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While at Apple, Mike Matas (@mike_matas) helped write the user interface for the iPhone and iPad. Now, co-founder of Push Pop Press (@pushpoppress), he's helping to rewrite the electronic book. In the above video he demos the first full-length interactive book for the iPad – with clever, swipeable video and graphics, and some cool data visualizations to play with. The book is Our Choice, Al Gore’s sequel to An Inconvenient Truth.

See the video at TED.

Be sure to read the discussion started by David Wees (@davidwees) titled “What is this ‘ebook’ missing?”

I'd have to argue that this ebook is missing some of the most important features of the interactive Web.... [W]hat I see is interactivity with static content, which in my mind is a dead concept.

...Most importantly, how is this book integrated with social media? How can we comment on the book, annotate it, share passages of the book with other people? If I want to share the book, like we can do easily and all the time with print text, do I need to share my entire iPad? How do we tag content? How do we set multiple bookmarks, so we can go back and reread our favourite sections? Can I read the same book on my laptop? Is it possible to make edits to the book when I see errors or omissions, or just want to play with the text?

In today’s digital age, we should be very suspicious of any ebook which doesn't offer all of the features listed above.

Read this discussion in full.

Let Somersault help you publish meaningful enhanced ebooks.

According to Sympatico.ca News (@Sympatico), a plastic smartphone as thin and flexible as a credit card has been invented by researchers from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

Roel Vertegaal, director of the Human Media Lab at Queen's University, first came up with the idea of using “bend gestures” as a new way of interacting with computers. He envisioned a device that would feel and behave like a sheet of interactive paper, so he named it the PaperPhone.

He expects consumer devices similar to the PaperPhone to hit the market in 5 to 10 years.

Vertegaal will demonstrate the prototype - and the bend gestures used to control it - at the Computer Human Interaction conference in Vancouver May 10 (#chi2011).

Read this in full.

Read the BBC News story.

Read the news release at Human Media Lab.

What are you doing today to prepare for the continuous changes in publishing so that you’ll be ready for the new book formats of the future?

Alberto Vitale was running Bantam Books, the world leader in paperbacks, when the Newhouse family recruited him to become the COO of Random House (@atrandom). In that role, and later as the CEO of one of the world’s top publishing firms, Vitale oversaw huge changes in the publishing industry. In this interview with Stephen J. Kobrin, publisher and executive director of Wharton Digital Press and Knowledge@Wharton (@knowledgwharton), Vitale discusses the rise of digital publishing, the future of bookstores, and the globalization of copyright, among other issues. Among his statements:

Digital technology may allow a lot of individual authors to self-publish. That's the power of digital technology, of the Internet. But still, the role of the publisher will continue [to be] as strong as before. You still have to figure out which book you want to publish. And, how do you want to publish it? There are obvious synergies between paper and digital [media]....

Absolutely [bookstores will survive]. However, they're going to undergo major changes. Three [or] five years from now, up to 70% of the space in [big box bookstores, such as Barnes & Noble] may be dedicated to other products. It makes sense. You have the universe that is digitalized now. You don't need these huge stores anymore....

Everybody's online now. The access to information is tremendously enhanced. But remember, the publishing model will change. And the product will change. The prices of hard cover books are now still $27.95, $26.95, which I find ridiculous. They cannot possibly make ends meet with those prices. They are going to grow to $36.95, $46.95. But the reader will have a much better product to purchase. Better paper, better type, better binding. And so, you will have a book to cherish....

Read the transcript in full, listen to the audio, and watch the video.

Do you agree with his views? Post your comments below.

Publishing’s competitors are not only other books vying for consumers’ time and attention. Average Americans have increased their TV watching by 2 minutes, to 34 hours, 39 minutes per week, according to State of the Media, Trends in TV Viewing—2011 TV Upfronts (pdf) from The Nielsen Company.

Heaviest TV watchers are adults 65+ (47 hours, 33 minutes per week), followed by 50-64 (43 hours, per week). Trailing all other age groups, teens age 12-17 watch the least amount of TV (23 hours, 41 minutes per week).

Emerging trends:

·       Timeshifting continues to be a significant factor in how consumers watch TV. 38% of all TV households in the USA have a DVR.

·         Mobile Video viewing has increased 41% from last year. The heaviest users of mobile video are teens ages 12-17 who watch 7 hours 13 minutes of mobile video a month.

·         Viewing video online also continues to increase. In January 2011, 144 million Americans viewed video online.

·        The audience overlap between visitors to network and broadcast media sites and social networking & blog sites is significant. In January 2011, 49% of social networking & blog site visitors also visited TV network and broadcast media sites

Read this article.

Today’s the Big Day for the UK’s Prince William & Catherine Middleton (@ClarenceHouse).

How does royalty market itself? By following the same marketing principles as any other successful entity (including having its own YouTube channel). Attention to branding is key, as is the proper logo. For Prince William, his “logo” is his coat of arms

And Catherine now has one as well

Companies are taking advantage of the festivities to market themselves. For example, T-Mobile's viral video has more than 13 million views:

Read Ad Age's "How T-Mobile Won the Royal Wedding With Video Stunt."

Four in 10 US consumers interact with retailers through social networking sites, according to a new survey from Deloitte (@DeloitteBA). Data from the 2011 Spring Consumer Pulse Survey (pdf) also indicate out of this consumer subset, 63% interact to find out about promotions and 56% browse products on retailer social networking pages. In addition, 38% of shoppers who interact with retailers through social networking sites review recommendations. And 43% of smartphone owners surveyed say they've used devices in stores to assist in their shopping.

Read the article in full.

These statistics reinforce the strategy of using QR codes on product packaging or in-store merchandising to communicate with consumers. But how you do it makes all the difference. In his MobileInsider column, Steve Smith critiques brands’ mobile marketing from a real-world perspective in the article Down the QR Code Rabbit Hole.

[I pull out my phone] in the aisles of Barnes and Noble [to click a QR code:] a Microsoft Tag was on back of an historical thriller Stardust that looked intriguing. Again, it kicked me over to a very attractive trailer — that wanted to go on for 7 minutes. Seven minutes! “Stop that,” my fiancée said. “Would you bring a TV to watch in the middle of a bookstore?” Worse, am I really going to sit in a bookstore and watch a 7-minute video in order to find out what the book is about?

Read this article in full.

You’ll also want to read The New York Times article, “Retailers Retool Sites to Ease Mobile Shopping.”

Let Somersault help you create an effective mobile strategy for your brand.

Sony is creating a flexible screen that’s thin and sturdy enough to be rolled while still showing video images. Samsung also has created a flexible OLED screen display:

Another application of a lithe monitor is the Rolltop notebook computer:

Acer has launched the Iconia-6120 Dual-Screen Touchbook, which USA TODAY says offers two touch-enabled 14-inch high-definition widescreen LED backlit LCDs:

And the two-screen Kno tablet is yet to come, as reported by Digital Trends:

Update (8/10/11): Kno is now software, not its own tablet. See "Kno Rolls Out New Features for Textbook App." 

What will flexible screens and dual monitors mean for publishing innovation? And how will you start preparing for it today? Write your comments below.

At MIT, Cynthia Breazeal and her team are building robots with social intelligence that communicate and learn the same way people do. Watch this 14-minute TED talk (@tedtalks & @TEDNews) to discover that when the infants of today become adults in 20 years, they’ll be interacting with robots as naturally as they do their peers.

What are the consumer and product implications of these technological advances on the future of the publishing industry? How far beyond ebooks will these innovations go?

As you know, our free online dashboard SomersaultNOW includes a tab for RSS feeds that focus on the future; articles trying to discern (and predict) what tomorrow will bring. We also "publish" the paper.li "newspaper" Somersault Futurist Daily News, to which you can subscribe. We include these because one of Somersault’s distinctives is to scan the horizon for coming trends and innovations to help publishers and marketers prepare for the possibilities ahead. The above video is just such an example. As you watch it, be thinking how the delivery of published content in the future will need to adapt and change, and what you should do today to get ready for it (and let Somersault help).

Religion News Service (@ReligionNewsNow) reminds us that Handel's oratorio Messiah was first performed on this day in 1742. Back then, the Dublin Journal wrote a review (originating social buzz), saying, "Words are wanting to express the exquisite Delight it afforded to the admiring crouded Audience.”

If you’ll recall last Christmas season, as a way to promote Alphabet Photography, Inc., a flash mob performed the Hallelujah Chorus at Seaway Mall in Welland, ON. The video of that event has now enjoyed more than 32 million views on YouTube.

Remember what elements comprise a successful viral video? What viral video can Somersault help you produce?

By the way, be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard created especially for publishing and marketing professionals.