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Or maybe it's not. But it is the issue of the moment for television providers, one that has been created by the creation of the iPhone and the iPad (and now Android phones, as well): who will be the ones allowed to create live programming apps, the program producers, or the content distributors?
With the launch of their iPhone app, WatchESPN, the Bristol, Connecticut sports network is now in the business of both content creation and distribution -- kind of, because the app will only work if you receive your television through Bright House Networks, Time Warner Cable or Verizon FiOS TV.
Meanwhile, Time Warner Cable and other television carriers are launching their own apps, generally iPad apps, but are getting plenty of push back from the networks, especially the major networks.
The reason is simple: the networks see that smartphones and tablets are another way to distribute their programming. With cable/satellite distribution you can negotiate a deal and try and cover the country, letting over the air handle the rest.
Imagine, for a second, that Americans decided that they wanted to watch their television programs inside movie theaters (crazy, I know). Who would the programmers negotiate with? The theatre chains, right? Well, I would imagine that the cable companies would argue that since they offer cable in the areas where the theaters reside that they have the right to deliver the content in that location. The argument is over whether the contracts involve only delivering programming to the television device, or the viewers location.
If device, then the programmers can negotiate new deals for new providers per device platform, or create their own apps. If location, then the cable companies are the ones who have that right.
It is a battle for the future of a new kind of programming distribution. The good news for consumers appears to be that everyone now (finally) realizes that consumers want their content everywhere (why are so many publishing executives so behind on this?). It is just a matter of letting the lawyers work things out (or the courts).
(Interestingly, the ESPN app skirted this debate by negotiating up front with the cable providers. In this regard, ESPN is siding with the providers, something the other networks disagree with.)
Friday, April 8, 2011
Final thought this week: ESPN app is tip of the iceberg
End of the week app round-up of miscellaneous media apps: wine, the wine country and cool hunting
In a week's time I download a lot of mobile and tablet apps that I never get around to writing about. Mobile apps have a hard time making their cut, so many are ways of reading content on the run -- better versions of a mobile website, but generally without interesting new features (like the new Talking New Media for iPhone app, which I am sure you have downloaded by now, right?). But media apps designed for the iPad are often more varied.
So now that it is the end of the week, and I can't think of a better way to wrap things up than to clear off my desk (so to speak) by clearing off my iPad. Here goes:
The first media app is a replica edition from Florida Weekly, or more accurately, a collection of replica editions. The serves the four editions of these free weekly tabloids produced by Florida Media Group LLC.: Punta Gorda / Port Charlotte, For Myers, Naples, and Palm Beach Gardens.
The free app opens to a dialogue box where the reader can choose their edition. The reader can move from edition to edition, if they choose. Beyond that, there is not much else here that differentiates this from print.
Produced and released by Our Hometown Inc., a website design and hosting company for small newspaper publishers, this is the first app to be launched into Apple's App Store. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the company spent much time inside the developer website working on this app.
"View full page Florida Weekly editions for free on your iPad!" reads the app description -- the entire app description. No word on what those editions might be, or why you would want to read them on your iPad. Additionally, only one screenshot was included with the app.
Hopefully, the approval and release of this app caught Our Hometown by surprise and they will add more in the description field and all a screenshot or two. This can happen: one day Apple tells you your app is in the review process, the next minute you are told the status of your app has changed, and suddenly there it is inside iTunes. Changes then made to the description take a while to appear in the App Store so maybe the developer is adding material right now.
Cool Hunting, from the website of the same name, is something altogether different. It has been featured by Apple inside the App Store, and has received pretty unanimous praise from users, as well.
If you are not familiar with the website (or the app) it is a design reference tool. "Our global team of editors and contributors sift through innovations in design, technology, art and culture to create our award-winning publication, consisting of daily updates and weekly mini-documentaries," the app description says.
The app was created by Bond Art and Science which has a pretty funky website which you will either find fascinating or annoying (I think I lean towards annoying).
There is a lot here to explore so, since this app is free, I'd recommend downloading it yourself and taking it for a test ride when you have some leisure time. But if not, this promotional video will reveal a lot:
Cool Hunting iPad App v2.0 Demo from Cool Hunting on Vimeo.
Jaguar's first 2011 issue of its customer magazine an interesting take on the tablet publishing platform
Last fall I looked at the first iPad app released by Jaguar Cars Limited as part of an ongoing look at the automotive magazines being released by manufacturers. These customer publications are free from the monthly deadline grind, often with pretty healthy budgets, and no requirement that they one day turn a profit. Their goal is marketing alone.
Produced by the custom publishing division of Haymarket Market in the UK, that first tablet edition has been pulled from the App Store and in its place you will find Jaguar Magazine March 2011. Still free to download, the customer magazine is still a great ride, and very instructive for those publishers searching for an alternative look at tablet publishing.
This issue no offers both portrait and landscape. Instead, the app sticks to landscape, better to show off the video content embedded within. Like Project, Esquire and other new tablet editions, the magazine 'cover' (an increasingly outdated term, really they are 'splash' pages) is itself a video. In this case, however, Haymarket does not create layers like in the consumer magazines where text overlays the moving image, here is just a video of a blue XKR-S (prices start at $132,000, if you're interested).
The app is fairly simple in construction as it begins: full pages of content with scrolls to a secondary page. The navigation is smooth and the reader might get lulled into thinking this was a pretty minimal app.
The fun begins at the Jaguar E-Type story. It opens with a video and moves on to a series of photographs of the first E-Type Jaguar launched at the 1961 Geneva Motor Show. Again, development-wise, this really isn't terribly complex stuff -- after all, that first page is simply a video and what follows are static pages. But I still find it effective from a reader's perspective.
I admit that I am a Jaguar driver, and so may be giving this app more credit than it is due. But I have always found the tablet editions released from the auto companies to be more interesting than much of the consumer magazines released. I also find that they produce more good ideas for me, as well.
(I've just downloaded Atomix Mag which promises to be a tour-de-force compared to this more modest effort, but will I find it more enjoyable?)
Note to readers: Comments stuck in spam-blocker
Recently a few comments have gotten stuck in Blogger's spam blocker black hole. The spam-blocker is on by default and I have found it useful as this site, like many others, gets a fair number of comments that are attempts to sell mobile phones and other goods.
Google added the spam detection feature awhile back and I see no way to turn it off, so my apologies to those who have added comments to the posts and have had to wait hours (days) to see their comment appear online. I'll try and remind myself to check the spam folder a little more often!
Morning Brief: Jon Stewart says his goodbyes to Glenn Beck; budget talks stalled on social issues, not money
The news, whether financial, domestic or international, is hardly the kind you'd like to wake up to this morning.
So let's start with something a bit different this morning.
Here is The Daily Show's Jon Stewart riffing on the news that Glenn Beck, with Fox News for the past couple of years, is moving on:
Staring at a deadline less than 24 hours away, negotiators for House Republicans and Democrats admitted they were close, though still deadlocked as Republicans insisted that any deal included provisions that would end funding for Planned Parenthood, a prohibition on the use of federal or local funds to pay for most abortions in the District of Columbia, and restricting the regulatory powers of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Complicating the negotiations is the thought that the Republican leading in the house, Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, is not empowered by his caucus to compromise with the minority. When asked about whether he was in sync with the demands of Tea Party members in the House, Boehner argued that he was.
"Listen, there's no daylight between the Tea Party and me," Boehner said. "What they want is, they want us to cut spending. They want us to deal with this crushing debt that's going to crush the future for our kids and grandkids. There's no daylight there."
Another war well managed. NATO today admitted that it destroyed rebel tanks in another incident of "friendly fire".
"It would appear that two of our strikes yesterday may have resulted in the deaths of a number of [rebel] forces who were operating main battle tanks," the BBC reported Rear Adm Harding stating Friday.
The State Supreme Court election took another bizarre turn yesterday when Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus reported that she had failed to report 14,315 votes in the city of Brookfield. The city leans heavily Republican and the suddenly discovered votes meant that the incumbent, Justice David Prosser, an ally of the Republicans, gained 7,582 votes over the challenger, JoAnne Kloppenburg.
The county clerk, Nickolaus, is a Republican who has a history of being caught up in controversy. In 2001 she was granted immunity in an investigation involving illegal political activity during state employment, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. In 2002 Nickolaus was accused of developing a computer software program to track campaign donations while a state employee.
Nickolaus appeared to get some support yesterday from Ramona Kitzinger, the Democratic Party representative on the Waukesha County Board of Canvassers. "We went over everything and made sure all the numbers jibed up and they did. Those numbers jibed up, and we're satisfied they're correct," the Journal Sentinel reported Kitzinger as saying.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
WoodWing announces that it will make its format open and free of charge in bid to make it standard; launches 'Open Format for Interactive Publications' website
Stating that it would like its tablet publishing format as much as a standard as the PDF format, WoodWing announced this afternoon that it will make its data format open and free of charge.
“Our mission is to serve the publishing industry,” Erik Schut, President of WoodWing Software stated in the company's press release.
As part of the announcement, WoodWing has launched a new website to promote "ofip", or "Open Format for Interactive Publications".
“Publishers will seriously benefit from standardization, as it avoids vendor lock-in and will allow to pick and choose different suppliers and technologies for the various parts of the supply chain. Both the tools to create your publication, as well as the reader apps for the various platforms can be chosen freely. Before making this decision, we have carefully analyzed the existing and upcoming standards, as well as proprietary formats. As our tablet publishing solution is currently the most mature and has the most extensive feature set, we came to the conclusion that our format is a good starting point for an open industry standard. Being XML-based, it’s easy to transform from and to other formats to allow quick and easy interoperability.”
