Why the news media should suck it up and get on the iPad ASAP

by ShironekoEuro[busy]
Buy iPad, cancel newspaper
[Via Brainstorm Tech]

The results of a new survey bode well for news, not so well for the printed word

Here’s what a team at the Missouri School of Journalism learned in a survey of 1,609 Apple (AAPL) iPad owners conducted over the past three months:

• Using the iPad to follow breaking news reports and current events is the most popular use for the device, with 84.4% of respondents saying this is one of their main uses.
• More than three quarters (78.6%) of the users spent at least 30 minutes during a typical day consuming news on their iPad.
• Nearly half (48.9%) of the respondents said they spent an hour or more during a typical day consuming news on their iPad.
• Among the 931 respondents who indicated that they currently subscribe to print newspapers, there is a statistically significant, moderately strong, positive correlation between iPad news consumption and the likelihood of canceling their print subscriptions. (emphasis ours)
• For example, more than half (58.1%) of the respondents who subscribe to printed newspapers and use their iPad at least an hour a day for news said they are very likely to cancel their print subscriptions within the next six months.
• More than three out of 10 (30.6%) respondents indicated that they do not subscribe to printed newspapers, with another one out of 10 (10.7%) saying that they had already canceled their subscriptions to printed newspapers and switched to reading digital newspapers on their iPad.

[More]

When you have a gadget that can take Twitter and Facebook feeds – i.e. Flipboard – and make them into coherent news media sites, you should know that your current model of print/subscriptions is dead. There are two ways I consume news right now – Google News and Flipboard.

Anything that matters enters there pretty quickly.

Only a small percentage of people will understand the strategic importance of the lastest leak

Boing Boing Exclusive: Wikileaks drops major bombshell*
[Via Boing Boing]

I hope we don’t get sent to Guantánamo for conspiring with Wikileaks to reveal this über-top-top-top secret cable. You’d better read this right now. (* You’re welcome.)

[More]

I was flabbergasted by the cable that was released. Then I realized it was sent when Clinton was President. The world sure has changed in 12 years. Read it now.

If you do not understand, it discusses a specific sort of intelligence which had previously only reached public knowledge around 2008. It is pretty amazing to think that America and Britain were engaging in this conduct 10 years earlier. This is still 10 years after the original incident.

I am glad we can now all follow the global effects that his cable was, so far, the earliest indication.

From the philospher Josey Wales, as interpreted by Clint Eastwood

“Now remember, when things look bad and it looks like you’re not gonna make it, then you gotta get mean. I mean plumb, mad-dog mean. ‘Cause if you lose your head and you give up then you neither live nor win. That’s just the way it is.”

I love that movie.

Infinity Blade will kill me

screenshot from my iPad

First iOS game I have ended up with cramped shoulders from playing constantly without moving. Yes, it is not a free-roaming FPS with RPG aspects. I expect the hardware is not quite there yet.

So we get a game on rails with some RPG aspects. It has a different feel than id Software’s Rage, which feels more like a funhouse ride along rails, with the movements oddly unnatural in disorienting ways.

Infinity Blade, your character walks right up to the boss – and that is all Infinity Blade has is bosses – and start fighting. You have to learn how to dodge correctly and to block with your shield. Use you sword to parry and then do some slicing. If you have the right kind of magic ring you can do some damage also – I love that the magic spells require your to swipe the screen using some mystic symbols, almost as if you were Dr. Strange.

The RPG aspects mean you level up yourself and each thing you are using. You spread your experience points around and then move onto the next boss. The strategic aspect of being able to by new weapons and armor provides some real strategy amongst the tactical battles.

Yes, the different battles can get a little redundant after a while but, like what I have seen with a lot of iOS games, the purpose is not really to have days worth of game time.

This is a game that breaks down into 5-10 minute segments that you can fit into a busy schedule when you need a break. It’ll fill up some time. That is Rage is nice. I can try and do better than I did last time and even if I don’t I’ll get a nice break from the real world.

Except my first push on Infinity Blade resulted in me sitting in a chair cramped up after playing to long. They should put a reminder in these games to stretch my legs every so often.

[Listening to: Half-Truism from the album "Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace" by The Offspring]