The New York Observer reports that the company formed by publishing’s Superfriends – perhaps Legion of Doom is more appropriate – will format and publish rags that “work across multiple digital platforms, whether the iPhone, the BlackBerry or countless other digital devices”, though they’re not developing their own reader hardware.

Which is where it gets a little sticky, says one of the Observer’s sources: “The really, really hard part is that you’ve got so many different kinds of devices running on different operating systems. And how do you handle that? The consortium provides one point of contact for the consumer. When you come to the main store, you can get the content any way you want.”

In one sense, the venture will be very much like Hulu – a separate company from the publishers, run by Time’s John Squires, who’s been behind the whole initiative, as All Things D originally reported. It’s like Hulu for another reason, in that it’s more like a disjointed confederation whose motto is hanging together or hanging separately since every publisher clearly rolling their own, separate gambit as well: We’ve got the tabletised version of Wired (Conde); Hearst was planning its very own ereader at one point; and Time too.

It feels like the early, disjointed days of digital music, at best. There’s a good chance stuff you buy now (well, soon) isn’t going to work forever. Time’s thing. Maybe Apple’s thing. Some kind of Adobe formatted thing. Amazon and Barnes & Noble’s thing. One of them will stick and we’ll have our digital magazines preserving an old print format in a digital way – hey, the publishing industry might even save itself – but I’m just going to cower in a corner with free stuff in my web browser until this all gets sorted out. [Observer]

Here’s how it’d work: There’d be a new company running digital store where people could buy and manage their magazine subscriptions that would be delivered on “any” device. Supposedly, Time Inc’s gotten Conde Nast (publisher of Wired, Vanity Fair, etc.) and Heart (Popular Mechanics, Esquire, etc.) ramped up about the idea as well, which would launch in 2010.

Great, except that it’s not going to work. As Peter Kafka points out, they have to convince people to sign up for another service — not an easy feat if they’re already tangled up with a Kindle or Apple. Especially if this new service will be just magazines, and not include newspapers. And there’s no way Amazon or Apple will let the publishers tie a separate service into their devices, pissing in their pool. The whole point of the Kindle is that Amazon controls the delivery method, and that’s likely how Apple’s tablet will work — downloading magazines and newspapers and textbooks through iTunes, just like iPhone apps or iTunes music.

Which basically leaves the the publishers with a handful of generic readers they could get their goods on, meaning they’re screwed. At this point it looks like all roads to eReaders people will actually buy to pass through Amazon or soon, Apple. Sorry magazine dudes: Give in, give up or get out. [All Things D]

So no matter what the time of day, Qlocktwo can spell it out for you by illuminating just the right spots.

But while the design is pleasing, Qlocktwo’s price is not. You see, it’s a designer product, meaning that you’ll need to pay somewhere around $US1000 to own on of your own, along with a few hundred bucks should you want to change out the faceplate.

Then again, if Qlocktwo can replace all the other reading you do in your life, it could save you a boatload on print materials. Our reserves from Danielle Steele alone will be staggering. [Qlocktwo via Design Milk via technabob]

Analyst Richard Doherty (whom I have known for years, and whom I respect) told BusinessWeek that Apple built two tablets, not one. There’s the larger one, presumably a 10-incher, which we’re expecting, and a smaller one, an overgrown iPod Touch with a 6-inch screen—an iPod Tablet, or an iPod Plus, as Leander at Cult of Mac said. This isn’t a post because it’s not verifiable—it’s all “may” and “might.” Doherty is saying that they’ve prototyped them, and that Apple may launch “one or both.” Possibly for as low as $US679. Possibly in September. Great. Thanks for making my dreams even more feverish, Rick! [BusinessWeek via Cult of Mac]

Dell has a smartphone problem. Everyone expects it to come, but the ones that are seen floating around, live or in PowerPoint, are all written off as mere ideas. After all of the hullabaloo over the Dell Mini i3 at a China Mobile event, Dell is back to swearing that the phone is not a real product. The sad fact is, one day Dell really will come out with an Android handset—and everyone will be totally underwhelmed. [Reg Hardware UK]

Two “asset protection” guys at a Denver-area Best Buy were canned after one of them, Jared Bergstreser, pursued a shoplifter who had stolen some mobile phones, tackling him outside the door. It was messy—one of the thief’s accomplices whipped out a knife, and even slashed a third employee. Bergstreser doesn’t protest the firing. He admitted he reacted on instinct, and that he broke company policy, saying “I put people in danger, and I put myself in danger.” But nobody’s sure why the other guy, Colin Trapp, got fired. He just went out to cover Bergstreser’s back. [Denver Post - Fictitious Best Buy asset protection dude by Dan Meth, first seen here]

Time only moves forward. We all know that. But somebody finally put pen to paper to prove it. It seems, as with most physics, that it has to do with the act of observation. If things could move backwards in time, you’d really have a mess to clean up, because so many people would observe things that didn’t happen yet or won’t happen, or won’t have happened or will have not happened. Alright, I’m going to stop there. You have two choices: Read the article, or read that passage in the Hitchhiker’s Guide trilogy where Douglas Adams explains why time travel is so hard to explain. [Ars Technica - Image from this guy's Flickr stream of Donnie Darko stills]

Nice work, jackass! You were probably doing something totally boring and didn’t look at your watch right as that second passed. The rest of us, where were paying close attention, sort of half smiled and though “oh, neat” to ourselves before going back to work.

If you’re desperate for that same feeling, there’s always 04:05:06 07/08/09 later this afternoon.

Also in this episode, you’ll get a look at the technology being used on the show, including an explanation of how their high speed cameras work.

Time Warp—a show that uses high-speed cameras to capture every-day actions in slow motion—airs every Wednesday at 8PM on the Discovery Channel. [Time Warp]

[Che-Wei Wang at ITP]

By Diamantini & Domeniconi, the $US230 Striped Cuckoo Clock has ditched the typically rustic bark and straw birdhouse design for a more modern approach to avian living. After all, in the age of dyed plastics, there’s no need for birds to live in leaky, drab houses. I mean, seriously, just because you’re a traditionalist doesn’t mean that the entire mechanical bird world needs to suffer. Arse. [Rockett St George via Switched On Set]

Needless to say, this testing requires a lot of bulky equipment that’s at least a cubic metre in size.

Now, a team of researchers out of Reno have successfully used a new technique that cuts down on gear. Using lasers (of course), scientists can hold atoms to be observed in place without a vacuum. The system still requires a bit of equipment, but it could pave the way for portable atomic clocks to be used in space laboratories, or just very, very complicated watches from Tokyoflash. [NewScientist and image]