Imagine taking control of your favourite magazine. You can decide what goes in, and where, change the layouts, zoom in on the images you like, or skip the articles altogether and focus solely on the latest videos.

After nearly two decades of publishing online, newspapers and magazines are finally coming to grips with the technology. Gone are the days of static websites lacking interactivity and, in most cases, any real visual acumen. And with the advent of smartphones and mobile media players – in particular, the hotly anticipated iPad, with its
9.7-inch touchscreen – the publishing industry is having a serious rethink about how the print experience translates onto screen.

Sports Illustrated is at the forefront. Recently, with the help of the Wonderfactory, a New York-based creative agency, it presented what a fully interactive version of its 20-million-issue selling magazine would look and behave like on a tablet computer. The application lets the user scroll around the magazine as they wish. You can view full-screen slideshows, watch the latest recap videos and increase the size of the text at your convenience. The application transforms Sports Illustrated into your version of Sports Illustrated. And the concept is already being developed for other magazines such as *Wallpaper, People, Fortune, In Style and Time

Interview and Wired magazines have fast-tracked their own version iPad-based magazines, which they expect will appear as soon as next month. Interview says that its digital offshoot will combine “the benefits of the digital age with the familiar advantages of Guttenberg’s printing press to deliver a groundbreaking, knock-out reader experience”.

For Wired, which has spent the last 17 years reporting on technological innovations, the iPad will allow periodicals “for the first time to do digital content with all of the same values and artistic range that are the hallmark of print magazines”, it says.

But tablets aren’t new. Ten years ago a wave of touch-sensitive computers was heralded as the future of communication. They failed miserably. So what has changed? In the past couple of years we have experienced drastic changes in how we consume information. Smartphones, such Apple’s game-changing iPhone, allow us to access information on the go.

And while in the past decade magazines have failed to replicate online the aesthetics a printed product offers, these new technologies are changing the playing field. With the iPad, some publishers are banking on the device to secure new readers that, as the App Store has shown, are ready for the world of micro-payments.

Will photographers benefit from this new market? The Guardian has made more than £200,000 in revenues from its excellent iPhone App, which is available for a one-time fee of £2.39. But photographers’ contracts already include fees for any such online use. In France, Libération has tried a different model, giving away the App for free, but charging €0.79 for access to a full interactive version of its daily paper – which could, in theory, be passed on in micro fees to contributors.

Is it a success? Not yet. The newspaper reportedly makes just €50 a day from the new service.