The magazine group plans to publish its content on computer tablets including, per widespread speclation, Apple's highly anticipated device. Right now these super magazines are just conceptual; Time Inc.'s demo video above just outlines the company's ideas, well developed though they may be.

That's partly why the video looks so exciting: Making a great demo is much easier than making a great product. It also helps that Time Inc, like other publishers, has come to see tablets as central to its future. If only the company had felt that way about the Web, five years ago, it might not be so desperate for new revenue right now.

We've included only e-readers (and one tablet computer) that are either developed by old media companies or have gone out of their way to partner with them; think of this as a compilation of would-be media saviors dressed up as gadgets.

Maker: Barnes & Noble (the retailer)
Name: E-Reader
Old media tie-ins: Books from Barnes & Noble (the publisher); access to books scanned by Google Books; a B&N e-book store. (More)

Maker: Apple
Name: Apple Tablet (unofficial)
Caveat: A tablet computer is much more capable than an e-reader, usually offering the resolution, sound and video capabilities of a laptop computer along with a full-color display.
Old media tie-ins: Apple is in content talks with the New York Times, a large magazine group and at least two textbook companies, sources told our colleagues at Gizmodo. (More)

Maker:Sony
Names:Reader Touch, Reader Pocket
Old media tie-ins: Sony has a great feature that will let you check out e-books from one the oldest distribution mediums out there: your local library. Publishers can't be thrilled with "Library Finder," to say nothing of Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Oh well!

Maker: Plastic Logic Ltd.
Name: Plastic Logic Reader
Old media tie-ins: Content deals with Gannett Co.'s USA Today and Pearson PLC's Financial Times. Digital bookstore from Barnes & Noble.

Maker: Amazon.com
Name: Kindle DX, Kindle 2
Old media tie-ins: e-Books — from fiction to textbooks — sold by Amazon; a variety of newspapers, including the New York Times; a variety of magazines, including Time. Non-participating newspapers, including those owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., have complained about the paltry 30 percent cut of revenues they were offered for sales on the device.

Maker: iRex
Name: DR800SG (catchy!)
Old media tie-ins: Books from Barnes & Noble's e-book store. B&N gets around.

And, bringing up the rear, there are the media companies whose devices are, for now, mostly talk.

Maker: Hearst Corp. and FirstPaper LLC
Name: Unknown
Old media tie-ins: Would presumably include content from Hearst newspapers like the Chronicle-s in San Francisco and Houston and from magazines like Esquire and Cosmopolitan. There has been talk of a hardware device developed by Hearst and, more recently, of an open software platform developed with FirstPaper.

Maker: Time Inc.
Name: Unknown
Old media tie-ins: There are conflicting accounts over whether Time Inc. is interested in making this device. Former Valleywag Owen Thomas of NBC Bay Area obtained a June 2009 presentation indicating plans to finish a prototype this year; Peter Kafka's sources at All Things D said the magazine division of Time Warner is interested in creating a virtual store rather than a physical device. Either way, the company is said to be seeking partnerships with other magazine publishers — Condé Nast, Meredith and Hearst, according to the documents reviewed by Thomas.

(UPDATE: Added Sony Reader due to Library Finder feature.)

(Pics via Gizmodo unless otherwise noted)

Time Inc. said earlier this year it wasn't planning to join the rush of old-media companies like News Corp. and Hearst who are developing their own e-readers. But now, according to documents obtained by NBC Bay Area, the company has plans to rush out a prototype by the end of this year, possibly in cooperation with a hardware partner:

"Whoever defines the interface wins," [an internal Time Inc.] slide concludes. A slide labeled "Key components to the winning model" includes... "product design" including "tools for research, design innovation and manufacturing," which suggests plans for a physical gadget; and a "consumer-facing brand" — a name for the device and service akin to Amazon's Kindle.

The company is also exploring a joint venture with Condé Nast, Meredith and Hearst, according to the documents.

It's easy to understand how an e-reader project would appeal to beleaguered magazine executives. While their industry is crumbling , analysts have estimated sales of 800,000 or more Amazon Kindle e-readers, and there is some evidence that device has goosed book sales.

But Amazon opened up a new market, taking books once available only physically and offering them via instant electronic purchase. Magazines are already available on the Web in a format superior to the e-book, complete with comments, videos and these things called hyperlinks. If Time Inc. wants a financially healthy future, it should focus on growing in that medium, which it already has some experience with, rather than on a brand-new hardware device far outside its core competency.

Grand gestures, in other words, are no substitute for the grinding work of real change; one would think a company owned by Time Warner, of all entities, would know that by now.

UPDATE: Peter Kafka at AllThingsD hears from Time Warner sources that the company does not want to get into the hardware business.

(Pic by Angel Leon)

As editor of the late Time Inc. title Business 2.0, Quittner once employed Valleywag emeritus Owen Thomas (as well as your current Valleywag). But somewhere along the way, Quittner soured on Thomas.

Thomas jumped to Valleywag and Business 2.0 folded. When Quittner landed at Fortune, Thomas wrote about Quittner's inflated title, covered Fortune's suspension of his blogging privileges, and quoted the Scrabulous-playing columnist saying he had "too much time on my hands."

Quittner seemed to take it personally. After jumping to Time, he used the magazine as his personal burn book, noting in January that a Sony virtual world wouldn't create an avatar "as fat as your average tech-gossip blogger."

Now Quittner's at it again, with a Sims 3 review in which he creates a "Loser" character named "Thomas Woodchuck" and burns him alive (see clip above). As several tipsters have noted, the resemblance between Woodchuck and Thomas can't be missed — nor can the creepiness of teaching his daughter to drown an enemy in the pool.

It seems early to get too alarmed; there are worse things than being called an "unredoubtable... woodchuck" in an anonymous comments, or killed virtually in a videogame. We're just a little surprised Time indulges Quittner's grudge — or that the reporter, after all this time, still holds it.

I used to get a dozen specialty publications which I directed to work where they (mostly unread) filled a corner of my office until I'd shovel them into a dumpster we'd roll around for just such trash.

With transitions to the web, I'm fairly certain that more articles are getting read (in sum total) than ever before, and this should (and to some extent has) translate into more targeted advertising than has ever been possible.

I hope someone has calculated the number of trees not being cut down due to this change, and while it has obviousy been disruptive to some people I can't help but think it is for the better in the long run.

Meanwhile, purely online media is still looking for the magic formula, combining authoritativeness (my spell checker is satisfied that that is indeed a word), reader interaction/feedback, ease of use and other factors that may not be well understood at all at this point (short/memorable URLs, etc. come to mind).

To my way of thinking, there should have been revolutionary changes to AOL/TW print publications at the time of that merger. The two parts of the company should have been rendered indistinguishable by now.

If they don't change, they may soon be indistinguishable in their absence.

Not that it was ever very clear to Time Incers what his division did: Until last year, it didn't even run Time Inc.'s Web servers, and several of Time Inc.'s more successful websites, like CNNMoney.com and SI.com, have made a point of staying outside of Desmond's reach.

When I worked for Quittner at Business 2.0, he talked constantly about his long-held dream of going to a startup or launching a blog. That he's now choosing to stay at magazine publisher Time Inc. is useful as an economic indicator. Quittner boosted the Valley's comeback, and the business of blogging, long before other mainstream journalists. That he's turned bearish on both now could be a sign of personal cowardice. Or keen prescience.

April 16, 2008

To: TIME Staff
From: Rick Stengel

I'm delighted to announce that Josh Quittner is coming back to TIME to cover consumer technology with a regular column in the magazine and a daily blog on TIME.com. In his new role as editor-at-large, Josh will apply his singular voice to technology, writing both reviews of new products and features that explain what's most important to consumers in Techland.

Most recently, Josh was the managing editor of Business 2.0 and a writer for FORTUNE. He first had a byline in TIME in 1994 as a staff writer covering technology, back at the very beginning of the internet. He went on to launch "The Netly News," first as a website on Pathfinder and later as a column in the magazine. He subsequently served as editor of TIME.com—twice—as well as tech editor of TIME before moving to San Francisco in 2002 to work for Business 2.0. Prior to coming to Time Inc., Josh worked at Newsday in the early 90s, where he wrote a pioneering column called "Life in Cyberspace."

Josh will continue to work from San Francisco where he lives with his wife, journalist Michelle Slatalla (with whom he has co-written five books) and their three daughters, but I expect he'll be in the New York offices regularly. Josh is a great mind and a great brand to have back at TIME. We're fortunate to have him.

R.S.

The domain name now points to a blog that's been active since March 10. The writers are "Slatalla" — almost certainly Michelle Slatalla, Quittner's wife — and "Roofie" — presumably Quittner. The prose matches his voice, and the subject fits, since Quittner took an active interest in real estate while at Business 2.0. But real estate is a bread-and-butter subject for Time Inc.'s finance magazines. Josh, rather than starting your own blog, why don't you just apply for a job at Money, run by your former deputy Eric Schurenberg? That seems easier.

Valleywag's Mary Jane Irwin — who worked for me at Business 2.0 — snapped this shot of a waiting passenger devouring Business 2.0's final issue in the Portland, Maine, airport. Another reminder that Time Inc.'s incompetent reorganization of its salesforce, not a lack of demand from readers, killed the title.

None of them want to say anything, though. Why? By playing the house sycophant, Kirkpatrick takes the pressure off the rest of Fortune's staff to write the bootlicking tech-CEO profiles he's known for — like his recent mash note to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Kirkpatrick's probing analysis of Zuckerberg? He's "nice."

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At best, it's careless; at worst, a deliberate slap. Add it to the list of ways Quittner, a difficult, mischievous, but endlessly creative personality who arguably saved the magazine (and, with it, my career) from a much-earlier death, has been treated disgracefully by his employer. The only mystery: Why is he sticking around, save for the New-York-media-level salary?

The boss text-messaged me instructions to report on who was there and who wasn't, but to me all business reporters and publicists kind of look alike. I could only confirm that the lanky guy whom several partygoers mistook for Digg founder Kevin Rose, complete with bedhead and horizontal stripey-shirt, was Not Kevin.

Besides the hacks and flacks, any event south of Market Street includes a few self-styled "startup CEOs" who've yet to hire a single full-time employee. Happily, one turned out to be Kyle Shank from Uncov, the cruelly funny site that aspires to be the anti-Techcrunch. (Memo to Kyle: Trade the 1997 orange shirt for some basic black. Sorry, kid, but if you give tough love, you get tough love.)

Overheard

Your name's Melody? Wasn't she the drummer for Josie and the Pussycats?

Working at home means you can drink whenever you want.

You guys coming outside? You know, around the corner, you know? Look, we're going to smoke some weed, are you in or out?

(Above: Donna Sokolsky and my wife laugh at the boys.)

As the party wound down, I followed Om out the door in pursuit of another photo. He refused. "I don't want to be the story, I want to be the guy telling the stories," he said. "People keep trying to make me the story. It's a problem." Fact check, Om: In the also-ran media world of San Francisco, you resigned from Time Inc. to go blogging. A year later you're doing better than most of those who stayed behind. You're a story. Cope.

(Photos by James Yu and Joey Wan; used by permission)