Whatayacallit?
July 5, 2007 by Marcus Grimm
Samir Husni thinks we should start calling digital editions "telemags." Personally, we’re in favor of a new name – let’s face it, the term "digital editions" is somewhat vague – but we’re not sure telemags captures what we’re doing, either.
Samir bases his idea on the fact that some digital editions blend print with video, and some do. However, we also incorporate audio, interactive games, forms and feeds.
In that light, "telemags" seems a bit restrictive.
Hmmm.. iMag anyone?
I don’t agree. The substrate doesn’t matter, It could be parchment, paper, scrolls, paper or plastic. It’s the words and at act of reading that is important. Mankind has been reading the same way for 25,000 years. There have been technologic improvements for all that time. Each time a new improvement happened it further democratized the supply of information. At the end of the day a book is book and magazine is magazine if it has words, is paginated, and in the case of a magazine has an issue date.
BoSacks is right, the substrate doesn’t matter… until now. In this case the platform on which the magazine is being presented has changed the capability and therefore the nature of the publication. At their heart they may still be magazines, but to simply call them that and nothing more is to is to ignore the vastly increased function of the product. I’m not sure if I can coin a new term for them, but similar to Kleenax, they will always be NXTbooks to me.