The Globe and Mail releases a completely new universal app as its mobile strategy continues to evolve and expand

I believe this makes three different mobile apps that the Canadian daily newspaper The Globe and Mail has released. No matter, the evolving apps continue to get better, and one senses that the newspaper is starting to feel comfortable in its digital media strategy.

When I was looking at the new tablet edition from the Orange County Register I searched for other apps that I felt looked and felt a lot like that new one. One app that crossed my mind was the Spreed developed app The Globe and Mail for iPad. But launching that app yesterday brought up a dead app. 'What was going on?' I wondered.

What was going on was that the newspaper was about to release its third app that works for the iPad. The Globe and Mail: News makes three: three apps that all are branded in "Globe and Mail", and all are still available in the App Store. The other app, The Globe and Mail's Globe2Go, is a replica app produced by NewspaperDirect.

Ignoring for a second the wisdom of having your brand image confused with so many apps, this new free app from the publisher is probably the direction the newspaper wants to go in.

Since the app is free, and for now, at least, so is the content, I will leave it up to you who are interested to check it out and make your own evaluation. Suffice it to say that it is a 'traditional' approach (if such a word can be used for a style this is only a year old) to building tablet newspaper editions.

The app, as mentioned in the headline, is universal, so will work for your iPhone, as well. The Globe and Mail also has mobile apps for both the BlackBerry and Android platforms, as well. I suppose a tablet app for both platforms should be their next move.

While it may appear that the paper is simply throwing things out to see what will work, having used all their apps in the past I sense that this new app is where they are going. The next move they have to contemplate (and probably are) is whether they will begin charging for access to content.

---

While there are no reviews inside the U.S. App Store for the new app from The Globe and Mail, there are already a number of reviews inside the Canadian store. The majority of users are very positive, though a couple of users mentioned the old Spreed app and lamented its demise.

The biggest complaint seems to be that the old app allowed for offline reading – and that certainly is important.

But the paper already is aware of some of the issues. Here is what their current app description has to say:

This app is a living product. We have a lot of updates planned for the next few months -- things like search, weather, push notifications -- but we'd also like your feedback: What killer feature have we missed? What can we change to make Globe News more useful to you?

News.me: news aggregation app uses Twitter to find content for users; app a hit-or-miss news experience

My wife is a huge fan of the television series Bones. In fact, every early evening the series is on in reruns on TNT so we "watch" the old episodes at dinner time – not necessarily paying attention because, after all, we've seen them before.

One episode involves the Jeffersonian team going to an Asian restaurant where Booth, the FBI character, tells the members of the team to let the owner order their food for them – 'it will better that way'. One character orders their own food and as a result gets sick to his stomach. Only when he returns to the restaurant and lets the owner choose his food does he feel better.

Are you the kind of person who would let someone you don't know choose your food for you? If so, you might think the new News.me app is great. If not, you'll be left wondering what the big deal is and why the hell would the NYT invest money in this thing.

The premise of the app is simple enough: upon opening the app you are required to sign into Twitter. The home screen then shows you in the upper left hand corner, along with some of the Twitter folk you might be following, as well as other media partners.

The concept is that you will be interested in what stories other people are linking to, what others are interested in.

The problem, at least for me, is that while I may be interested in what one person has to say about their field of expertise, I may not be interested in what their other interests. For instance, I might tweet that the Giants won yesterday (actually, they had the day off). Great, except you might be following me on Twitter for news about New Media, my obsession with the Giants is just something that comes with the package, you are a Yankees fan, or hate baseball completely, or live in Amsterdam only care about Ajax.

So for me the possibility that I will run across an interesting article is too hit-or-miss.

But as I try to avoid predictions I won't guess whether this app has a chance of being a success. If you like are one of those people who likes to be told what to think, say a Fox News fan, this app might appeal to you – just turn off your brain and let the stories come to you. But if you are someone who knows what they like, and doesn't have time to sift through the stories others are reading in hopes of finding something of interest you probably would prefer an app like Flipboard where you feel in total control of the content.

---

One reason I didn't write about News.me yesterday was that by the time I got around to downloading the app I noticed that several articles had already appeared online. Fine, I thought, no reason for me to pile on.

But last night, leisurely reading some of them, I realized that in some cases the author had not even opened the app themselves. My gut told me that the author doesn't even own an iPad – yet here they are writing about an iPad app.

Whenever I wonder whether it is time to close up shop and move on to another web launch these incidents bring me back to TNM.

Morning Brief: As Apple remains silent on tracking logs, concern grows; Flanders Image app gets update, another can be expected; short day ahead

Even as Apple remains typically silent about its latest PR fiasco, concern continues to grow about why the tech giant continues to have its iOS devices track users and then retain the information in an accessibly file. CNet today reports of instances where police investigators have used the stored data in the course of their work, while readers comment about the intrusion of privacy.

Once again it is the culture of silence that is doing the company the most harm, where as a simple statement that a fix is in the works would have defused the entire drama.

Guess with Apple you can't teach an old dog new tricks.

Shown here at right is my own iPhone data – or at least a portion of it. I found the file not 100% accurate when it comes to my actual locations, but then again the way the tracking works it involves cell towers so they would not necessarily line up exactly with your true location (this is apparent in the occasional one dot locations far off the main highways).

---

If there was ever an app that shows you that, well, things can go wrong, it has to be this one for Flanders Image. Earlier this week I looked at the app and tried to use the app as one of those "teachable moments" pointing out that publishers need to make sure their developers are responsive, etc.

In the case of this app the problems was simple: it wouldn't let you download the issues. I suggested that an update should be coming soon.

And indeed an update has arrived. The good news is that readers can now download the Spring issue of the Belgian film magazine. The bad news is that another update will be right around the corner.

It turns out that if you have your iPad in landscape, which I tend to do most of the time because of the case I use, opening the app will take you to the download area. There you will see the latest issue – displayed on its side – and the word "landscape" typed across the cover.

I took a screenshot of it but decided that this publisher has suffered enough drama with their app by now – better to simply show the cover of the magazine as it appears in my iPad now. But look for version 2.2 to be released any day now.

---

The youngest kid is out of school, the wife is off work, the dog is recovering from his latest injury . . . sounds like a good day to take off, at least part of the day, anyway.

So expect a quick look at the News.me app, which honestly didn't impress me, and then off for the weekend. If that's your plan, too, then have a great weekend and we'll see you next week.

Final thought for the day: is there a barrier to entry for tablet news aggregation apps?

I was asked by about a half dozen readers today what my impression of the new app from News.me was – that will come tomorrow. But while many writers are enthusiastic about these news aggregation applications, I am a little cautious. Like any new product that hits the market I ask myself two questions that I find are fundamental: what is unique about the product, and is there a barrier to entry that will prevent others from doing the same thing?

When Apple started to accept third party apps into the newly launched App Store one of the first types of apps that were seen in the News category were RSS feed news aggregators. New readers are still launched. But sitting on top of the heap remains Marco Arment's Instapaper. The reason is simple: Instapaper provides a unique service that combines both superior programming with unique features. It is not simply an RSS feed reader. (In fact, it is not one at all.)

Now, one year after the iPad was launched, we have Flipboard, Zite, Pulse, News.me and other magazine-styled news apps. Can all these apps succeed? Is there a barrier to entry that will prevent other apps with similar concepts from entering the market?

I don't know the answer to these questions yet, but clearly I wonder about the long term viability of the news aggregator model for tablets. I know that because I am a news junkie and consume far more information each day than the average reader, sitting in front of Flipboard holds little pleasure. But the time I get around to reading for pleasure I want something that offers me a consistent level of quality in both writing and design – not a mashup. If the goal is a quick read I find the tablet to be the wrong device, for that I want the web.

Like the OCR which created a new iPad app because it wanted a product that fit the reading habits of iPad owners, I wonder if aggregation apps will be supplanted by more branded news apps from individual media outlets who take the design and aggregation ideas from these new entries into the market and improve upon them through better curation, writing and editing. I have no doubt that consumers what the ability to customize their media experiences. I just wonder whether consumers will find that they are better aggregators and curators than the professionals.

In the end, aggregation of content will continue to be a major features of future media apps. I just have my doubts whether the future will be lots of these apps all raking in millions. Right now I just don't see it.

First news apps developed for the BlackBerry PlayBook begin to enter RIM's BlackBerry App World

The marketing people at WoodWing passed along a press release and screenshots of what they claim to be the first daily newspaper to publish on RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook tablet platform. The newspaper, Kompas, offers readers the paper's weekly digital-only supplement Jendela, and the paper plans on offering its daily product for the PlayBook soon, as well.

“We aim to provide the best tablet media experience for our readers, regardless of the platform they are using,” said Rikard Bagun, Editor-in-Chief of Kompas in the WoodWing release. “We paid close attention to how we can digitally enhance our newspaper and brought that to the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.”

“One of the main differences between the two tablet platforms is the different screen ratios of the devices – 16:9 for the PlayBook versus 4:3 for the iPad," said John Fong, CEO of Serious Technology, one of WoodWing´s Gold Authorized Solution Partners in Asia.

"With WoodWing´s multi-screen-enabled Tablet Publishing Solution, we can easily create the content for both platforms using a single master template to gain efficiency and achieve consistency.”

---

Have you visited the BlackBerry App World online store? Since I don't own a Blackberry there has really been no reason to pay much attention to the online store.

Like the Android Market, it will be important to see what is being released there by publishers, right? But I wasn't expecting this silly warning message when I got there (see at right).

"It looks like you are using an unsupported Operating System. BlackBerry App World was designed to support the following: Windows."

You're kidding, right? It's a frickin' website! What are the folks up in Canada smoking?

Orange County Register dumps old iPad app and develops new one in keeping with its digital strategy

Had it not been for a tweet I would have missed the radically new iPad app released yesterday by Freedom Communication's Orange County Register. The new app is a far cry from the RSS driven app released last year that was more of a mobile app for the iPad rather than this new, more tablet-centric product.

Driven by the belief that the reading habits of tablet owners are different from mobile users, reading their devices in a leisurely fashion, late in the day, OC Register for iPad is designed as a separate media product, not just a brand extension of the print newspaper.

“People are using it (the iPad) a little in the morning, and really in the evening is when traffic spikes,” Claus Enevoldsen, Freedom’s Director of Interactive of Marketing says in the company's case study. “In the old days, you’d sit with your laptop at night...But when you’re on your laptop it feels like work. There’s a sensation that there’s always something extra to look at, that the reading is infinite. Plus the laptop will get warm when you’re using it, and it becomes uncomfortable.”

---

Claus Enevoldsen joined Freedom Communications in 2006 as the marketing manager at the chain's Victorville Daily Press. He moved up to Orange County in 2009 to join the team that wrote the company's mobile strategy.

"We're trying to get a new audience," Enevoldsen told me this morning in an interview. "We looked at our reach with our existing products said 'where do we have some gaps'. Then we looked at the iPad and asked 'where is the sweet spot for the iPad.' And there was just a good fit."

Because of this, the OCR has created a totally new and different iPad app than what was released back in December of last year. That app, developed by mobile app developer Handmark, was roundly criticized here for its mobile look and lack of tablet features. The new app, however, is more consistent with the publisher's digital strategy.

"Our strategy is more of an audience creation than it is migrating existing audiences to a new platform," Enevoldsen said.
"Our strategy is that we play to the strength of the platform."

The app currently gives gives readers free access to the content, which is designed more like apps from a developer like Bottle Rocket than a typical newspaper converted to tablet. This consistent with the company's of goal of creating a product that is consistent with the reading habits of iPad owners.

"There is a sense to this that we are bringing back the afternoon paper, but its just not paper," Enevoldsen said. "During the day you have the web, and 24/7 you have your phone, and the phone is really what you use for breaking news."

The new OCR iPad app does employ RSS feeds to bring in some content, and there is a ticker that can bring in breaking news, if necessary. But the app is not designed to fulfill the role of a constantly updated news product.

For one thing, the daily edition of the OCR does not appear until six in the afternoon, but then it can be updated several times a day, if desired. I would argue with the publishing time, but the concept has merit.

"We're taking a magazine approach. We believe in this design, and the design drives the story. Whereas a lot of the RSS based apps out there are automatic," Enevoldsen told me. "It's not a compromise, it's a choice, we're sacrificing some of the instant updates with RSS feeds over design and curation and this finite experience."

Read More >