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It is a sad fact that God does not issue press releases, a reason why there is so little good religion news in modern newspapers. But fear not: a developer has just released an app that can help.
Dubbed Rapture_Detector_1.0, the 99 cent app promises to give you a heads-up 30 minutes before the rapture – very useful for those editors in charge of their news site's content. At 99 cents this app seems like a bargain, but then again it can only be used once.
The app also comes Android and Windows Phone 7 versions, thank God.
"Partying and wild living can be yours again with Reverend Billy Joe Estes, Holy Manifestation House of Worship Rapture Detector," the app description states.
Looks like a winner to me. But since I will be one of those "left behind", I am sure I will be condemned to watching reruns of the rapture each night on TNT when they substitute it for Bones.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
The essential news app: Rapture Detector promises to give users 30 minute head start on the competition
Morning Brief: Time Inc. start rolling out app updates for its magazines; how to dress for the Supreme Court
Time Inc. began rolling out app updates for its magazine titles, adding the ability of current print subscribers to sign-in to their accounts in order to access the tablet editions free of charge.
As you can see here with the screenshot, the Sports Illustrated Magazine received an update last night. The reaction from iPad owners has so far been positive: "Thanks for listening, SI. I hope other magazines follow your lead," wrote one reviewer in the App Store. The reviewer, Pebav, then proceeded to give the new app a one-star rating. Sometimes you just can't win.
Time Inc. also updated their apps yesterday for TIME Magazine and FORTUNE Magazine, as well. The Fortune app gives readers a free issue with the download, giving me a chance to look at it for the first time later today.
Giant fans hoping for a repeat of last year's World Series are already resigning themselves to another disappointing season as the team current can't hit the broad side of a barn.
Yesterday, before losing yet again to the Nats, some members of the team visited the Supreme Court. Seen here at left is closer Brian Wilson, who dressed appropriately for the occasion.
I took the screen capture on my iPad as I was using the MLB.TV app of a game being broadcast by Comcast Bay Area. At first I just took it for myself, then realized that there is a lesson here somewhere for media folk – something about how their products will be accessed and copied in new ways thanks to the new digital platforms.
As for Brian Wilson, he might as well stay dressed in jeans since it is doubtful he will get much work this year thanks to the poor hitting Giants.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Let's move on to the Third; retweet for 'Above & Beyond'
Today is not really a good day for intelligent conversation about New Media thanks to the events of last night. So let's just move on to the third of the month, OK?
In the meantime, here is a retweet of sorts, in case you missed this post from this morning.
TNM's contributor from Portugal, Pedro Monteiro, discovered this new app from Joe Zeff Design, Above & Beyond: George Steinmetz which features innovative design using the WoodWing Digital Magazine Tools. The app can be found here, while Monteiro's look at the app can be found over here.
I normally do my own screenshots, but must admit that in order to give TNM readers another look at this app I have grabbed this one from the Joe Zeff Design website.
So you tomorrow.
Copart releases car sales app for the iPhone and iPad as consumers continue to find ways to NOT buy newspaper classified advertising
It might be tempting to say that the rise of the Internet is solely responsible for the decline of classified advertising in the newspaper industry. But as a former CAM (that's classified advertising manager, for those of you on the outside), I've always looked at the decline a little differently - if newspaper executives weren't so against the new digital platforms themselves they might have hung on to the business. Instead, the loss of ads also ended up meaning that newspapers became more and more irrelevant to their clients, resulting not only in the loss of ad revenue, but in the loss of customers in general. CAM always claimed that many readers picked up the paper for the classified ads, and circulation numbers don't dispute this claim.
Now, customers – both readers and advertisers – are being conditioned to go elsewhere when they want their classified ads. But we could go on and on with this subject, and I'm not sure what good it would do – too many newspaper executives believe they are in the "newspaper" business rather than the news delivery business, and as a result just can't get their heads around any new platform that arises. But here is an easy picture to understand: classified revenue since 1960, care of the Newspaper Association of America:
One can see two dips, one after 1990, and another after 2000. Interestingly, despite the growth of the Internet, newspapers were able to ride a rising economy to new growth twice following recessions. But the after a decade of surrendering auto, real estate and help-wanted advertising to new electronic competitors, the industry is at a disadvantage this time around.
And that is truly too bad: because the rise of both mobile and tablet publishing platforms should be a new opportunity to become competitive again.
In May of 2009 Steve Outing asked the simple question: How’s your classifieds mobile app coming along? It was a bit of a rhetorical question because the message was that the rise of smartphones meant an opportunity to create for the classified market. Sadly, newspapers have once again let an opportunity pass them by (though, I would suppose the opportunity hasn't completely disappeared yet).
Looking at new mobile and tablet apps, such as this one from Copart, should make smart classified ad people drool knowing they could do better. But can they? Are they involved enough in the discussions going on at newspaper companies to be able to convince executives that there is a huge opportunity?
This free app, Copart Sell My Car, violates just about all the rules for the new digital platforms. It opens with a page that says "Call Us Now!". Gee, thanks, I really needed an app to tell me that.
If you bypass this first effort to get you outside the app, you can fill out a form about the car you want to sell. It immediately asks for lots of information that eventually leads you to sending them an email.
Yep, this app is basically a way of writing an email.
If you are a CAM you should definitely download this app. Then ask yourself this: "we're losing to these guys?"
'Above & Beyond': Inspired design work, interactive graphics, helps bring the work of master photographer George Steinmetz to the iPad
The new app from Joe Zeff Design is a nice example of thinking out of the box. Above & Beyond: George Steinmetz is a photography-based application like we haven't seen since The Guardian Eyewitness app.
The application takes us right on to the picture world of George Steinmetz, a well known photographer that flies the world on a motorized paraglider. George's pictures have been featured in National Geographic, Geo magazine, etc.
Many lines have been written about the iPad's amazing display for photographs and this application only show us how those lines where right on spot.
What I really like about this application is to know that it was built using Woodwing's Digital Magazine solution. I've been working with Woodwing for six months now and I wasn't able to 'see it' on the Above & Beyond application. This alone can tell you something about the inspired design work that went on the making of George's app.
For each picture, within a set of pictures from literally around the world, we can hear an audio comment by George Steinmetz himself, we can also access the geographic data of where the picture was taken - with the added feature of being able to see the area where the picture was taken on Google Earth, we can scroll around a resized version of the picture (I would like to have bigger zoom here, or the possibility to zoom with the pinch gesture - something that is not included on Woodwing's 'arsenal' of solutions, but coming soon, as far as I know) and finally, we can also share the pictures, by email, with whomever we want to.
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The navigation for this application is really simple, you have a grid based table of contents that can be access from every page of the content and you have the buttons for the previously described actions. That's it... And it works like a charm. Swipe from right to left to change pictures.
On the end of the application we are presented with a very nice biography of the author, George Steinmetz, and a clever interative info graphic on George's motorized paraglider.
As I've stated before, this application teaches us that, even if you're using the same publishing tools as so many publishers out there, you can still make a difference by thinking out of the box and pay real attention to what the content 'needs'. I think that Joe Zeff Design deserves a great share of congratulations here. Their previous app, The Final Hours of Portal 2, was also something worth checking and the studio looks like it's nailing some nice reviews out there.
To end, I would like to urge all TNM readers to go to the iTunes shop fast, since Above & Beyond: George Steinmetz is being sold at a special price introductory of $1.99 until May 15th.
Monteiro is digital art coordinator at Impresa Publishing,
and the publishes the newly launched website Digital Distribution.
Here is the promotional video from the Joe Zeff Design website:
Morning Brief: OK, but will it really change anything?: Time Inc. to offer free access to iPad magazines to print subscribers through in-app subscriber verification
You know what I mean by that first headline, right? He's dead. 'bout time, and all that. But were we really in Iraq because of ObL? Of course, not. We're not bombing Libya because of ObL. The war on the middle class, unions, all things government related, affirmative action, education, social security and medicare, did not happen because of ObL. So why did all this happen in the last ten years?
As Jack Reed would have said: "profits".
In this regard, nothing has changed.
So I guess I strongly disagree with Richard Engel, correspondent for NBC, who wrote this morning on Twitter: "The end of the Global War on terrorism, the GWOT, which has defined our nation, our economy, our military for a decade."
But Engel also asks: "Today is certainly a big day for US troops... but some may ask, if Osama was in Pakistan, why they served so many tours in Iraq?" (Tweet corrected)
Not a great day for posts about the media world, what with everyone writing about you-know-who, but we will be continue on.
Contributor Pedro Monteiro has a post about the new photography app Above & Beyond ready to go, and we'll look at other new electronic products recently released, as well.
The WSJ is reporting that Time and Apple has "agreed" to a deal whereby print subscribers can log into their print accounts on the iPad in order to access the content for free – though I am confused as to why this is new since other news apps have allowed this, as well.
But no matter, this is another example of a publisher that sees tablet publishing not as a new platform to be exploited, but as a way of saving their print business. The problem, of course, will be that non-native tablet publications will have a hard time completing with native publications down the line. I don't normally make predictions but that is one I feel pretty good about.
Remember that "Amos 'n' Andy" was once put on television because early television executives saw that medium as simply an extension of radio. Now we have print publishers making the same mistake. iPad owners have no interest in saving the print products of publishers.
