We’ve got an ally in the enterprise reseller marketplace who sent us this video link with a simple note. This fellow, who talks with IT directors and enterprise managers about their future tech needs simply said after seeing the iPad in action, “Now I get it.”

There’s an important note to file away here about this demonstration of the new journalism. Wired will operate its iPad app on Adobe AIR, technology that is supported on the iPad. In fact, even the dreaded Flash applications can run on the new Apple device, according to a report from Gigaom’s James Kendrick.

It turns out Flash runs fine, as long as it’s in the form of a native iPhone/iPad app. Adobe has tools to make that easy for developers to do, and told me that more than 40 Flash-based apps have been submitted to the iTunes App Store. Now comes word that the cool Wired iPad app was developed with Adobe AIR, which, Apple’s feelings aside, makes apparent just how much can be done with Flash on Apple’s domain.

This quantum leap in information gathering will be slow to arrive. You might save your iPad budget for next year, because the launch of this new tool is going to mirror the intro schedule for the iPhone, if you expect apps written especially for the new device. Wired expects to release its iPad app this summer, at least 90 days after the iPad goes on sale. What’s more, Wired wants to charge for its information by subscription, something the iPad enables more easily than the Web. Set aside some budget for information subscriptions. The advertiser model, where you paid nothing, will be losing some ground to the value of interactive content.

AIR is serving Macs already for the companies who need to follow Twitter traffic and post to multiple feeds at once. Adobe’s Tweetdeck program runs on AIR, and is worth trying out to get a handle on a complex Tweeting task. Getting AIR apps under an iPad could trigger a great launch for information collection and sharing.

It helps if your blog already has an RSS/CSS feed, apparently, something that most blog services include as a tick-box. Yapper promises a means to create that brand-specific app for smartphones and perhaps the iPad too.

We’ll have a look at the tool when it makes its debut at Macworld next week. Early feature sets in the teaser information tout:

APPER (Your APP maker) is an online self-service for bloggers, newspapers, pod casters and others to make their own native mobile apps in WYSIWYG fashion. Key features:

• No coding required use existing RSS/ CMS feeds
• Multiple mobile OS support: iPhone, Android and Blackberry
• Optimized for mobile user experience: Mobile optimized UI (mobile friendly entire article content with images and videos), Content caching (users can read offline), Fast (no straight RSS feed parsing), Location enabled
• Customization options: colors and branding
• Push notifications for breaking stories and events
• Monetization and analytics support

The Grey Lady used to be more cautious about its speculations, but the staff flowing in from online jobs have stretched the rumor envelope. The tiny article in the Times‘ Bits blog was written by Ashlee Vance, new to the newspaper’s staff after a long and flashy run at the Web site The Register.

The Microsoft “slate computer” was supposed to be part of MS VP Steve Ballmer’s keynote speech last night. Alas, what some around HP are calling The Courier didn’t debut. Vance wrote great articles for The Register, but the standards for rumors are limbo-low over there.

Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, will unveil a novel take on a slate-type computer during his evening keynote.

The Times only posted the initial rumor article on the Bits blog, not in a printed edition, so the editors only figured they had to post a generic follow-up today on the non-story. The rumor report shows how little can be counted upon for innovation from Microsoft. HP has had its hands on touchscreen technology since 1984, but the last two years it has had serious touch products released. Last night’s cobble was not one of them.

One of the best summaries of What Just Didn’t Happen came in the comments to the Vance article. One reader quoted the line from the article, “So the last thing Mr. Ballmer wants to hold up is a me-too device,” then added

The good news for MS: That didn’t happen.
The bad news for MS: Nothing else happened, either.The Microsoft blasts are just a click away in this story:

Just another full-blown Ballmer clownboy fiasco. Courier was vaporware. MS went out of their way to throw their cards down on the table and show that they’ve got NOTHING, and plenty of it. If Jobs shows up to demo a yo-yo, he beats Ballmer now.

Journalists still want to write stories that kill off or condemn with faint praise the interesting mobile device coming from Apple. Predictions are a loser’s bet, but we all want to deliver them.

Far better advance reports on the iSlate are coming from Jon Gruber at his daringfireball.net site. I’ll just echo what he’s forecast — an impressive range of content, sculpted for the Apple device, will be part of the vendor’s rollout solution. You want to read a Conde Nast publication online? Some say those pubs will be ready on Day One of the iSlate rollout.

Gruber is also dead-on about an App Store or iTunes experience for the iSlate. Apple takes 30 cents of every dollar for apps and music. This new mobile tool will be a revenue generator for Apple, and not just from the sales of the hardware.