Toss the headsets aside and get ready to turn your backs on the screeching masses of 12 year old boys staying up late to play on XBox Live! The rise of the mobile gamer is upon us…apparently: One in Three Mobile Phone Owners Is a Regular Mobile Gamer.

Being involved in both mobile research and gaming research projects at the moment, the above study caught my eye. It says a lot for how mainstream gaming is becoming, but it also says a lot for the progress of mobile devices. (And yes, I realize that since this is an article and not the actual report there is probably a lot of information that has been lost in translation but stay with me during this post.) This does, however, force me to point out the obvious: Many mobile games are not comparable to console games in terms of depth, gameplay style, or time required for gameplay. With a few exceptions here and there, most mobile games are “quick plays” designed for 10 to 15 minutes of time that can be picked up randomly without any impact to the story. So does that mean that mobile gaming is becoming popular because of how ‘easy’ it is to pop in and out of play? Or, is it symbolic of how mobile our society has become? Maybe both?

Interesting thoughts to ponder, so here is another set of data to include in the ponderings. One of the corresponding statistics to this story is that of 31% of US mobile device owners have smartphones. Of the respondents in the study, 83% of the smartphone owners surveyed indicated that they played mobile games. This last statistic I don’t think anybody should be surprised by as smartphones can support more complex gaming experiences (though their physical design might not make it comfortable to play such games). While this is all interesting/not too shocking/great to see more people catching the gaming bug, it provides fodder for an interesting thought exercise: What will companies do for consumers who own both a smartphone and some sort of home entertainment system with a streaming/recording media device?

The answer is pretty obvious, at least in my mind, for those who own devices with a touchscreen and accelerometer (read: iPhone users, possibly iPad owners). The mobile device can serve as a controller while games can be live streamed into someone’s house and results stored in the cloud somewhere tied to a login name and password. There’s something similar to this already with OnLive, but that’s only streaming the games in to download and play, so not quite the same but close. For those of us who own AppleTV, the streaming device already exists, and with the plethora of apps out there that allow iPads and iPhones to intersect with AppleTV (and other devices, such as DirectTV receivers and Xfinity receivers), it is not entirely out of the realm of possibility that the mobile gamer who plays Bejeweled 3 while waiting on their date at the restaurant bar will become the next home-based gamer racking up points on a leaderboard and trash-talking their friends.

When the iPad came out I began to wonder: What’s going to happen to the website as we know it? The internet isn’t going to go away anytime soon, that’s for sure. But the technology for accessing it is becoming more streamlined. It started with the MacBook Air–no CD drive, flash memory, wireless connectivity capability. Using the MacBook Air, you had to be able to survive as a minimalist by having all of your software and docs already installed on the device or having what you needed available on sort of portable or cloud storage. The iPad takes that a step further by leveraging the fluid interface design seen on the iPhone and expanding it to a slightly larger device with a bit more power. There is no software, however, to install on the iPad as it works on a series of apps downloaded from the App Store. And the constraints of the device itself have led to the development of a distinct design style that companies are thinking of as a specific skillset that designers must develop.

It isn’t just the iPad, though, that’s driving this. It’s the onslaught of touchscreen devices and tablets in general. Optimizing a website for a touchscreen device, which is most often a mobile phone, or a tablet means turning the concept of a website on its head. Displaying a website on such devices means designers and developers need to be able to ‘trim the fat’, so to speak. Important functionality must definitely be there, but the overload of visuals, frivolous animations, and pointless features is no longer needed–or viable. Users need to be able to access the important information or perform important tasks while on the go, and they don’t need anything getting in their way.

With this very distinct design style, advances in web programming languages such as HTML5, CSS3, and jQuery, and the growing capabilities of touchscreen devices and tablets, it’s only a matter of time before the traditional website becomes a web app.

Not a native app, a web app. Let that sink in exactly what I’m saying here. Native apps are optimized for a system, run on the system directly, and require very specific skillsets that can be expensive to maintain on staff or to hire in directly. A web app, while still needing to be optimized for different browsers, has more flexibility in that it relies on a combination of client-side and server-side technologies to deliver content and functionality to users, and users can download content to keep files and data on their devices. And because it does not rely solely on the device displaying it, it can actually be used on a wide variety of devices.

So what does that mean for companies’ websites? It means these companies will have a new way to interact with their customers if they do it right. Retailers, for instance, can begin creating more immersive experiences. Instead of static pages, or pages with dynamic content portions, shopping can be done from a large catalog that users interact with through a series of tools or guides to find the right outfit or the right accessories. Social networking sites can create interactive maps to track activity, closeness of connections, and even the creation of new connections.

Now to answer my question about what will happen to the website as we know it: It will become a relic, a great reminder of how far technology has come in relatively short time.

Today, while stuck at home with 3.5 ft snow drifts and no internet, I listened to the news on my Sirius satellite radio. One major story–aside from that of Snowpocalypse–was the debut of the first ever iPad ‘newspaper’ app, The Daily. What struck me more than the business model ($0.99/week or $39.99/year for content that you can’t get anywhere but through the app itself), was the amount of techie brouhaha surrounding it. This alone got me excited because that usually means something truly unique or monumental is being accomplished with an application. Rupert Murdoch, founder of Newscorp, and Eddy Cue, Apple’s VP of Internet Services, introduced The Daily to the world as the first app of its kind. So, once I had access to the internet again, I downloaded it.

And what was my reaction? “Ooh! This is pretty cool!”

In terms of design, it’s clean and uses space well. Users can peruse content by swiping through items in coverflow view, but it is called carousel by the developing team. As an added bonus, these content items rotate on their own after a set amount of time. Within each item, interaction is intuitive and the results engaging. For instance, swiping left to right in an item while in portrait view takes you through pages of the story. Changing the orientation of the device to landscape view lets you view photos. You can then swipe left and right to view photos. This interaction can get a bit confusing the first time using the application. Some articles swipe left to right to advance through them, while others, such as in the Apps & Games section, require a user to swipe down to read an article and left and right to switch between articles. Luckily there are usually pretty clear visual cues for this, like in The Coquette, the daily advice column: An arrow at the bottom right of the screen indicates the need to swipe down for more content.

There’s a strong social component to the application, too. Users can post to facebook, twitter, or email the story. Leaving comments is, of course, also available. However, you can actually record a comment.

Another cool factor: Video anchor! While in carousel view there is an expandable control panel with an icon that looks like an old TV set. Tapping it will launch a brief video giving an overview of the current article. There’s also story audio that can be accessed by tapping on the headphones icon. This audio will play in order of the articles in the issue, or can be randomized by clicking on the shuffle icon.

Navigation gets an A- from me. The main navigation consists of only 6 items: News, Gossip, Opinion, Arts & Life, Apps & Games, and Sports. Tapping on one, though, launches users into the first item in that section sometimes with no clue as to how many other, or what are the other, items in the category.

Features in this app are fantastic. In the Apps & Games section there are useful app reviews, and daily sudoku (WIN!) and crossword puzzles (meh). There is also a daily horoscope feature and local weather, which I should have mentioned early–the weather feature is pretty nifty. Both the horoscope and weather can be set by the user in their account settings, and once set up, the weather will allow a 5-day and 12-hour forecast. The cool factor increases with the 12-hour forecast as it includes a slider users can move to see the time, phase of the sun or moon, cloud cover, and temperature.

All in all, this seems like a nifty app so far. And in an effort to convince everyone, Verizon is covering a 2-week trial period for new users of the app. With that, what’s the reason not to check it out? (And if won’t check it out because it came from Newscorp or Rupert Murdoch, then your loss.)