To provide some background context, recall the popular news site launched an online TV network in August that streams 12 hours of live footage a day from New York and L.A. It’s a big investment, but the company is hoping its hyper-engaged user community will follow the brand into the video space, and that all that footage will produce buckets of viral content clips to spray across HuffPo and AOL web sites.

So what is the significance of the iPad app in all this? At first glance, not much. The app is simply another way for a user to watch the live stream — which features both ordinary people and celebrity guests like Bill Maher — while reading and adding comments, and sharing shows to Twitter or Facebook. Here are a couple of screenshots that show how comments can appear either stacked or tiled:

On its own, the HuffPo Live app is not extraordinary. Where it could be a real game changer, however, is the fact that the app can be slung onto a TV set using Apple TV. This means that Huffington Post has a chance to control not just a living room’s second screens but also the primary one as well.

In practice, this could occur if groups of friends watch the presidential elections on HuffPo Live and share comments in real time via their iPad — comments that would appear on their TV. If this comes to pass, HuffPo Live will have created what amounts to a walled garden extraordinaire in living rooms across the land.

But could HuffPo actually pull this off? In the short term, the answer is no, as the commenting system is too rudimentary. It allows users to like or flag a given comment but does not let users create a limited community like the ones they know on Facebook or Twitter. A company spokesperson says improved commenting features are coming soon (a Reddit-style up-or-down voting system might be one idea).

Meanwhile, bandwidth will provide another obstacle to HuffPo Live as most houses don’t have the capacity to enjoy an uninterrupted live stream on several devices at once. (Although, as Om’s recent account shows, things are improving quickly).

Still, the future prospects of a living room with a single media source dominating all devices is intriguing from both a user and marketing perspective. Will we one day see other content makers like the NFL or BuzzFeed try to do the same thing?

Its existing Sky+ iPad app already let its 4.3 million Sky+HD subscribers schedule set top box recordings over the cloud from any location via its on-screen EPG.

Now an updated version of the app released on Wednesday adds same-room TV control including pause, rewind and fast-forward of the Sky+HD set top box; channel changing and recording management.

This is just an increment in Sky’s second-screen developments. In a few months’ time, the app will be injected with social TV functionality from Zeebox, the promising startup in which BSkyB invested this January.

The interesting remote UI introduction today is that the majority of those new features involve not on-screen virtual buttons or sliders but simple finger swiping across an otherwise blank iPad screen.

This may make it easier for some folk who don’t comprehend a wealth of interface options, but the lack of interaction prompts may also pose a challenge.

The main technical challenge, however, is that both the iPad and the Sky+HD box must be on the same broadband network. Sky’s TV boxes are Ethernet- but not WiFi-enabled. Marrying the devices requires an additional £60 Wireless Connector bridge to the TV box, or some homeplugs.

BSkyB rival Virgin Media has taken almost two years so far in developing the iPad remote control app for its TiVo set top box. paidContent reported in March that the app was essentially ready but Virgin feared consumer network confusion – its TiVo boxes also do not have the necessary WiFi functionality.

Announcement.

Family Christian Stores, which has nearly 300 locations throughout the U.S. and calls itself the country’s leading provider of Christian books and supplies, just launched the color-screen Android edifi for $149.99. It’s available online and in Family Christian stores. The company also offers a free Family Christian Reader app for iOS and Android.

Like a low-end version of Barnes & Noble’s $169 Nook Color, the edify is essentially a 7-inch WiFi e-reader with some tablet functions. It’s preloaded with a Family Christian Reader app and includes a “suite of family-friendly features” including safe-search Web browsing, Christian radio and English Bible translations. It has a touchscreen and some basic tablet functions like web access and email, though it lacks Nook Color apps like Netflix.

“It’s been rewarding to tell my friends and family that I have a Christ-centered tablet,” one customer writes in a review, but another says, “I haven’t decided yet if I am going to keep it or save up for an iPad.”

After much speculation, News Corp. has confirmed that it is considering a split that would see the media and entertainment conglomerate cleave itself in two, with the newspaper (and book publishing) assets carved out as a separate unit from its TV and movie businesses. Although the company could still decide not to do so, the idea raises an interesting question: Assuming that chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch is interested in seeing that newspaper-only unit succeed — as opposed to just selling it to someone else or slowly liquidating it — what would he have to do in order to make that happen? (Update: News Corp. officially confirmed the split on Thursday)

When it comes to the digital aspects of its newspaper business — which includes the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, the Times of London and the Australian, among other prominent names — News Corp. is a creature of contradictions. Many have criticized Murdoch for being too quick to erect “hard” paywalls at newspapers like the Times (as opposed to soft or metered paywalls like the one at the New York Times), since that resulted in a massive loss of readers for the venerable British paper. Murdoch also maintained the paywall at the Wall Street Journal after buying it in 2007, despite initially saying that he planned to remove it.

At the other end of the spectrum, there’s The Daily, a bold experiment aimed at creating a digital-only newspaper designed and produced specifically for the iPad and other tablets. Even if you see the venture as something of a failure — given that it doesn’t seem to have come close to the readership or revenue targets News Corp. envisioned when it was launched — it is still a substantial ($30 million plus) bet on the mobile and digital future of news. It may be an attempt to duplicate the old scarcity model of news, but that’s a much bigger investment than many other traditional media entities have made in the potential future.

Less like The Daily, more like the Pulse deal

Is The Daily something that News Corp. could build on or expand with its other newspaper properties? It no doubt has lessons it could teach the conglomerate’s other papers about what works and what doesn’t in terms of mobile or digital apps, but to some extent the iPad newspaper is a very different animal. For one thing, it still doesn’t even have a website where you can go and browse the content the way you would with the Journal or the Australian — so it is more or less a hermetically sealed tablet product, and it’s not clear yet whether that’s what readers (or enough readers) actually want.

Arguably more interesting as an indicator of future direction are some of the moves the Wall Street Journal has been making. As we’ve noted a number of times, the Journal has been experimenting with a variety of ways of moving what it does into a digital future, including the expansion of its video offerings — which my colleague Jeff Roberts has described in more detail — as well as more recent ventures like the partnership it signed on Tuesday with Pulse, the news-reader/aggregator app for the iPad.

What’s particularly interesting about the Pulse arrangement is how it differs from a similar deal that the New York Times struck with Flipboard, another news-reader/aggregation app. While the NYT is distributing content to existing subscribers through the tablet app and hoping to generate additional revenue from advertising within Flipboard, the Wall Street Journal is actually selling subscriptions to some of its content in a new way: readers can click and get access to just the Water Cooler, the Technology Digest and other sections rather than having to subscribe to the whole newspaper.

Is that how people want to read the news? No one really knows yet, but at least the Journal is experimenting with one possible solution — and you could argue that it is a smart way of taking advantage of the brand value that the newspaper has in the financial sector, where readers are theoretically more likely to want to pay for content. With the Pulse deal, they can subscribe to only the specific content they want (which might attract more casual readers than a blanket subscription to the whole paper) and they also take advantage of the alternative distribution method that Pulse represents. Those are both arguably smart moves.

Let the content flow and monetize it elsewhere

So what does the future hold for a standalone News Corp. newspaper company? Undoubtedly, there would have to be cutbacks and even asset sales, since the newspaper operations will no longer have the financial support provided by the parent’s entertainment assets — and $30-million bets on experiments like The Daily would probably also be a thing of the past, for the same reason. As media analyst Ken Doctor notes in a post on the future of News Corp., Murdoch might even wind up deciding to sell or dispose of everything other than the Journal.

But if News Corp. (or whoever winds up owning the newspaper assets) wants to try and make the transition to a digital future instead of just liquidating its properties, it would do well to continue the kinds of experiments that the Wall Street Journal has been implementing: in other words, let content flow through different channels like the Pulse app or Flipboard and find readers wherever they are, and then monetize that content where it is being consumed instead of pushing people to a website. And think more about how to make use of video — and other alternative content forms — rather than just the traditional news story.

At some point, the Journal and some of Murdoch’s other properties could also try to implement some of the ideas that former Washington Post managing editor and now WSJ managing editor Raju Narisetti has proposed with respect to a “reverse paywall” approach — one that focuses on membership benefits for devoted readers, rather than simply penalizing everyone with a paywall. Whether News Corp. or its successor company have the gumption to try something like that, however, remains to be seen.

Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Flickr users Mark Strozier and Rego Korosi

Springpad essentially uses bookmarklets, browser extensions and its mobile and tablet apps to grab information off the Web for later viewing, but unlike other note-taking apps, Springpad tries to structure that information and add context. For instance, if you “spring” a review of a restaurant or a movie, the service will recognize the information for what is, adding to your notes information about opening hours and local box office show times as well as links to dinner reservation or ticket purchasing services. Users then store all of those items in individual notepads, which they can make public to the whole Web or keep as private files.

The new update allows users to share their notebooks with one another, publicly or privately, similar to collaboration features on Evernote. For instance, a family could share grocery or to-do lists among its members. A book club can keep a running list of reading ideas and cooks can trade recipe ideas. Users can share notebooks privately among friends, or they can make notebooks public, allowing any Springpad member to follow another’s particular interest. The feature is particular useful, since I might be fascinated by one member’s recipe collection, but have no desire to read his collections of religious or political essays. The tools allow me to selectively follow what I find interesting and filter out the rest. Here’s a video Springpad produced to highlight the new features:

Like Pinterest, Springpad relies heavily on images to represent the items and notebooks, leading to a stunning visually layout within the application. But according to co-founder and business development VP Jeff Janer, Springpad is adding many more layers of contextual information to make the service into a sophisticated social collaboration tool.

“We want to form active micro-communities that revolve around particular interests,” Janer said. “Pinterest is focused on inspiration that may lead to a transaction, but there’s not really any collaboration there.” While Janer isn’t dismissing inspiration – which has made Pinterest an overnight success – he said Springpad sees a lot more potential in inspiration-oriented networking than in simply driving customers to retailer Websites, though such transactions are a key part of Springpad’s business model as well.

A mixed bag of revenue

Like Pinterest, Springpad takes a little off the top from any transaction originating from its notebooks, whether it’s a CD from Amazon or a movie ticket from Fandango. But Janer said Springpad’s primary business model will be based on advertising and offers. With detailed information about each user’s interests, Springpad’s advertisers can tailor specific coupons, based on the exact items they have stored in their notebooks. If you have saved a specific Sony HD TV in a gadgets notebook, Sony could ship you a discount offer specifically for that TV, Janer said.

Springpad has added a few other features with the new update as well. It’s introduced natural language understanding features to its search and item creation bar. So typing “Call Jeff tomorrow” into the add item bar will automatically generate a reminder task, which is then automatically synced with Google Calendar. It’s also generating alerts, based on items in stored in notebooks. If you a add a movie trailer, it will send you a notice when the film is available in your area and later generate another note when its is released on DVD and Blu-ray.

Springpad is still a relatively small operation. It launched in 2008 with funding of $7 million, and has since grown to 3 million registered users and a staff of 17. Much of that growth has been fairly recent driven by its mobile apps.