Online magazine Slate has found a new use for iPods, using the ubiquitous devices to deliver text rather than audio or video - in what is probably a first, reports AdWeek. Slate has planned "textcasts" of its daily "Today's Papers" feature, which aggregates the day's news. Slate will deliver the text via a 15-minute silent audio file. In recent months, Slate experimented with text in the feed of its "Explainer" podcast. Lexus, a Slate podcast advertiser, will be sponsoring the new textcast.

The Lexus logo will appear where the album art is usually shown on the iPod; a Lexus text ad will be placed within the story.

Slate began making its content available for e-books in 2001, but e-book technology has not taken off. Slate publisher Cliff Sloan said the textcast effort was the result of that slow pace of adoption. "What's been missing has been the ubiquity of the device," he said. "With the iPod there is a ubiquitous device."