Video Book Hybrids

A story in the New York Times about a week ago on the emergence of "vook" technology was analyzed further in an article for Salon yesterday. Both articles do a pretty admirable job of summarizing the fact that a sucky novel is not going to turn into the Great Gatsby by adding a slide show. What a surprise. But even though the specific content they are analyzing seems to be somewhat sub-par, I think that the integration of media in this specific format is exactly where newspapers and other news outlets should be heading in the future.

Yes, a good vampire novel may not benefit to much with simultaneous Edward Cullen music video, but multimedia technology such as this can provide richer details on a non-fiction subject or event. Maybe some of the current smartphone apps that newspapers such as the New York Times are now providing can learn from this technology to create a more integrated content experience. I could definitely see it improving the horribly boring app the Times currently has for Blackberry. Maybe people will even pay for a product if it's more than just a repackaging of another one.

Even if, as the Times article states, a reader's "cognitive ability will actually go backwards" because of the multimedia experience. Horrifying!