TGIF: Wired makes its May iPad edition free to download; Instapaper releases update; Eine kleine Nachtmusik

With its May issue, Wired will have published a full year worth of issues on the iPad. And its been a roller coaster year with sales of its first issue very encouraging, and then not so encouraging. We'll see if "sales" of the May issue spike because it has one advantage of the previous 11, it is being offered for free.

"Sure, this will save untold thousands the $4 readers have to pay for a single issue for the Apple tablet," John Abell writes on the Wired website. "But merrily giving Wired away for the month of May is also apt to only increase the frequency of the number-one question Wired gets about the app — When will you start offering subscriptions, already!?"

Unfortunately, Abell can't provide an answer to that question.

The May issue is being offered free because "the promotional tab is being picked up by Adobe". That is pretty strange language to use. As a publisher, it would mean that Adobe is giving Condé Nast a make-good. Or it could meant that they are trying to reenergize the brand, after all, the first issue of Wired hit in at the end of May, in time for the international launch of the original iPad. Now iPad 2 is out, so maybe it is time for a new promotion – like a free May issue.

The May issue is available from within the iPad app, which serves as a library app where readers can buy, read and archive tablet editions.

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Developer Marco Arment updated his Instapaper iOS app today (iPhone here, iPad here). The update includes a new in-app, offline dictionary that includes more content and longer definitions. The new updated app also includes a new full-screen image viewer (screenshot at left).

Instapaper is, of course, one of those essential apps that any first time buyer of a tablet should get. For me, it is the perfect tool to use when working on posts and coming across material that I would like to read, but know that now is not the right time. The app is $4.99 in the App Store.

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Back with Talking New Media was first launched my last post of the week would always be Photoblogging Friday. The post was my version of cat blogging, a tradition of posting pictures of your cat credited as being started by Kevin Drum, then publishing his own blog at Calpundit (now at Mother Jones).

I don't own a cat, and dog blogging seems silly for a media site, so Photoblogging Friday. That is why in the Labels section to the left you'll see that there are 24 entries for PbF. It died when the site was put in mothballs for a short while, and not resurrected when the site became live again. The reason was simple: no one seemed to read the PbF entires, and no one commented on them. Many of the posts were written by Dean Brierly, a school chum from high school and college, and the publisher of Photographers Speak, as well as two other sites.

Too bad, those were some of the best early posts that appeared here. But it was, I guess, too off topic. But today it's time to start a new tradition kind of related to PbF. I've decided to feature something – music, film, books – something different.

So here is entry number one, a music recommendation: the new CD from the Marcin Wasilewski Trio, Faithful.

This is the third CD release on ECM for the Polish trio: Marcin Wasilewski, piano; Slawomir Kurkiewicz, double-bass; Michal Miskiewicz, drums.

Now like a lot of material that appears on ECM, this, too, might seem like nocturnal music (hence, the headline), but this is a very talented group of musicians who create intense as well as reflective music. The title track is an Ornette Coleman piece, but the track that grabbed my attention was "Night Train to You" a self-penned number.

The trio, until recently, were part of the Tomasz Stańko Quartet. The ensemble released three CDs on ECM: Soul of Things, Suspended Night and Lontano. Each are worth investigating.

Trumpeter Stańko, a Polish born veteran of the European jazz scene, really was reborn when working with the young trio; similar to what occurred when Charles Lloyd began playing and recording with Michel Petrucciani in 1981, though they were together for a far shorter time than was the Tomasz Stańko Quartet.

Hearst's Esquire magazine: Zinio and iPad editions

Readers know a magazine's brand and rightly or wrongly assume that picking the latest copy of a magazine, no matter what the format or platform, will be a consistent experience. This, of course, is no longer the case as publishers move their content from one platform to another.

Replica edition makers sell the idea that a reader wants their digital version of a publication to be exactly like print edition, then publishers see that their print editions don't look the same in print as they do on a 9.7 inch display, or a seven inch display, or a 3.5 inch display.

The April issue of Hearst Communications' Esquire show the difficulties of moving from one platform to the other. The tablet edition, priced at $4.99 in the App Store, gives readers the issue in portrait mode only, saving iPad owners a bit of storage space, but giving the reader a very different version of the magazine than either print, or the electronic version from Zinio.

The Zinio version of Esquire does not contain the kinds of enhancements found in Zinio versions of say National Geographic. The folk at Zinio are rightfully proud to show off the efforts of publications that take their flipbook versions of their magazines seriously by adding interactive content. But the fact is that the majority of publishers continue to let their digital publishing vendors do the work, adding very little to the electronic versions that either sit on their own website as flipbooks, or go into digital newsstands like that offered by Zinio.

What the desktop and iPad version of Zinio editions can offer, however, is landscape mode – a chance to see the two-page spread ads the way they were meant to be seen. Things get complicated in the Zinio app, however, as the app works in both portrait and landscape.

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Left-top: the Zinio edition in portrait cuts off half the layout; Middle: the landscape version of the layout in the Zinio edition shows the complete two-page spread; Right-top: the iPad edition, with only portrait mode available, forces a new layout.

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Esquire solves this in their app by pulling the print ads and inserting only ads that are designed to be seen in portrait and add interactive material.

For feature layouts, however, things tend to get complicated. In print, the Matthew McConaughey feature is a beautiful spread. On your laptop, signed into your Zinio account, the digital version really pops, no center binding to get in the way of the experience. On the iPad, however, how you see this completely depends on whether you have your tablet in portrait or landscape.

In the iPad edition, however, the art director knows the reader will only see the layout in portrait and is forced to start over.

As a reader each format of Esquire has its drawbacks and advantages: print is mobile, heavy, static; flipbooks (without enhancements) are mobile, static, and variable; the iPad version is limited, interactive, and hard to navigate.

Hearst is not using Apple's in-app subscription services and have not created a "library" app for Esquire. That means that each month readers have to download a new issue through the App Store rather than through the Esquire branded app. Hearst has built in notifications into the app, presumably to tell readers when the next issue is available, but opening the last month's app won't get them to the next issue.

The disadvantage is obvious: the app becomes simply a driver of single copy sales. Hearst, however, offers readers an 11 issue subscription for only $8 in the Zinio newsstand online.

The advantage of individual apps is that each issue gets noticed in the App Store at release, if only for a couple of days. Nonetheless, I doubt Hearst is selling many iPad editions based on the number of reviews inside the App Store. Readers feel abused by a $4.99 price, despite the high costs to produce that first app edition.

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Les Habs win! and then this morning their fans get a new iPhone app courtesy of the Montreal Gazette

To say that the people of Montréal love their hockey team, the Canadiens, would be a bit of an understatement. Only in Montréal would there be a riot over a first round win in the playoffs. Watch out if Les Habs actually win the Cup this year.

Last night the Canadiens beat the Boston Bruins in the first game of the first round of the playoff – and I might add, the Sharks squeaked by the L.A. Kings last night, as well – and this morning the English language newspaper, The Montreal Gazette announced that their hockey app had made it into Apple's App Store.

Hockey Inside/Out is a free app from the Postmedia Network owned daily. It is an RSS driven app that has the latest news and photos at the Canadiens, well as video, box scores and the blog of Mike Boone.

Probably the best feature is that, once you have signed in, you can comment on stories – sports fans love to comment, that's for sure. There is also social network sharing of stories, as you would expect from a modern mobile app.

The app appears to have a single sponsor, Subaru, whose name appears on the splash page, and has banner ads throughout the app. The single sponsor idea remains one of the best ways to launch a new app where the total number of downloads and users is hard to determine. Also, launching an app at the beginning of the post season is a bit tricky. I have seen at least one app released by a media outlet for a football team that then did not make the playoffs. App development usually take a bit of time, so planning ahead and launching in time for the start of the season seems like the best strategy – the Boston Herald's Baseball app being the best example of that so far (though that would have meant that development of this hockey app would have had to start in the summer).

I love the screenshots in the App Store showing the carrier, Rogers. As you can see on my own screenshots, my reception in my office is sometimes not the best!

Left: the video page; Middle: Mike Boone's hockey blog with Subaru banner ad; Right: the log-in page for commenting and story sharing.

Rant: Do the aggregators even read what they aggregate?

A few days ago the AP got caught picking up a story that said that General Electric would repay a $3.2 billion tax refund – the story which picked up from another source was, of course, a hoax.

This morning I opened an email to find a story about a "recent" study of tablet and eReader users which asked "Are publishers paying attention to what consumers want from iPad magazines and newspapers?"

I received the same study and think its findings are of value. But, in the end, there was no way that I was going to do a post about a study that was conducted last September, a mere five months after the iPad was first introduced, and now read five months after the data was collected. At that time there were, at most, six million iPads in circulation. Since then another ten million original iPad have been sold, the iPad 2 introduced, and new tablets from Samsung and Motorola brought out, as well. That doesn't make the study worthless, it simply makes the findings old.

(As an example, the story quotes the author of the study as saying that "as many as" 15 million more tablets and eReaders will be sold in 2011. Yesterday Mobile Burn reported that Apple is now expected to exceed its original sales estimate for 2011 by 15 million units, selling "between 40 million and 45 million pads throughout 2011.")

There is no need to go on about the story. But that it was passed on in such a manner is what makes matter worse. Even a cursory review of the story would have led to the tablet sales quote and the sure sign that the information was outdated. But that is the nature of much of the aggregation that goes on, and its advocates continue to insist that this is the future. God, I hope not.

Morning Brief: AP to change formula for determining fees as agency pursues new revenue; Facebook wants you!

The Associated Press, the much maligned and resented American news agency released two statements yesterday about their attempts to grow revenue. The first announced that it will change the formula for determining the fees its charges its media customers, the second involved the hiring of a former ABC News executive to lead an independent agency created to grow revenue from licensing.

Starting next year, the AP said it will being charging its fees based on the size of the newspaper's print and digital audiences. The change is an obvious effort to make sure that as readers move from print to digital the AP is still getting paid. The statement failed to say how this in anyway will be of benefit to its customers. In fact, the statement puts the blame for AP's declining revenue squarely on the shoulders of its customers saying that the cause of its revenue woes "has been AP's decision to lower its rates during the past two years to help newspapers cope with a sharp drop in advertising revenue."

See, all you publishers, its your fault that the AP reported a loss of $14.7 million last year.

The language here reminds me of the US Postal Service, which yearly complains about its revenue woes, and each year appears to want to drive its publishing customers out of business.

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The second AP announcement was that it is bringing on David Westin, the former president of ABC News, to lead a new agency designed to generate revenue by licensing news content for online customers.

The agency doesn't appear to be designed to create any new products, but to make online sites pay for the news they take from the AP. The AP statements says that "customers include websites that run or excerpt content from those news providers without paying for it." This has to be the strangest definition of a "customer" that I have heard of.

One would guess that the AP is attempting to build an RIAA model, where its real for being will be to harass bloggers and aggregators into pay for anything they believe originated from an AP source.

Sounds like its time to stop quoting the AP.

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Meanwhile, CNN writer Mark Millan reports that Facebook wants to "friend" reporters and news organization in order to attract more news content to its News Feeds. The social networking site has hired Vadim Lavrusik away from Mashable, where he had been a community manager.

Lavrusik appears to be the right guy for the job. In his background is some work with social media for the NYT. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism where he teaches social media skills. Lavruski is also the founder of the Community Managers Meetup, according to his website.

Question: looking at the two pictures here, which guy do you think would be more likely to come into your office and talk to you ways to grow your business, and which guy is likely to come in with a group of lawyers trailing behind?

It's been a really good day for Flipboard: issues update with pages from Oprah, Rolling Stone and others, and gets $50M in funding at valuation level of $200 million

How good a day has it been for Flipboard co-founders Mike McCue and Evan Doll? Today the WSJ's Kara Swisher revealed in an interview with McCue that the start-up has secured a $50 million round of funding at a valuation of $200 million.

The investors are a pretty well known group, led by Venture Partners. Other investors include Comcast’s venture arm, according to the WSJ story, as well as Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures and some big name angel funders.

"With this funding, we can grow at the right pace and have a lot of flexibility to get the product right,” McCue is quoted in the interview. (Ya think? I guarantee you that there are plenty of TNM readers who think $50 million would help them get their products right.)

As for the iPad update, I was pretty impressed with that until I read about the funding. Flipboard is getting some big content players onboard: Oprah, Rolling Stone, Wire, Elle and others.

Their update also incorporates Instagram, a new photo sharing service with its own iPhone app. Instagram allows users to share photos with friends for free, and to follow their friends through photo sharing. The branded app is one of the most popular in the App Store.

With the media deals and the massive infusion of funding, Flipboard is moving well beyond the "that's an interesting app" stage, and fast.