TOC’s Wednesday Devices, and Gadgets and EReaders Update – Tools of Change for Publishing

via toc.oreilly.com

O Reilley’s “Tools of Change” is launching a Wednesday review of hardware news in the e-reader space, with a recent slew of announcement and upcoming tablet devices this will be an interesting ongoing read. Most new devices are based on the Android platform, and general acceptance of this OS for e-book reading is also creating interesting opportunities and challenges for publishers.

Firefox 4 Beta Arrives, Now With Multi-touch

via webmonkey.com

I think this confirms my hypothesis of tablet devices driving a trend towards the mainstream web adaptation of multi-touch, interactive, “digital magazine” like experiences on the browser…

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Zmags Launches new Digital Magazine Showcase

read the full story via zmags.com

An Online Forum for Sharing Best Practices and Inspiring Others to Build Highly Effective Digital Publications for Various Business Cases and Markets

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS–(Marketwire – Aug. 12, 2010) – Today, Zmags Corporation announced the launch of the Zmags Showcase, a website featuring a collection of the best ‘zmags’ selected from more than 100,000 digital publications created by the 2,500 Zmags customers. The Showcase site provides the fast-growing online publication community with examples of highly effective digital publications created for various business cases and markets. In the Showcase, visitors can join discussions, share ideas, vote on the best ‘zmags’, and discover best practices on using digital publications to improve ROI.

Flipboard imitator? YourVersion HD for iPad

via itunes.apple.com

I love apps that help personalize my news:

Flipboard started the trend, the latest entry in this genre is a real-time discovery engine that continuously delivers the latest relevant content.

Major Update of WoodWing’s Digital Magazine Tools for iPad

New Version 1.4 of the Tools provides a multitude of new and enhanced features, expanding the creative scope.

Renowned newspaper and magazine publishers around the globe are using WoodWing´s Digital Magazine Tools to create and publish stunning iPad Apps. The new Version 1.4 of the Tools provides a multitude of new and enhanced features, expanding the creative scope.

WoodWing Software, one of the innovation leaders in cross-media publishing solutions, today announced the release of Version 1.4 of its Digital Magazine Tools for iPad, supporting both Adobe CS4 and CS5.

WoodWing´s Digital Magazine Tools for iPad are used by many renowned newspaper and magazine publishers around the globe to create iPad issues of famous publications, including Time, Sports Illustrated, Life and Fortune; the Asian newspapers South China Morning Post and Kompas; Veronica Magazine in the Netherlands and many more. A list of iPad Apps created with WoodWing´s solution is available at www.woodwing.com/en/digital-magazine/ipad-gallery.

Expanding the creative scope
The new release provides publishers with a number of new and enhanced features, enabling them to create iPad Apps that are even more attractive to the reader. Scrollable elements dramatically increase the creative leeway. Assigning audio files to pages provides for automatic sound when pages are opened. Two-finger swipes to switch to the next story and more.

New features are available for the design of a table of contents – a vertical list that pops up in a separate window. A new scrubber in the page navigator similar to the navigation used in iBooks.

Furthermore, the Digital Magazine Tools 1.4 allow for new extension possibilities. Custom Page Objects allows third parties to add their own functionality to the digital magazine code. Web elements can be shown embedded in the page, as a pop-up in the application or in the Web browser outside the app.

High Acceptance by Publishers around the Globe
“We are very pleased with the high acceptance of our tools by publishers around the world,” said Erik Schut, President of WoodWing Software. “In addition to the creative features, they appreciate the fact that they can create their iPad Apps using existing teams. Based on the very positive customer feedback and the great iPad Apps already done with our tools, we can say with confidence that WoodWing is a driving force in the iPad Publishing segment. And we keep our promise to provide enriched versions of our Digital Magazine Tools for iPad each month.”

The WoodWing Digital Magazine Tools are integrated with WoodWing’s cross-media publishing system Enterprise and WoodWing´s content management application Content Station, enabling publishers to create their iPad Apps in a very efficient and secure way.

CCI, a provider of leading newsroom solutions especially for newspapers, offers WoodWing’s iPad Reader App under an OEM agreement as part of their solutions.

About WoodWing
WoodWing creates the most progressive solutions available on the market for the production of print and online publications. Rapid growth worldwide and success across the full spectrum of small to large publishers demonstrate that WoodWing markets the best tools for the best price.
WoodWing Software is located in Zaandam, The Netherlands, and has regional sales companies for Europe, the USA, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America. Customers are served through select partners.

Press contact
Stefan Horst
PR Manager
WoodWing Software
T: 0049-151-12 72 63 62
E: sho[at]woodwing.com

via woodwing.com

App Store tsunami of crap apps create opportunity to Android | AppManifesto Insights

Apple’s policies have created two classes of app citizens. First, the top 1% of apps that deliver unique value, showcased effectively by Apple and drive significant revenue. Second, is the other 99% of apps, which deliver the sheer size numbers that are great for PR (“App Store exceeds 100K apps!”) and taglines (“there is an app for that!”) but are effectively filler, struggle to monetize and generally slide down a descending scale of crap. The argument from industry observers is that between the 1% and the 99% there are a large number of high quality applications that get lost in the ever-widening chasm. My argument is that the policies also create a perverse monetization incentive to deploy the largest amount of crap apps as possible.

via appmanifesto.com

Internet Trends 2010 by Morgan Stanley Research

via slideshare.net

If you have not come across this great report from Morgan Stanley yet, it is a must read for internet marketers, mobile strategists, web and app content developers

Mobile access using laptops and other devices | Pew Internet & American Life Project

via pewinternet.org

Additional demographics about wireless internet usage indicate that most laptop owners use their device wirelessly, a factor that bodes well for the rapid rise in tablet device usage. Interesting too to note the relatively even split between male and female users.

Mobile Access 2010 | Pew Internet & American Life Project

African-Americans and Latinos continue to outpace whites in their use of data applications on handheld devices.

Continuing a trend we first identified in 2009, minority Americans lead the way when it comes to mobile access—especially mobile access using handheld devices. Nearly two-thirds of African-Americans (64%) and Latinos (63%) are wireless internet users, and minority Americans are significantly more likely to own a cell phone than their white counterparts (87% of blacks and Hispanics own a cell phone, compared with 80% of whites).  Additionally, black and Latino cell phone owners take advantage of a much wider array of their phones’ data functions compared to white cell phone owners. It is important to note that our data for Hispanics represents English-speaking Hispanics only, as our survey did not provide a Spanish-language option.

via pewinternet.org

Dell’s Android Tablet Looks to Undercut the iPad on Price

via mashable.com

Will a smaller device like this present competition to the iPad, or will serious competition come only from similarly priced tablet devices?