“Creative content” brings gadgets to life according to Rupert Murdoch

In his speech to the Abu Dhabi Media Summit, News Corporation’s Rupert Murdoch said that the latest gadgets and technology can “blind us to what is real and valuable” and “that we risk missing the magic: the creative content that brings these devices to life.”

If you have to think for a second who this guy is let me throw in some media outlets you may recognize: The Sun, The Times, Sky Television, New York Post and Fox Television. To put it briefly, he’s not someone you summarily dismiss if he says something about media.

Let’s think about that for a moment. I suspect that most of us don’t consider what type of content really lies at the core of most gadgets and other tech we use on a daily basis. The most obvious area is the Internet where we read text and watch pictures and other multimedia. Then there’s of course movies and TV. But even in something like a smartphone there is content that has to be developed and localized, and that is in some respects even more important than the stuff on the web and on TV.

Take the example of Apple’s soon to be released iPad. Sure, in January when Apple unveiled it, they spoke about the iBookstore and how users could buy and download books directly from the iPad without needing a computer in much the same way as Amazon’s Kindle. Access to that content is great and getting it on the go is even better but notable was that Apple didn’t talk about magazines and newspapers, arguably critical to the success of a platform like iPad. So for something like iPad the “creative content” Murdoch is asking for will arguably be vital and to get that content in your own language even more so. We don’t know how much Arabic content will be available for iPad when it launches but a safe bet is not much.

Since Shufflegazine is already available on iPhone we know our bilingual tech content will be on iPad from day one and for that we’re happy. Hopefully Murdoch’s words will spur on more content development in the region whether that’s for iPad, the web, TV, movies or some other platform.