Mashable's Lauren Indvik recently shadowed the men and women behind Sports Illustrated and published a case study of their workflow. There are some interesting lessons here for other publishers who are developing a digital strategy. Indvik writes: ...web and print are divided mainly by article length: the web is for shorter, newsier hits and print is a repository for long-form journalism. Quality is consistent largely because most of Sports Illustrated‘s staff touch every extension of the brand. Nearly all the writers (95%) produce content for both the web and print, filing short news pieces for the web while building out longer,...

E-reading isn’t just for books and newspapers. ReadWriteWeb and Gizmodo report that the Obama administration is offering to pay up to $44,000 as Medicare incentives or up to $63,750 as Medicaid incentives to any doctor who starts using drchrono, an electronic medical records app that has been certified for “meaningful use” by the Department of Health & Human Services. The app began as a simple appointment reminder system for patients, but it has iterated steadily. It recently added support for billing through insurance providers, media integration for medical charts, speech-to-text transcription, and support for electronic...

Rich Adin at An American Editor says he won't buy a tablet in the near future, partly because of the walled garden approach enforced by Apple, and partly for utilitarian reasons: My “no” came about for various reasons, not least of which is that I really dislike Steve Jobs telling me what compromises I have to make. For me, the lure of the PC/Microsoft world has always been that, with the exception of the operating system, I have choices — and lots of them. [...] I do know someone who bought a tablet and loves it. But when I asked him...

German ebook software company txtr has updated its Android app with several new features. Some, such as bookmark and note syncing, are familiar to users of the Kindle app, but the update surpasses Amazon's offering by including cloud storage for personal docs as well as purchased books. The company also offers a white label version that can be customised or branded by third parties, and claims to have the largest selection of German language titles in the German market. From the press release: Besides searching for books and browsing by genre, users can now discover books through channels, such as Featured Books...

While reading various articles today about the forthcoming Amazon tablet, it struck me that of all the giant media companies entering this space, only Amazon routinely and successfully sells physical goods across a vast array of product categories—not just consumer electronics or digital media, but houseware, printed books, clothing, tools, toys, lamps, those little pet sweaters, luggage, and so on. An Amazon tablet that ships pre-loaded with access to everything Amazon has to offer, including its no-brainer payment options like One-Click and Prime, means it can provide something no other competitor can: a portable, interactive, instant-gratification sales catalog, the 21st...

Although Sony has long offered some nicely designed, feature-packed E Ink readers, the company has trailed Amazon and Barnes & Noble for a while now in both sales and media coverage, and this week is no exception. Yesterday, while Amazon sucked up all the media attention, Sony Electronic's vice president of digital reading Phil Lubell told Bloomberg that his company plans to introduce two new Sony Reader models "probably" in August, and is currently working on two tablet devices for release later in 2011. The article doesn't provide much info in the way of hardware specs, but it looks like prices...

In a news conference yesterday afternoon, the Philadelphia Media Network, owner of the newspapers The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News, announced plans to beta test a subsidized tablet subscription offer to readers this August. So far the publisher hasn't named which Android tablet will be offered, or how much the combo deal will cost; those details will be made public in the next 4-6 weeks. However, the blog Liliputing.com attended the event and confirmed that at launch the tablet will be a Wi-Fi only model. Here's more info from Liliputing's coverage: If you were to buy digital subscriptions to both newspapers...

Update: Macworld just posted that an unnamed Apple source says Apple is currently working with developers to bring their apps in line with the new guidelines, and that we can expect to see modified app updates appearing in the coming days or weeks. [Original post follows.] Despite all the threats, blog outrage, and speculation around Apple's new rules for content apps over the past several months, as of this morning the three major ebooksellers' apps already available on Apple's App Store—Kindle, Nook, and Kobo—remain unchanged and available for download. (Sony never got a chance to play.) Kindle and Nook both offer a...

Wednesday, Apple Insider reported on an investor report from J.P. Morgan, which indicated that tablet manufacturers competing with Apple's iPad have reduced their future build plans for their devices after experiencing lackluster sales. J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Moscowitz called the poor sales an "early dose of reality". The tablets in question include Asustek’s Eee Pad Transformer, Motorola’s XOOM, RIM’s PlayBook, and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab. Overall planned production numbers have declined by 10%, from 81 million units to 73 million units. It's not surprising that these competitors’...

Last month, we mentioned Condé Nast’s plans to convert every one of its magazines to digital tablet format by the end of 2011. However, it seems Condé Nast has changed its mind, at least in part. A report in Ad Age suggests that the publishing company is planning to scale back its efforts and concentrate on magazines that are most likely to find audiences first. "It's a shift," one Conde publisher said. "The official stance was we're going to get all our magazines on the iPad because this is going to be such an important stream....

ReadWriteWeb reports on a study from mobile VOIP company Rebtel which polled immigrants on their tablet-buying habits. It finds that an average of 13% of immigrants own tablet-style devices, compared with a Pew study showing 4% of Americans own tablets and 5% own e-readers overall. While their terminology is a little sloppy (they seem to consider the Kindle a “tablet” for purposes of the study), and the charts are a little tricky to interpret, the results are certainly interesting. Why would immigrants adopt mobile technology at a higher rate than native residents? I wonder if it holds true...

ReadWriteWeb has a report on Jolicloud, a cloud-based spinoff of Ubuntu with a user interface based on Chromium (the development version of the Google Chrome browser) and HTML5. This zippy little Linux OS is mainly meant for running on Intel-based netbooks and tablets, but today dropped an update that will make it usable on computers as much as ten years old. While this may not be directly related to e-books, anything that makes older hardware more usable means it could be more easily used for educational purposes by the needy—purposes such as reading e-books. I’ve been playing with Jolicloud...