Slate magazine IPAD vs. print magazine

I decided to take a look at Slate magazine on my IPAD. It has a very nice layout. I like at the top of the page you have contents, the slatest (instead of latest) video, and podcast. The contents tab is closely related to the table of contents in a print magazine. The slatest tab gives you recent stories with a headline and the first few sentences of the article. The page on the site also has pictures for each article on the right. It's easier for you to look at all the recent stories at one time instead of flipping pages in a magazine. The video tab has recent videos of stories from the past week. Not only can you read articles on this site, but you can also watch videos. The final tab is podcast. When you click on podcast you have podcast categories to choose from, the topics are as follows. 1) Daily Podcast, Political Gabfest, Culture Gabfest, Hang Up and Listen, Double X, Audio Book Club, Spoiler Specials, The Root, Manners for the Digital Age, Poetry.

Comparing Slate magazine to a print magazine. Most print magazine you see on the shelves have a great deal of pictures. The pictures they have are very eye opening. I can see that there are more advertisements in a print magazine. A lot of people complain that printed magazine have too many advertisements. The only advertisement on the Slate site is Liberty Mutual. There are several places to go within the contents of Slate or a printed magazine. The differences I see is that there are more articles, you can interact by reading the blogs, there is a slide show. Down at the bottom of the page you are able to post articles on Facebook or Twitter, Instapaper and email. You are unable to use any of these interactive tools with a printed magazine. These are some of the conventions that take away from printed magazines. Yes, it is necessary to have an online magazine that has video, podcasts, blogging, and interaction amongst several social networking sites. These thing are going to make more and more people want to turn to a non printed magazine. As far as design for Slate magazine I don't know what more they can do right know. Maybe in the future we will be interacting even more by communicating instead of typing words. The design of a magazine, however needs to find a way that is totally different than all the printed magazines out there currently. There will be a time where printed magazines will become obsolete. There won't be a need for them everyone will have some type of interface with you allow for you to get your magazines electronically.