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Finally, a Satisfying iPad Magazine Experience

15 Apr

So I decided I might like to get a subscription to Bloomberg Businessweek. It’s a magazine that’s popped up on my radar a few times lately, both for some interesting longer stories and for its innovative design.

March 22 cover, via AisleOne.net

I explored my subscription options:

  • Through the Businessweek website: 50 issues plus 4 “bonus issues” for $40, including a free subscription to digital iPad editions ($ .74/issue)
  • Through Zinio, the digital magazine newsstand company: $46 for 51 issues, digital replica-style ($ .90/issue…wait, 22% more for digital only? Nope.)
  • Through the new Bloomberg Businessweek+ app for iPad (iTunes link): $2.99/month, charged automatically each month through the Apple in-app purchase function. (free for print subscribers, or about $ .75/issue for non-subscribers)

I really wanted only a digital edition because this weekly magazine will hit my recycle bin so often, and because business isn’t a huge personal interest for me. The price is reasonable. (Businessweek will get $2.09/month after Apple’s 30% cut.)

While it might not let me experience the magazine’s intriguing print design, the iPad app is a good deal comparatively – and received rave reviews on iTunes – and so I tried it out.

I have to say: I’m impressed. The first issue did take a few minutes to download, but far fewer than the 11 minutes required by the free May iPad edition of Wired (iTunes link) that I downloaded this morning. A few interesting moments in the app are below:

Provide my personal data to Businessweek? Hmm...

Downloading my first issue (bottom right), with previous issues available for individual purchase

Watching an introductory video linked to the cover images, with editors explaining the chicken on the cover

Finding topics connected to the names mentioned in the story and realtime data through the Related button

Integrated social media connections...yes!

So far, I’m pretty impressed with the app. It provides enriched content, beyond just a digital replica, that is smartly designed for greater usability, not mere novelty. It’s reasonably priced, easy to access, and has clean design. It will automatically alert me to new issues.

It lets me stay in my social reading mode that I have come to enjoy so much, rather than putting me in the “walled garden” so common among digital magazines to date.

And, finally, there’s just the right amount of interactivity – enough that it’s interesting and suits the iPad, but not so much that I’m distracted from reading, which is still – obviously – a major draw of magazines.

My only tiny issue? I wish there were pagination for stories, not just scrolling; personally, I’m a more effective reader in Instapaper’s pagination mode, and I’d prefer it here too. But I can live without it for now.

Worth $ .75/week? Time will tell – but this is an auspicious start.

Two more reviews are here and here for some additional perspectives. Add your thoughts in the comments.

New Post at MediaShift: Single-Story Sales

17 Feb

I have a new post up at MediaShift on the various ways magazines and others are experimenting with selling individual stories online:

If magazine publishers can identify stories that provide rich, deep reading experiences, and then add engaging multimedia to develop that experience even further, they may be able to leverage their brands and editorial authority to market individual stories successfully. Other possibilities might include packaging stories on one topic together in one download, or combining stories from different magazines in a collaborative product. Individual stories or packages of stories can be sold through apps, websites, and vendors like Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Go check it out, and please comment while you’re there!

Magazine Industry Terror

4 Feb

So I saw this interesting little graphic over at the Association of Magazine Media (formerly the MPA) E-Reading blog, and it brought only one thing to mind:

Hmmm…

[A more substantial post next week, I promise!]

Research Ideas: Digital Magazine Publishing for the Masses

26 Jan
Collecting Magazines

The bin of leftover magazines...its days are numbered in the digital age.

I’m contemplating the best angle for a new research project about the world of digital magazine publishing. I’m including here not just the magazines that have released iPad and other mobile apps, but also web-based publishing like that offered by Zinio, Yudu, Texterity, NoLayout, and others.

I’m interested in to what degree these digital magazine publishing opportunities are democratizing magazine publishing. Though I find print-on-demand a fascinating trend as well for magazines whose content and design implies the value of a lasting hard copy, the high cost of purchasing many of these publications means that they will likely be restricted for some time to a more affluent audience. But the opportunity for small publishers to whip up a magazine in PDF format, then post it online, seems to open up a whole realm of possibilities.

No longer are independent publishers relegated to blogs or mere websites; the ability to publish a polished, slick, easily accessible digital magazine is now within reach. Any magazine can be available on the web or even on the iPad using a newsstand app like Zinio, or through HTML5 using a service like NoLayout (though the latter concentrates on fashion and art topics).

So who is taking advantage of this opportunity to present a polished look at their subject matter? I’d like to know the breakdown by size and topic of the independent publishers who are crafting new projects online. I’d also like to know, more specifically, whether and how many activist or politically oriented digital-only magazines there are. An initial exploration of just Zinio’s listings suggests, interestingly, that there are many more ethnic or international magazines that might fit the “activist” label than English-language publications of this variety. As someone interested in how magazines affect or enable various social and political movements and identities, I also want to know whether and how digital magazines are playing a similar role to print magazines’ role in past movements. (I did a study on the role of National Review in mobilizing the conservative movement, though mine is just one of numerous studies in this area.)

I’ve previously explored the role of social media in adding to political/activist print magazines’ engagement of readers in this MediaShift story. The research study I’m anticipating now would likely examine the role of smaller, exclusively online activist publishers in directing, enabling, or mobilizing the causes they’re associated with through this new medium, as well as the reasoning behind their decisions to use digital magazines for this purpose.

If you have thoughts or suggestions along these lines, or suggestions of specific digital magazines I should explore, please leave a comment. I am excited about the opportunity to have some dialogue around this topic before I set out a concrete plan for the project.

More Teaching Ideas for the iPad

7 Jan

The Atomic Web Browser app - an iPad alternative to Safari.

I’m excited to start my first full semester with an iPad at hand, ready for use in the classroom. I’ve found some ways to work around the frustrations I encountered in my first attempt to teach with the iPad, so here are some of my new strategies and plans for using the iPad during teaching.

Projecting the Web

I’ve downloaded Atomic Web Browser for 99 cents, which will project web content through the VGA connector. This is a major advantage over Safari for iPad. I also much prefer the tabbed browsing offered by this browser to the page system in Safari, as it’s more convenient both for casual reading and for pre-loading a selection of web pages prior to the start of class and easily switching among them. It also supports multi-touch, which is nice when you’ve become accustomed to that capability elsewhere.

Blackboard on the iPad

Starting up the Blackboard Mobile Learn iPad app.

(Setting aside the variety of problems with Blackboard itself for a moment…) The new Blackboard Mobile Learn app is much improved from its previous versions, which for me were essentially useless. You can do a lot of what you can on the web through the app at this point, so administering your class activities on the move during class time (or from your couch at home) is now much more feasible.

Teaching Writing

The iCardSort app in action.

I’m not teaching a writing course this spring, but I can see how some apps I’ve started using for myself are going to be very helpful in working with students on their projects. For example, iCardSort, a free iPad app, can be used to show students how to brainstorm and organize their ideas for a new project. Outliner (currently $4.99) can be the next step in the process, generating a clear outline for the project that can be easily manipulated. (I use Inspiration for outlining on my laptop, though I may move to something with a better UI sometime soon.)

Using the Outliner app for one of my own research projects.

For the more visually oriented, a mindmapping app like iThoughts HD ($9.99) might be a better option, though I haven’t tried it myself. iThoughts HD will apparently also project through the VGA connector, so an all-class brainstorm session for writing projects or other topics is an exciting possibility. Unlike a whiteboard activity, the iThoughts HD session can be saved as PDF and shared with the class in a more permanent form. (Hmm – I may have to buy this one after all.)

When I do teach writing again, I’m also really looking forward to being able to walk around the computer lab with the iPad and immediately locate and show students examples of things we’re working on. For example, I could go find examples of anecdotal leads in online news stories for a student who’s unsure about how they’re used – without having to borrow the student’s computer or project the example on the classroom screen through the instructor’s station, which would distract everyone from their work.

Demonstrating Multimedia

Another great aspect of having an iPad in the classroom for someone teaching journalism and communication is simply the ability to show students some of the innovative new ways media professionals are preparing content for the iPad. If I hadn’t been able to use an iPad through my university, I’d feel very much left out of this rapidly developing area of the industry. However, I’m happy to be able to demonstrate these new products in class and discuss them knowledgeably with students as someone who keeps up with the field and uses these new products daily. The iPad has been a great asset in this way for me as an instructor.

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