On my last trip to British Columbia, I was lucky enough to have my sister and my niece visit-me on the island while I was there. I picked them up at the ferry terminal to bring them back to town. In the car, I noticed my niece taping away at an i-pod touch. I asked her what she was doing on it and she replied “playing a game and before that I was watching the rest of my movie…”.

Apple may just have done the smartest thing ever by introducing a multi-touch application interface to the ipod and I-phone. They have now trained an entire generation (maybe a couple of generations) on how to use their new tablet computers. Of course, I’m referring to the ipad. No learning curve here. If you can use the iphone, you already know how to use an ipad. At first when apps started coming out for the iphone, I thought… do people really want to manage all those apps? I mean – there’s an app for this and there’s an app for that. When I started downloading and playing with apps myself, I realized that the process forces you to pick and choose carefully. I found myself cleaning out my screen and getting rid of the dirty old apps and replacing them with apps I would actually use – a fairly quick and painless process.

Regardless of whether you think it’s good or bad usability – the last couple of generations have been trained and are ready to grab some more apps for the ipad. As anyone who has read my previous posts knows, I think we’re nearing the end of browser-based experiences. Mobile platforms and Apple has brought us to the dawn off the app.

I was browsing around this morning, checking out some news stories on the anticipated Apple tablet, when my reading experience was interrupted by a little contextual link widget. We all started seeing these years ago, first, as tool-tips then as hyperlinked definitions. The later of which is helpful if you’re browsing a medical journal and are unfamiliar with some of the terms and jargon. Now, however, they are used as full-on mini-microsites, complete with their own tabs and navigation.

I have no desire to browse a website only to experience another microsite which is the size of my wristwatch. Hyperlinks should always be used in context of the article you’re reading. An example of the proper-use would be when it links to an article that is relevant to the hyper-linked word. It’s when they’re used to advertise that it degrades the reader’s experience. For example, the article I was reading had the word “business development” hyperlinked. As your mouse grazes the link, a little contextual ad for IBM business solutions pops-up. If you were going to tell me that there is a great article on business development waiting for me on the other side of that link, I would say – Thanks for the reminder. Instead, my reading experience was interrupted by a page peppered with these ad links, most of which had little or no relevance to the article I was reading.

As a UX consultant I am always faced with the challenge of how to monetize websites but this really isn’t the best way to do it. Don’t go for the cheesy contextual link-ads to gain a quick win. Especially in the case of a news and information site, you are bound to lose credibility with your readers.

As the news publishing industry struggles to find a way of monetizing their online products, I’m realizing more and more that perhaps their business model doesn’t need to change that much.  Greater accessibility to global news and topics has caused some alarm as we no longer rely on just one source for a story.  That aside, the quality of the journalism and the editorial content is still where the value will always be. Supporting your local news source will be an important responsibility of news readers as we don’t want our community voice to disappear.

Devices such as the Kindle are offering an interesting solution to how readers will get even more value out of their news experience. So what are you paying for when you subscribe to an online version of your local paper using the Kindle? You are paying for the same content as the paper version of course, and the ability to take your paper with you and read it wherever you go.  There are no wireless fees with Kindle – Amazon pays for the 3G cellular network and the cost would be included in the subscription fee for the content. Sounds pretty good for the reader so far? Oh yes, and the added benefit of not getting newsprint on your hands.

The transition for the Newspaper will mean having to tap into more revenue streams to make up for the fact that a portion of the subscription fee will pay for portability.  I believe that once the first few newspapers take the big leap and starts replacing print and delivery costs with electronic delivery and network fees, the product will end up ahead in profitability. By the time that happens, other revenue streams that newspapers are implementing online will have made up for some of the losses.  I think the model that Kindle is using is great, the question is:  will Kindle be to News what i-Tunes has been to music? Will this device be the one to get Newspapers to start making that final leap of faith? A lot remains to be seen but I don’t think we’ll have to wait too long to find out.