The researchers suggested the idea of newsfulnews as a way of measuring the likelihood of a multi-purpose device being used for news, based on the number who use a device for news compared to total number of owners.

They conducted a web-based survey of a random sample of the American adult population in August 2010.

The researchers found that the laptop was far by the most useful for news at 45%, with the iPhone at 33% and iPad at 35%.

But they also found that 24% of people did not use any electronic device to get their news, with 57% only using one device, usually the PC.

Only 10% used two devices, with 8.5% using three or more per week.

There was little variation in the level of enjoyment across devices. The researchers suggested that this meant people preferred to use older devices such as the PC.

News use on multiple devices was not yet a reality, they said.

The Daily is a custom application with a custom content management system that was built from the ground up for product.

The idea is to be able to create custom experiences everyday, exploring what works and what doesn’t work, he said.

Kilpatrick explained that the experience of news on a tablet is difference from print or the web.

The Daily’s approach was not to be platform agnostic, but rather create something for a specific news experience on a specific device.

What we have created is a curated experience, said Kilpatrick. So it is digital, but not endless.

The approach at The Daily draws from broadcast, print and web, he explained. From broadcast, the lean back experience. From print, it’s finite, From the web, it’s interactive and connected.

But it also wants to avoid some of the pitfalls of other media, such as the overuse of breaking news in broadcast, PDF-style app from print and long scrolling pages from online.

The design team was drawn from the New York Times, AOL, Vogue, Live Nation, film production and more.

Kilpatrick ended by running through some of the editorial content, its advertising and its original use of video, and offering some insights.

He has found that people mainly use the iPad at night in the US and most people are connected when they are reading The Daily.

60% of readers view The Daily vertically and 40% horizontally.  But Kilpatrick also added that many shift orientation during usage. What this means is developing pages that work both ways.

I have had an iPad for a few weeks.  My initial impressions were that it was an interesting device but I was unconvinced as to its purpose.

Now that I have it for some time, and have customised the experience through apps, I’ve realised that there is no one purpose to the iPad.

In some ways, it is a blank slate, which can be tailored to fit an individual’s needs.  Need an ebook reader, download the iBooks app, the Amazon Kindle Reader or ebooks by Kobo.

For news, the BBC News app is elegantly simple, while the Guardian Eyewitness app showcases the best news photos of the day beautiful on the iPad screen.

An essential app for reading PDFs is GoodReader, a bargain at 99 cents. Another recommended app is Evernote as it allows you to synchronise text notes between the iPad and your computer.

There are also some interesting music apps that take advantage of the iPad’s touch interface.  Looptastic HD ($14.99) offers an intuitive way to create music remixes, while PatternMusic reimagines music composition by layering sound patterns. And best of all, it is free at the moment.

For the more professional musician, there is the Korg iElectribe app ($9.99), which recreates the historic analog synthesizer.

And for a moment of zen and relaxation, there is the Pocket Pond HD app.

All these apps point to the potential of the iPad as a platform and the ability to rethink our interaction with computers based on a touch interface.  And this is just the start.

(All links are to the iTunes store)

Dan Gillmor has expressed concerns about Apple’s ability to decide what appears on the iTunes store and hence the iPad.

I asked Ethan Zuckerman of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, and a co-founder of Global Voices, for his thoughts on the issue:

The first speaker was Dan Treinish, director of content acquisition & business development, Skiff, a platform to distribute content to mobile devices.

Skiff was incubated as a start-up by Hearst about three years ago. The business model is based on the migration of ad dollars to the mobile space.

As a platform, Skiff aims to replicate a newspaper in a way that retains the editorial authenticity of the print product, but in a way that works on a mobile device.

From the screenshot in the presentation, the end result still looks like a print product but on a digital screen. But I remain to be convinced that reversioning, rather than reimagining, print for a mobile device is the best strategy.

NPR’s iPad app

By comparison, the NPR iPad app offers a very different experience to the traditional radio experience. Kinsey Wilson, senior vice president and general Manager, gave an insight into the development of its editorial for mobile devices.

What NPR didn’t know is that someone else had developed an NPR app for the iPhone, based on NPR’s API. This, and other factors, prompted NPR to speed up development of its own branded app for the iPhone.

After launch last July, NPR mobile traffic experienced a 10x growth.

“We’re betting on Apple, we’re betting on Android,” said Wilson. He expects these two to become the dominant mobile platforms.

With the iPad, NPR decided that it was critical to be on the platform from day one, re-engineering the website for the device.

“This is a breakthrough in digital computing,” said Wilson, pointing out that it lent itself to writing and listening at the same time.

But he added that he was sceptical that the iPad alone was a salvation for traditional media.

New York Times’ strategy

Tom Bodkin assistant managing editor, design director, The New York Times took on the spirit of the session by presenting from an iPad.

After going over e-readers and smartphones, Bodkin said turned to tablet computers, saying they were “a whole different game” and “allow us to return to what we do best, narrative story-telling”.

He talked about replicating some of the attributes of print – convenience, serendipity and more – on a tablet.

The current iPad app from the Times is limited and free, but the intention is to expand the content, add to the features and charge for it.

Bodkin concluded by saying that with the right design and experience, products such as the iPad app would “demand the emotion commitment that we find in a paper product”, and importantly, bring in subscription and advertising revenue.

Designing The Guardian iPad app

After a few technical difficulties, John-Henry Barac, digital designer on The Guardian’s iPhone app, concluded the session.

He recalled in developing the app, he found that 76% of mobile use of Guardian website at the time was on iPhone and iPod Touch.

Barac said he looked as sections as a series of planets and this was how he set about organising content on the iPhone app.

Most people use the Guardian app while commuting at 8am, but there is also a spike in use at 10pm, suggesting people are using the app at home on the sofa.

What is exciting about touch, he said, is because you interact directly with it. “You can grab news,” said Barac.

We are trying to get the familiarity of existing media on new devices, he said, but there are issues with it.

He found that the NPR app the most comfortable on an iPad, perhaps because it did not come from an incumbent print organisation.

Barac said the iPad was exciting from a design viewpoint, as it offers ways of rethinking how we interact with content, from every bit of data on a screen.

He concluded by talking about the need for experimentation, with tools that allow this to happen easily. And there were also issues with the way newsrooms are organised, with developers and designers part of the editorial process.

His final thought was about sound design: should there be a sound when you turn a page? Or a way of providing an audio alert to updates from a different section?

Clearly mobile devices are not simply print on a digital screen, but platforms for inventing and creating new ways of experiencing journalism.

This video of Todd Lappin’s 2.5 year-old daughter using an iPad for the first time is remarkable in illustrating how we are conditioned by the interfaces of our technology.

The Swedish publisher Bonnier worked with design firm BERG to rethink how traditional magazine content could work on the iPad.

The result, Mag+,  is an innovative prototype, that goes beyond just reproducing text on a screen with some video next to it.

Explaining the ideas behind the prototype, Bonnier R&D said:

The concept uses the power of digital media to create a rich and meaningful experience, while maintaining the relaxed and curated features of printed magazines. It has been designed for a world in which interactivity, abundant information and unlimited options could be perceived as intrusive and overwhelming.

The Guardian has a round-up of some other ideas of how print would work on the iPad, but none are as imaginative.

Like so many thousands, I followed the presentation through the live blogs from Engadget and the Nieman Journalism Labs, as well as Twitter.

Ahead of today’s unveiling, there was so much hype about the device that you could be forgiven for being a little underwhelmed. One study found it has been mentioned in more 25,000 articles online so far this year.

The tablet had been touted as the saviour of print, publishing, or just about any media industry going through a period of upheaval.

The irony is that a device alone is not going to save these industries and it is wrong to see Apple as some white knight.

Apple’s secret is in marrying form and function into devices that are focused on the user experience. The iPhone has demonstrated how a device can serve as a platform for new media experiences.

On first impressions, the iPad appears to offer an ideal platform to rethink journalism in a more visual, interactive and multimedia direction.

Considering the screen as just another way to display print is simply recycling the norms and conventions of one medium onto another. And embedding video in a text story falls far short of reimagining both the journalism and how to present it.

Bobbie Johnson of The Guardian tried the iPad shortly after the announcement and wondered:

The big problem I had was in trying to understand what the iPad was for: the answer, it seems, is everything.

This is exactly what is right, and wrong, about the iPad. It may seem puzzling, but by doing everything it offers a platform for individuals to tailor to their specific needs. So whatever you may want to do, there will be an app for that.

This is the first iteration of the iPad, so it is important to consider what this device could offer in subsequent incarnations.

I suspect we may end up underestimating the long-term impact of this device, both on what we consider personal computing and how we interact with media.