The Wall Street Journal was one of the first major newspapers to develop an iPad app, and for David Ho, the paper’s editor of mobile, tablets and emerging technology, it was the most intense professional challenge that he’s ever took on. But he emerged from the process with new insight on app development, which he shares with Mediabistro in the latest installment of So What Do You Do?

“The best technology is invisible. It doesn’t call attention to itself. It doesn’t get in the way of the experience. It just works…  Not everyone agrees with this, but I also think people should have options. One of the reasons people like our app is that there are many ways to navigate and explore the news. There are distinct styles for reading news and a good app allows for that. But my number one rule for mobile and tablets is do not annoy.”

Read more in So What Do You Do, David Ho, Mobile and Tablets Editor at The Wall Street Journal?

J.K. Rowling, author of the famed Harry Potter series, was interviewed in this month’s edition of Words with Jam. There was no mention on when she plans to release the Harry Potter series as eBooks, but she did talk about the wonders of eBooks.

In response to a question titled eBooks – Genesis or Nemesis?, she replied that she loved the smell and feel of a paper book, but there are times where eBooks are valuable:

However, there are times when e-books are a Godsend. We forgot to pack my youngest a bedtime book when we were away last year, and I truly appreciated the magic of being able to download one in seconds! This summer will be the first that I take away 50 e-books to read while on holiday, rather than filling up my suitcase with print books.

via Words with Jam (login required)

The television show Lost was made a few years before the eBook revolution. The show ends on Sunday, May 23rd, but the creators have made for an amazing enhanced eBook for the show.

Today’s guest on the Morning Media Menu was Nikki Stafford, author of the five unofficial guides to the hit television show. She also keeps the popular blog, Nik at Nite.

Today Stafford discussed highlights and theories about the final season of the cult program. The author will return on Monday morning to discuss the finale of the series.

Here’s an excerpt: “What set Lost apart was that right from the very beginning conversation has been marked by speculation–’what did that mean?,’ ‘What’s going to happen next?’ and ‘What if, what if?’ As of May 24th, we know ‘What if.’ We won’t have all the questions answered and there’s no more ‘What’s going to happen next?’ because there is no next.”

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This morning eBook blogger Mike Cane experienced the Staten Island ferry crash, providing an eyewitness account to MSNBC about the unexpected event.

Listen to his harrowing description of the crash in the video embedded above. Cane is a prolific eBook expert, tweeting about digital publishing everyday. Our thoughts are with all the injured victims today.

Earlier this year, eBookNewser featured Cane’s thoughts on the iPad and on a Nook advertisement. (Via Oliver Drobnik)

What will eBooks look like in five years? Yesterday on the Morning Media Menu, we spoke with two leaders at the digital publishing company, Open Road Integrated Media.

We spoke with executive VP of production Luke Parker Bowles and chief marketing officer Rachel Chou about the company’s new release–digital reprints of work by the late novelist, William Styron. They explained how the company built video, photo, and text-based support materials to help market the backlist of this novelist.

Press play below to listen.

Bowles had these thoughts: “The days of the generic author video and author interview are gone–audiences expect more. Our mandate here at Open Road is really to go back and plum the depths of these authors…we sat down with the Styron family, we’ve been to the archives at Duke, we’ve interviewed his daughters.. we’re doing extensive interviews with various people involved in Styron’s life–to really give more depth to the experience. That’s what people expect these days.”

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Remember that panel this blogger, Jason Boog of GalleyCat, and a few others were supposed to do until it was canceled–twice!–due to crummy winter weather? Well, it’s back on! Tonight!

The Future of Book Reportage
Featuring:
Laura Miller (Slate, the New York Times)
Sara Nelson (O, the Oprah magazine)
Michael Miller (Time Out New York)
Jason Boog (Mediabistro’s GalleyCat)
and Craig Morgan Teicher (Mediabistro’s e-Book Newser)

The panel will be held at the Melville House Bookstore: 145 Plymouth St, at Pearl St, DUMBO, Brooklyn

It’ll be fun. Hope to see you there.

Celebrate National Poetry Month the eBookNewser way, with poet Mark Doty, who talked to Jason Boog and Matt Van Hoven on this morning’s edition of Morning Media Menu.

The video above was made by Granta magazine based on a personal essay by Doty about the affair with a man that ended his marriage to his wife. The film is part of a multimedia push Granta‘s making, which will include a forthcoming iPhone app, which Doty discussed on this morning’s show.

He also talked about how poetry might mix with other media in this brave new digital age. Here’s an excerpt: “”I think the idea of offering the perspective of a visual image, a little music, makes a wonderful invitation into a work of literature–be it a poem, a memoir, whatever. Why not use every medium we can find to connect with the audience? I love that the people at Granta are about to put out a smartphone app around this same issue. You will be able to access some media related to the Sex issue on your smartphone very shortly.”

Listen to the whole interview using the embeded player, and click past the break for more of the interview from GalleyCat.

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Richard Nash, outspoken publishing provocateur and one of the brains behind Cursor, recently gave a keynote at Booknet Canada’s Calculated Risk: Adventures in Book Publishing. To describe risk in digital-age book publishing, Nash drew on his own experience with Soft Skull, on mathematics, and on a host of anecdotes.

Wired editor Chris Anderson sent a tweet last night that said this was the “Best speech on the future of books & publishing I’ve ever seen. @R_Nash is a genius. Every sentence quotable.”

“Everything we’re contending with right now is a function of Kinkos, and the aftermath of the Kinkos revolution,” said Nash early in his speech. If you want more, watch the whole keynote here.

In the video above, comedian and Onion.com editor Baratunde Thurston talks with Media Beat about the iPad as the savior of media, and, more importantly, whether media in its current form deserves saving at all. The iPad is an important and exciting device, sure, but what’s most important about it is how it’s put the discussion over old and new media into hyperdrive.

Here’s an excerpt: “I went to the iPad launch. I didn’t buy one. I pretended to buy one. I ran out of the Apple Store with my backpack in my hand screaming, ‘We did it!’ and all the Apple employees go nuts. There’s something a little perverse and wrong about something with that level of consumerist, cultish behavior. But what I’m excited about is that … it does change how we interact with things … The way we tell stories has to change.”

You can see the full interview with Baratunde next week on FishbowlNY.com and on Mediabeat.com.

In an GalleyCat interview this morning, one New Yorker staff writer refused to “sugarcoat” the declining state of long form journalism. However, he placed hope in online outlets and digital tools for carrying the art into the 21st Century.

Today’s guest on the Morning Media Menu was David Grann, a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine and the author of and The Lost City of Z. Grann discussed his newest book, The Devil and Sherlock Holmes, and shared tips for aspiring long-form journalists–explaining how he ended up at one of America’s greatest magazines after years of work.

Press play on the embedded player below to listen.

What do you think? How can digital books help long form journalists preserve their literary legacy? Here’s an excerpt from the interview: “It was a very circuitous path. It was not very linear–I floundered about for many years. I had many different careers early on. I knew I wanted to be a writer. But, like so many people, I didn’t know how to be one–other than just do it. I didn’t know what form it would take.”

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