Andrew Douglas B2B journalist, turned PR man, specializing in new media.

I have seen the future… and it looks a lot like the web?

Time Warner has unveiled it's prototype e-reader. It looks kind of like Amazon's Kindle, except more web-like. Users can poke around pages to activate video, sort pictures, create their own table of contents, and other neat stuff.

I suppose it's cool but man, it looks demanding on the reader. I might be old school but when it comes to magazines, I'm happy to place my valuable reading time in the hands of a good editor. I prefer letting them sort through all the week's news and choose the best tidbits for me to know. I have plenty of opportunity elsewhere in my life to pick and choose exactly which fruit I want to eat. When I buy a magazine, I like coming to a table with food prepared and the table set, ready for me to tuck in.

I wonder if I had one of these fancy tablets from Time Warner if I'd spend most of my time poking and proding the darn thing instead of reading. When I want a web experience, I'll fire up the web.

This is very un-techie of me to say but sometimes the best tools are ones that have limited capabilities. Take my three-year-old iPod Nano. By and large, Apple resisted the temptation to pimp it up with too many bells and whistles. I know you can get an iPod Touch with plenty of extras built in but for my purposes, which is mainly listening to podcasts during my walk home, the iPod Nano is perfect.

Magazines are simple. Sometimes simplicity is good.