9to5Mac reports that Wired magazine showed off the tablet version of their magazine at SXSW, and dropped hints of an iPhone version soon to come. It's a whole lot more than a screen version of a print product!

Wired simply ported over their entire March issue into tablet form. Swiping horizontally acts a bit like a table of contents, taking you through the ads and the first pages of sections and stories. Scrolling vertically lets you scan through the whole content of longer stories. The app is very sensitive to orientation, with different images being displayed for an article based on whether the device was tilted in portrait or landscape mode. See about 3:30 into the video below for an example.

A tap brings up a scrubber that lets you scroll through the magazine, seeing thumbnails--perfect for those who tend to riffle through publications. Some articles included tap links, bringing up additional information at a touch. Some images were animated, and others allowed zooming, panning, and scrolling. Rather than having to scroll through multiple images associated with one article, there was a thumbnail gallery thar you could tap on any image to see the full-size version. They also demonstrated audio and full-motion video associated with an article.

Zooming out into "browse mode" lets you quickly see multiple pages. That actually makes it easier to see the path of some of the design elements Wired is known for incorporating over different parts of the magazine. They even showed the equivalent of an iPod scroll wheel associated with an image, so that the image and associated contents on the page changed as the demonstrator moved his finger around the image.

A similar version optimized for the smaller screen will be available for the iPhone and Nexus One.