NYTimes Editor “leaking” the Apple Tablet (see 8:20 in the video) in this supposedly off record talk. But this isn’t proof of anything.

It could easily just be that Bill Keller reads rumours, too. But what if that was a whoopsie letting loose a secret that Bill knows with first hand knowledge? So what? We already know it’s coming, having talked to people who have seen and heard things first hand. And we do know the NYTimes is involved with the project. So that’s just more of what we already know, but in a way that’s not really more proof.

Silly. [Defamer]

The first shot at Amazon reported by the WSJ is kinda weak in the grand scheme of things: Yesterday, Walmart started selling 10 “hotly anticipated” books, like almost-President-of-the-United-States Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue for 10 US bucks. The paper kind. For the same price as the pretend books you buy on a Kindle. Amazon fired a volley back, matching the price. Walmart went to its classic $US9 position this morning. Ker-plow.

This is apparently deeply frightening to publishers. Why? Because once people expect a book for $US10, they’re not gonna pay $US28 for it, which would seriously alter the economy of the publishing industry. And I mean, they’re already deathly afraid of the very uncertain future of publishing. A standard $US10 price would make books feel more disposable — granted, this is the future that’s coming with eBooks anyway.

Walmart actually still makes a bit of money at that price — and obviously Amazon does hawking eBooks for that much. The people this would seriously screw are independent booksellers, who couldn’t scrape by on margins that low. Which makes you wonder how they’re going to continue existing in a world where we’re all buying books, for cheap, on tablets. Amazon and Walmart’s likely just the beginning of the end. [WSJ Image via Ryan Conway/Brave New Films/Flickr]

Technologizer excavated the reviews from every major publication at the time, and the early reactions are kind of amazing given how people felt about Vista just a few months after launch (the Walt Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg called it “the best version of Windows that Microsoft has produced”). Only Forbes’ Stephen Manes’ ventured that Vista is “at best mildly annoying and at worst makes you want to rush to Redmond, Wash. and rip somebody’s liver out”.

Given the massive public beta for Windows 7 and all of the telemetry data Microsoft’s been able to gather before launch (among a ton of other factors), I really doubt 7’s gonna be Vista all over again, even if Steve Ballmer himself feels the need to leave Microsoft a little bit of room to manoeuvre. Still, Vista’s a solid illustration of how different a product can be for a handful of isolated reviewers than it turns out to be for everybody else. [Technologizer]

According to TechCrunch, UK company ICQ is developing the full-out Spotify phone for telecommunications provider Telia. And with recent news that Spotify service is expanding to television (in Sweden), the handset would be a notable multimedia force — even if the iPhone app makes an easier upsell.

So theoretically, if Spotify made its way to the US, and if the Spotify phone made its way to the US, every American would have Spotify phones. [TechCrunch and TechCrunch UK and image]

Yesterday, we explored Apple’s discussions with newspaper, magazine and textbook publishers about creating a new type of hybridised media for an Apple tablet. Vooks—interactive books for the PC/iPhone—are a telling example of such an idea gone wrong.

Starting today, four Vooks are available for $US7 a pop. They’re essentially part-book, part-video stories and instructional texts that can link you to social networking sites should you want to fanboy out to your awesome Vook.

While the idea is sound, the product looks no better than a mid-90s encyclopaedia on CD.

And it really makes us realise, mixing medias—especially enhancing text for fiction—is tricky beyond the mere subject of taste. We’re used to watching both news and fart-related video clips on a blog, but embedded flash video is just corny when placed next to a murder mystery.

Part of the challenge is format. UI needs to be updated to something we haven’t really seen before — or maybe even imagined. Jumping across media should be a natural, passive experience. That part seems doable, though extremely difficult, with touch, camera and even voice interfaces. For instance, you could track a reader’s eyes to a certain word and activate a sound. You could make a page turn naturally to a full screen video as opposed to relegating clips to an awkward 480×360 box.

But when hybridising media, the part that could be even tougher is one of budgetary constraints. As soon as a book includes video, a publishing house becomes a production house and a writer becomes a director/editor. Stephen King’s prose might send chills up your spine, but the local cable commercial quality video blurb sitting beside it won’t have the budgetary love of a Hollywood flick, at least, not unless Stephen King or somebody else is going to take a paycut (or sell a LOT more books).

Advertising books costs money. Printing and distributing books costs money. But writing a book? That part’s basically free.

So whatever Apple and publishing houses are cooking up, we hope it’s beyond what we’ve seen in Vooks. No offence, Vook — someone had to do it (wrong) first. [Vook via NYT]

Several years ago, a modified version of OS X was presented to Steve Jobs, running on a multitouch tablet. When the question of “what would people do with this?” couldn’t be answered, they shelved it. Long having established music, movie and TV content, Apple is working hard to load up iTunes with print content from several major publishing houses across several media.

Two people related to the NYTimes have separately told me that in June, paper was approached by Apple to talk about putting the paper on a “new device”. The R&D labs have long worked on versions of the paper meant to be navigated without a keyboard or mouse, showing up on Windows tablets and on multiple formats using Adobe Air. The NYTimes, of course, also publishes via their iPhone application. Jobs has, during past keynotes, called the NYTimes the “best newspaper in the world.”

A person close to a VP in textbook publishing mentioned to me in July that McGraw Hill and Oberlin Press are working with Apple to move textbooks to iTunes. There was no mention of any more detail than that, but it does link back to a private Apple intern idea competition held on campus, in their Town Hall meeting area in 2008, where the winning presentation selected by executives was one focused on textbook distribution through iTunes. The logic here is that textbooks are sold new at a few hundred dollars, and resold by local stores without any kickbacks to publishers. A DRM’d one-time-use book would not only be attractive because publishers would earn more money, but electronic text books would be able to be sold for a fraction of the cost, cutting out book stores and creating a landslide marketshare shift by means of that huge price differential. (If that device were a tablet, the savings on books could pay for the device, and save students a lot of back pain.)

Apple also recently had several executives from one of the largest magazine groups at their Cupertino’s campus, where they were asked to present their ideas on the future of publishing. Several mockups of magazines were present in interactive form. It is presumed that more talks took place after the introduction and investigatory meeting. Some magazine company is also considering Adobe Air as a competing option for digital magazines, but without a revenue/distribution system that iTunes has, it seems unlikely.

I haven’t heard anything about traditional book publishers being approached yet, but given the scope of the rest of the publishing industry’s involvement, it’s not hard to imagine they’re on board as well.

Another source corroborates that the January announce date others have reported is correct within the month, with this information heard from a high level.

Some I’ve talked to believe the initial content will be mere translations of text to tablet form. But while the idea of print on the Tablet is enticing, it’s nothing the Kindle or any E-Ink device couldn’t do. The eventual goal is to have publishers create hybridised content that draws from audio, video, interactive graphics in books, magazines and newspapers, where paper layouts would be static. And with release dates for Microsoft’s Courier set to be quite far away and Kindle stuck with relatively static e-ink, it appears that Apple is moving towards a pole position in distribution of this next-generation print content. First, it’ll get its feet wet with more basic repurposing of the stuff found on dead trees today.

If the proposed law passes that, incidentally, is currently supported by over 50 politicians, every Photoshopped human on everything from advertisements to news stories to product packaging would require the footer: “Photograph retouched to modify the physical appearance of a person”.

Advertisers who fail to include the footer would be fined $US55,000 or up to 50% of the cost of their campaign.

The law itself is being driven on by arguments that Photoshopped images can “lead people to believe in a reality that does not actually exist, and have a detrimental effect on adolescents”. And while that’s a fair point, the skeptic in us might see this as the lame excuse of someone not committed enough to rigorous cosmetic surgery. [Telegraph via ars and Image]

My buddy Chris Hardwick posted this video of my buddy Scott Dadich speaking about how he makes covers for Wired Magazine. [Fora via nerdist]