Preview parallels efforts by other publishers

Media publisher Time Inc. has previewed specialized version of Sports Illustrated magazine reformatted for tablet devices. A demo of the tablet variant shows a variety of additional features such as video clips from game highlights, audio content, extra photos and dynamic advertising. The layout would allow users to quickly focus on particular sections or teams, while switching to a text view fills the screen with the story.

Time included several features common with Internet-based media, including Facebook integration for sending favorite stories to friends. The company is working on adding a fantasy football section, along with an interactive feature that will allow users to make predictions in real-time as they watch games on TV. Swimsuit editions are set to include videos in addition to pictures.

The Sports Illustrated demo parallels efforts by other publishers to ready their content for tablets, well before the devices even come to market. Condé Nast recently announced that it is currently preparing Wired, and it's 17 other publications, to be optimized for tablet-size devices.

Both publishers have yet to say if they have received private information regarding specs of the rumored Apple tablet. The companies nonetheless can speculate that such a device would have a significantly larger touchscreen than the current smartphones, along with enough processing power to handle multimedia such as video.

“Nobody reads the magazine on the Website,” Sports Illustrated editor Terry McDonell told All Things Digital. “That’s a firehose. This is the opposite of a firehose.”

Time expects the tablet content to be ready sometime in the middle of 2010.

By Electronista Staff