(Annette Moser-Wellman) -- Here's my latest guilty pleasure: lying on the family room couch watching mildly entertaining TV while working on my laptop. Somehow when I combine the two experiences, it seems to redeem them both. I just have to be careful not to get popcorn butter on my keyboard.

I suppose this multi-tasking activity is an awkward precursor to the convergence of devices that we hear so much about in the tech community. Device convergence is at the stage of development where it has created more questions than answers for people in the news business. Will access to the Internet on a TV screen alter the way we view news and information? Will mobile devices usher in the intersection of the Web and entertainment? When we can communicate seamlessly across mobile, TV and portable computing, will the nature of news change?

It's Venu Vasudevan's job to think about questions like these. A senior director in applications software platforms research within Motorola Labs, Venu is exploring the implications of convergence on media experiences.

"One aspect of convergence that's particularly exciting is that most devices will not only render rich content, they'll also have communication channels. We believe that when you blend content and communication – when you can talk about content, you can create some new collection of experiences that you couldn't if you were just watching content in isolation."

While Venu is talking, my mind is shifting from my laptop/TV experience to my nephew, who is a big Xbox 360 fan. His buddy is miles away and yet he and my nephew play Grand Theft Auto and chat about the game while they play. I ask Venu if this is the kind of interactivity he is talking about. He says it's similar to the video game experience, but more.

"We're looking for ways to bring back social interaction for media programs. How can you combine watching something with chat, speak, instant messaging, clipping, annotating and sharing? ‘Social TV' is a concept that digitally extends the couch, enabling my friends and me to join each other in watching a common TV program without being physically co-located. While Xbox 360 is fast paced, Social TV is a ‘lean back' experience that turns your electronic program guide into a social dashboard."

"TVlicious is a project of ours that brings a peer-to-peer content-sharing element to TV watching. Just like social bookmarking on the Web, TVlicious allows you to clip TV content to share with others and chat about it over the TV screen." The name TVlicious is an allusion to the social bookmarking site de.li.ci.ous that offers users the ability to tag Web content they are interested in and share it with others."

Sling Media has developed a similar technology it calls Clip+Sling. Users with a Slingbox can access their home TV program simultaneously on their laptops or cell phones through the Internet. With Clip+Sling, they can tag TV content, then send it to an open portal that anyone can access.

Venu believes this kind of technology will be of value to news organizations. When viewers clip stories, media companies can gauge the peaks and valleys of users' interests within a larger story in real time. News organizations can see what is propagating virally and use that information to tailor content.

"Without disturbing the TV experience, you can create a social experience around it," said Venu. You can imagine a scenario in which viewers are more interested in the news because they can interact and share their ideas online.

Venu goes further. He describes a future for TV news in which there is an overlay of content that would allow the viewer to research the subjects and characters more fully. These would be "advanced news experiences" that would allow you to access background information while you are watching. Venu likens this next-generation experience to participating in a reality show and having a relationship with the storyteller. The news ultimately becomes a dialogue.

"News is as much about the people who write the news as the news itself. The creators are also stories in and among themselves," Venu said.

When these technologies become widespread, media experiences will become intensely personal, reflecting our deeply held preferences but at the same time able to be broadly shared. We will sort out exactly what interests us and find communities with like interests.

"Personal media experiences are about convenience and about coherence. Convenience means anytime, anywhere consumption – time-shifted, play-shifted, device-shifted. Think of it as the end of appointment-based media. Coherence means that you can tailor the way the story is consumed. And that you can tailor the story to the device itself," he said.

Venu describes an application that makes convenience and coherence possible today. Advanced media synchronization software enhances the usability of mobile devices by allowing you to cache information on one device and port it to another. For example, you can pick up a story from the Internet on your desktop, then read it on your mobile as you commute home. Rather than a converged device, this application optimizes devices you already use – enabling your "ensemble" of devices to support your media needs by invisibly coordinating with each other with little or no action on your part.

The mobile experience is made effortless and "zero click" via Active Idle technologies such as Motorola's version, Screen3. Screen3 displays news items on your cell phone's menu and gives you the choice to read a few lines or the full story. It gives you the capability to record the content on your home TV or DVR so that, with this convenience, you experience a richer, more in-depth story.

"By allowing you to start an experience on mobile and continuing it on TV or start an experience on TV and continuing it to mobile, you're going away from the notion of listening or reading an item. You're instead going to the idea of consuming a story. Your devices will cater to you, and you can consume content across multiple devices," he said.

The good news is that these technologies optimize the key competitive advantage of a news organization – powerful stories. It allows the media company to focus on providing depth and information, to build out a narrative and tell a more complete story. Because a story is device-agnostic, it doesn't have to live on just the Internet, TV or a handheld. Stories have always had the ability to travel through time. And now they can travel through space as well.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts, experiences and reactions by clicking on the comment button below.

Annette Moser-Wellman is President of Firemark, Inc., an innovation consultancy, and author of "Running While The Earth Shakes: Creating An Innovation Strategy To Win In The Digital Age," published by Media Management Center. She teaches in MMC's Advanced Executive Program and Digital Strategies for Media Executives seminars.

This TechScout article is part of a new series of Moser-Wellman interviews commissioned by Media Management Center to explore opportunities and insights at the intersection of technology and the news media. Click here to view others in the TechScout series.