Morning Brief: Japan raises nuclear crisis level; mobile coupon clipper acquired, launched last year

Japanese authorities today raised the crisis level at its Fukushima Daiichi power plant to the highest level, seven, the same as was applied to the Chernobyl disaster. Despite the raises measure of severity, Japanese officials say the amount of radioactivity leaking from the plant is far less than what occurred at the Chernobyl.

"This is a preliminary assessment, and is subject to finalisation by the International Atomic Energy Agency," said the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, Reuters reported.

Reuters also reported early today (in Japan) that a fire had been seen at the nuclear facility, though the flames were only seen for a short time.

"Flames and smoke are no longer visible but we are awaiting further details regarding whether the fire has been extinguished completely," a spokesman for the plant operator said early today.

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Mobile app maker, Peekaboo Mobile, was acquired by nSphere one year after the company was launched. Peekaboo Mobile makes apps that let users find coupons for companies near the user.

Peekaboo Mobile has been partnering with location shopping publisher "Where". This is the kind of non-editorial content best suited for local newspapers, but because the vast majority of newspaper apps are simple RSS driven editorial products a giant hole has been created in the market that is allowing developers to walk right in. (In other words, once again newspaper companies are surrendering a part of their business, in this case, local retail. The anti-app crowd are winning the day, and developers are getting rich because of it.)

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Penton Medis this morning announced that it is launching a marketing division aimed at providing its business-to-business customers with content marketing, digital media solutions and sales sales optimization tools, according to its statement.

Penton Marketing Services will be run by Kim Paulsen, Penton Media Senior Vice President. George Assimakopoulos, who was CEO of the recently acquired EyeTraffic Media, will serve as the division’s Vice President of Digital Media Services.

According to Penton Media CEO Sharon Rowlands, the move is being made after the company surveyed 4,000 of its customers and found frustration with web lead generation and a lack of knowledge about how best to use social media.

"Marketers are clamoring for new solutions to grow their businesses and they want providers intimately familiar with their industry segment,” said Sharon Rowlands, Penton Media CEO.

Amazon now offers Kindle with 'special offers' and sponsored screensavers in exchange for $25 discount

Will consumers accept ads in exchange for a discounted price? That is the proposition Amazon is testing out as they announced today a new Kindle price tier: a $25 discount in exchange for ads on your Kindle.

"How are we doing this?" the Amazon.com home page asks. "We took our bestselling Kindle and make a version with special offers and sponsored screensavers. Companies sponsor the screensavers, and you pay less for your Kindle."

Buyers of these ad-embedded Kindles will be able to customize their screensavers in order to better match up owner preferences.

Will $25 be enough of a discount to drive sales of these ad-embedded Kindles? We probably will not find out as Amazon.com does not report its Kindle sales numbers except in the most vague terms.

Amazon.com already has four announced sponsors: Buick, Chase, Olay and Visa.

Adobe announce Flash Builder 4.5 and Flex 4.5; introduces subscription model for Creative Suite 5.5

Software giant Adobe Systems Inc. announced two new upgrades in its Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 release: Flash Builder 4.5, available immediately, and Flex 4.5, expected to arrive in June.

Flash Builder 4.5 Premium will be included in the new Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Web Premium software. For the first time, Adobe will now have CS available as a subscription: Photoshop will be priced at $49 for a one month subscription, or $35 per month on an annual basis. Creative Suite Web Premium is priced at $89/$135, Creative Suite Production Premium at $85/$129, Creative Suite Design Premium at $95/$139.

"With these releases, developers for the first time have a single development platform for building highly expressive Web, mobile, and desktop applications, marking a leap forward for mobile app development,” said Ed Rowe, vice president of development tooling, Adobe.

“With the proliferation of smartphones and tablets, enterprises now need to ensure that their applications work seamlessly across many different types of devices. Flash Builder 4.5 and Flex 4.5 will now allow companies to standardize on a common platform capable of delivering rich and consistent application experiences that perform great across Android, BlackBerry Tablet OS and iOS devices.”

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette launches paid iPad app; revamped web designed should have been first priority

I don't live in Pittsburgh, so reading the local paper, or visiting the website is not something I would normally do unless I was following a link. But the launch of the first tablet edition of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette caught my attention as it is one of the few newspapers or magazines that have launched a paid app with free content, usually the opposite of the approach of those publishers trying to monetize their app development.

PGSelect offers readers "breaking news and a selection of the day's top local stories in sports, news, business, lifestyle, arts and entertainment, plus featured editorials and columnists from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette," according to the app's description.

But since the website is free (except for a member's only website – more on that in a minute), one has to wonder about charging for an app. But the cost is only $1.99, while content inside, though somewhat limited, is still free to access.

As for the app itself, its biggest limitation is design, not programming. That is what brought me to the PG website, to see if it resembled the app. No, but clearly the paper is struggling its digital media design team.

And that brought me to the Newseum, to look at the front page of the print edition. I grabbed the screenshot from the Newseum's recently released universal iOS app which is proving incredibly useful.

I suppose you can decide for yourself whether you like the paper's front page design, but I put myself in the place of a Pittsburgh resident and felt that I would be more comfortable reading the print edition that the website – and because of this I could see the merit in the company's first iPad effort. But digital design is not something this paper seems comfortable with.

Comparing the iPad edition to the website, one can see that the content management system is allowing the editors to show a headline and a summary first paragraph. This was apparent in the typo found on the home page in a story about a police taser incident. The typo misspells "Saturday", but this typo is not in the actual story.

In the iPad app, it must be RSS driven as there are headlines, but no summary paragraphs. As a result you get leads like this on a story headlined "Cop shooting charge withdrawn for 1; new suspect charged". The text under the headline reads "Alleghany County police announced today they have charged a new" – yep that's it.

So would a reader be better off simply using their browser to read the paper's website rather than their new app? I wouldn't think so.

The PG website is a modern 980 pixels wide (the NYT website is 970, TNM is 980), but the news hole is 500 pixels in size -- that's all you get. Along the right side is a 300 pixel column for ads which for some reason contains both medium rectangles (which are 300 pixels wide) and a 160 pixel wide skyscraper which floats in the 300 pixel column. The NYT's main news hole at the top of the page is 530 pixels wide, but news can be found on both columns to the right.

My point, of course, is that the PG is in desperate need of rethinking its digital media design work.

So, does a paid app/free content strategy make sense? I think it could for certain publications that offer free content, and where the app adds value. Here, the app does provide a good alternative to the website. But a better designed website would trump an iPad app with limited content.

In the case of the PG, the paper offers free web access, but in 2009 launched PG+, a members-only website that offers interactive features and exclusive content such as blogs, videos, live chats. The cost is $36, and according to a post written last September by Bill Mitchell of Poynter, the experiment has proven modestly successful.

Bloomberg Businessweek launches discounted iPad edition; swipe or scroll, the choice is yours

Business magazine Bloomberg Businessweek has released its initial tablet edition today in Apple's App Store. Bloomberg Businessweek+ is a free iPad app that creates a library where users can download one issue for free and additional individual issues after they have bought a highly discounted four-week subscription, an in-app purchase of only $2.99. Print subscribers can log-in to access their issues free of charge.

The app features both portrait and landscape modes with readers scrolling through stories when the iPad is in portrait, swiping when in landscape.

The app opens to an introductory video of either one or two people sitting around a tablet discussing the issue, something that could be shot on your cellphone, frankly. But it is consistent with an app that does not try to throw the kitchen sink at readers, making it far easier to repeat week after week.

If readers want a digital replica edition, Bloomberg Businessweek still offers its issues through the Zinio digital newsstand. But while that option offers the ability of the reader to access their issues through multiple devices (computer, tablet or mobile phone) the issues are still priced at newsstand rates of $4.99.

The app has an overall sponsor, NetApp, a digital data storage and management solutions company. Individual sections, however, have their own sponsors. The GlobalEconomics section, for instance, is "brought to you by" OppenheimerFunds, while Companies & Industries is sponsored by BASF, and Markets & Finance by Goldman Sachs.

The app allows readers to access additional information about companies mentioned in the articles by tapping on the company's bolded name – this pulls up stock price information and any recent news stories from Bloomberg's news service.

What is missing from the app at this point is a breaking news section that could pull in stories from the website. The app, strangely, does not have push notifications, so if any breaking news occurs this app will not help keep you informed. Of course, like any app, this could be updated.

There are three font sizes available, with the default size being the smallest. Articles can also be shared via Twitter and Facebook, as well as email.

But because this app does not contain animation and other video content, the issue sizes are rather modest, meaning that issue download times are fairly short. Even more importantly, issues can be read offline so that business travelers will have no problem quickly downloading, then reading their issues during air travel.

Finally, the app description promises that issues will be available to tablet edition subscribers by 10PM ET each Thursday.

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I see at least one replica edition vendor arguing that the economics of creating these natively designed apps is excessive. The problem with that argument is that it implies that readers don't care whether they read a digital version of a print edition or a digital product specifically designed for the device's platform.

Unfortunately this is just wrong. Creating once and porting over to different devices leaves the publisher with one attractive product and a catalog of misplaced products.

I would rather see these vendors begin to offer publishers inexpensive native design options rather than continue to insist that readers just won't mind being fed these ugly and hard to read replicas. But I sense that a lot of vendors get pretty worried when they see important publishers investing in their tablet editions.

Gartner forecasts that the iPad will dominate the "media tablet" market with +50% market share through 2015

Information technology research firm Gartner has released a forecast that predicts that Apple's iPad should continue to dominate the "media tablet" market through 2015. Gartner defines a "media tablet" as "a device based on a touchscreen display (typically with a multitouch interface) whose primary focus is the consumption of media."

Gartner's report forecasts huge growth in Android tablets, from a 14.2 percent share in 2010 (though even that number seems high to me) to over 38 percent by 2015. Nonetheless, Apple's iPad, which sold more than 14 million tablets last year, will continue to hold the number one spot, selling 47 million this year.

“Seeing the response from both consumers and enterprises to the iPad, many vendors are trying to compete by first delivering on hardware and then trying to leverage the platform ecosystem,” said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner. “Many, however, are making the same mistake that was made in the first response wave to the iPhone, as they are prioritizing hardware features over applications, services and overall user experience. Tablets will be much more dependent on the latter than smartphones have been, and the sooner vendors realize that the better chance they have to compete head-to-head with Apple.”

The forecast predicts slow growth for RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook, blaming the fact that the company will need time to attract developers to its webOS platform.

It will take time and significant effort for RIM to attract developers and deliver a compelling ecosystem of applications and services around QNX to position it as a viable alternative to Apple or Android. This will limit RIM’s market share growth over the forecast period,” Ms. Milanesi said. “It will be mainly organizations that will be interested in RIM’s tablets because they either already have RIM’s infrastructure deployed or have stringent security requirements.”