Methow Valley News gets its first iPad app thanks to the work of a local developer and duct tape wallet maker

If Google Maps is to be believed, Twisp, Washington has to be a fairly isolated, though idyllic. Population 938, according to Wikipedia, it is located in the Methow Valley, which looks like the kind of place where you horse back ride in the summer, and cross-country ski in the winter.

The weekly newspaper, the Methow Valley News is published by Paul Butler and staff, and now it has its own tablet edition thanks to Brian Drye, who lives in nearby Wintrop.

Drye, 40, has just released his first iPad app, Methow Valley News, and is charging $2.99 for access to the latest local news. In addition to this first tablet app which is an offshoot of his original iPhone version, released in 2009, the developer has a dozen other mobile apps for such things as Tennis String Tension, a cross-country skiiing app called MVSTA Grooming Report, and others.

I tracked Drye down and asked him about his app. It turns out that Drye does his development all from scratch, no do-it-yourself website vendor help – "just for fun, mainly," Drye told me.

"I have Xcode, and write it in Cocoa, and then test it locally – and then use a simulator, and then an attached iPod to try it out," Drye said.

If you click on the app support page, you'll see pictures of his mobile app shown on an original first generation iPhone. The page is part of MethowTime.com, the site Drye uses to sell his other wares: Duct Tape Wallets – "that's my other sort of weekend activity."

"I used to live in Seattle with my wife and we moved to a smaller town, Wintrop," Drye said. "They have a nice farmer's market so it's a good place to meet people."

The move was made at the beginning of 2007 and he clearly likes it there. "It's a great place," Drye told me. "We're on the other side of the Cascades, so its pretty dry and sunny – and we're kind of up in the mountains, so you have all hunting, fishing, hiking, biking, skiing and all that stuff going on. It's a great place to live."

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I wondered if Twisp was the kind of place David Lynch used to shoot Twin Peaks, his television series. But that turns out to have been North Bend, Washington, much closer to Seattle than the Methow Valley.

Judging by the photos of the staff of the Methow Valley News, Twisp is definitely not anything like the folks in Twin Peaks – which may be good or bad depending on your perspective, I suppose.

In any case, Twisp now has both iPhone and iPad news apps, something a lot of towns can't claim including Chicago, one should be reminded.

Now I wonder if the Antlers Saloon (real place) has good WiFi so you can use these apps to catch up on events in the valley?

Assouline Publishing released tablet app version of its soon to be published luxury book 'Coca-Cola'

You are about to experience a visual journey of Coca-Cola imagery from around the globe, that spans 125 years of people refreshing and connecting with Coca-Cola. – Assouline Inc.'s introduction to its Coca-Cola iPad book app.

Luxury illustrated book publisher Assouline has released an iPad app that is sort of a companion piece to its coffee table book Coca-Cola, which has not yet been released (although the company's website says it was supposed to be available in May).

In many ways, the iPad app, Coca-Cola, which costs $4.99 is a smart promotional piece for the printed book which the publisher has priced at $65 (it can be pre-ordered at a discount on Amazon.com). But in keeping with the publisher's luxury theme, a special limited edition of the book is available of $650, seriously. (Maybe they could have done a special limited edition of the iPad that ran Flash.)

The app, of course, has the multimedia material including video ads, animation, you won't find in the 208 page printed version, though you won't get "a complimentary ASSOULINE canvas tote bag" like you would if you paid $650 for the limited printed edition. Oh well.

The book and its tablet edition are meant to celebrate the 125th anniversary of Coca-Cola's founding. Unfortunately, the tablet edition is geared towards the fun side of things rather than a serious look at the company's history. In this way, it truly is a coffee table app (and in this regard, it's a good one).

(It's history is pretty interesting, having started as a coca wine drink, then as a medicinal drink, before finally becoming a national iconic drink associated with all things American. For a historical look at Coca-Cola you might try the book by Mark Pendergrast: For God, Country, and Coca-Cola: The Definitive History of the Great American Soft Drink and the Company That Makes It.)

The app is probably best viewed in landscape, though portrait will work in a pinch. The app has some pretty good reviews from users inside the App Store, though I think some users are a bit confused by the way portrait mode works for them – many of the photos don't work as well.

For Assouline Publishing, this is their first iPad book app, so their developers may getting the hang of things. As for the company itself, the company that was founded in Paris, and is now headquartered in NYC, usually is associated with all things upper crusty. The new effort seems like a step in a more populist direction.

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Here is the company's promotional video for their Coca-Cola iPad book app:

Morning Brief: Dr. Death dead at 83; Apple ponies up some cash to ease iCloud's introduction

The man known as Dr. Death, Jack Kevorkian, has died at the age of 83 after suffering from kidney and heart problems.

As a former Detroiter, Kevorkian was often in the news as he was from Pontiac, Michigan. Kevorkian was a trained pathologist, and was a right-to-die activist who was also a hog for publicity, advertising in Detroit newspapers his services in "death counseling."

His first assisted suicide occurred in 1990, an elderly woman with Alzheimer’s disease. Kevorkian was charged with murder but those charges were later dropped. The incident, however, lead to his license to practice medicine being revoked. Eventually the authorities got some charges to stick and he served eight years for second-degree murder. He was released in 2007 on condition that he would no longer offer assisted suicide services.

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The New York Post is reporting that Apple will pay four major music labels between $100 and $150 million in advance payments to grease the wheels for their new iCloud music storage service. And why not, with $40 billion in cash reserves this amount is little more than chump change.

Rumors have floated about Apple charging a $25 a year fee for the service, but these types of rumors are often wrong as witnessed by rumors that Apple's iPad would be introduced at $1000 or more.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs is expected to introduce iCloud, along with Lion and iOS5 in his keynote address that kicks off its Worldwide Developer Conference on Monday in San Francisco at 10 AM PDT.

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The media, which is a self-absorbed industry at most times, really became unglued with the news that Jill Abramson would become next excutive editor of The New York Times, apparently the media discovered her gender.

Jill Abramson is 57 years old, has been managing editor of the NYT since 2003, and has worked as a reporter for The American Lawyer, editor of Legal Times, senior reporter for the Wall Street Journal, and was made the NYT's Washington bureau chief in 1997. She has also been the heir apparent to Bill Keller for quite some time.

But, of course, the big news is that she is a woman. (I would have thought her marriage to "Henry" and her two children would have given them a clue about all this.)

Jay Rosen tweeted a link to this story by Tom McGeveran, to be fair, that actually talks about Abramson in a meaningful way. It's worth a read.

Groupon says it looks to raise $750 million in an IPO; company lost $413 million last year

An SEC filing is not where you will find modesty: "I started The Point to empower the little guy and solve the world's unsolvable problems. A year later, I started Groupon to get Eric to stop bugging me to find a business model. Groupon, which started as a side project in November 2008, applied The Point's technology to group buying. By January 2009, its popularity soaring, we had fully shifted our attention to Groupon."

So reads the letter from Andrew D. Mason contained in the Form S-1 filed today with the SEC by Groupon, which now hopes to raise $750 million in an initial public offering (IPO). The filing also shows that the social buying service has seen its revenue explode from $94K its first year in 2008, to $30 million in 2009, to $713 million last year. It has already generated $644 million in revenue in the first three months of 2011.

But Groupon is still bleeding money, losing $413 million last year, and is on a similar pace in 2011.

Groupon, which said "no" to Google's $6 billion bid, will rely on Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs as lead underwriters for their IPO.

The time seems right for tech IPOs, if LinkedIn's IPO is any reflection of the market (LNKD is currently trading at around $80 a share today, lower than their first week performance, but still much higher than original expectations).

My bet is still that saying "no" to Google was foolish, but one can never discount that the feeding frenzy will continue to the advantage of Groupon.

Update: TechCrunch reminds us that Groupon isn't the only new media company looking to IPO. Music streaming service wants to raise a little over $140 million, pricing its shares at around $7 to $9 per.

Revenue at Pandora are not anywhere near Groupon levels, however, but then again they sell advertising around its content, whereas at Groupon it is the content.

A second look at aside magazine and the issue of HTML5 programming as an alternative to iOS app publishing

For the past two weeks, since posting this first story about aside magazine, the German HTML5 based online 'magazine', I have been haunted by a question concerning the poor user experience I reported: was it the result of using a first generation iPad?

I can report that it was most definitely inherent in the product itself and the performance I experience was in no one influenced by my broadband connection or my first generation iPad.

Using both a new generation iPad, at different locations, with different connections I experienced the same stuttering and jerkiness that I reported in the video demonstration I made two weeks ago (which you can see in my amateurish video below):

To recap: aside magazine "works", that is you can read it, and the in-magazine animation and content is viewable. It is just not a great user experience when compared to natively designed iOS tablet editions.



This raises the question that we hope will be answered soon: will Onswipe's digital publishing solution see similar results, or is there something that can be done on the programming side to make the reading experience better? We'll probably find out on June 21 when Onswipe holds their launch event – unless we get those canned videos that some companies like to use to avoid showing a live demonstration. There will be a lot riding on that launch event, no doubt.

But I think publishers who are dreaming of HTML5 publishing should sit back a bit and ask themselves a couple of questions: first, how are their online products doing now compared to print? and how will they monetize an HTML5 magazine any differently than they would a natively designed app magazine?

The advocates of web-based publishing often forget that most print publishers are not exactly raking it in online right now. That is why a tablet magazine, with its closed environment, is actually more like print because print publishers are generally better at selling products than they are access.

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Is Verizon the new Best Buy?

Years ago, when Best Buy first started selling Macs, the buying experience was so poor that it was all but certain that Best Buy was simply using the presence of Macs to sell higher end PCs. The sales staffs were uneducated on the Mac OS, gave potential buyers truly bad information, and did they best to turn people off to anything Apple.

Today I believe the situation seems better at most Best Buy locations I visit. While sales people still tend to gather around the PC area to draw in customers, most sales staff I encounter don't intentional try and stir people away.

(Though they still don't properly answer the question posed by many customers properly: Question: what programs can you run on a PC that you won't be able to on a Mac? Answer: none, after all, you can always install Windows on your Mac if you want.)

Today I once again encountered a Verizon sales rep who intentional tried to stir me away from an iPad. This has, as you can tell, happened before. This time the person launched into a speech about how I should buy a Motorola XOOM because it can be upgraded to 4G at some point.

I played along: OK, I said, what about apps? The Verizon staffer said that the apps will come eventually.

So I should buy a tablet that one day will be able to upgraded to 4G and that one day will have more tablet apps instead of an iPad which will run on the same 3G network as the XOOM but already has access to natively developed tablet apps?

The sales person then admitted that they were just "doing their job" directing me to the XOOM.

Interesting. If Verizon is intentionally trying to move XOOMs at the expense of iPads, then the sales numbers that already are skewing heavily for the iPad would be even more lopsided if one of Apple's partners weren't intentionally trying to support a competitor (at least in the Chicago area).

Pennsylvania paper is the latest to go behind metered paywall, the latest to hear it from their online readers

Are newspaper executives the most arrogant folk in the world? I personally think they would have a tough time beating out B2B executives for the title of most arrogant media executives, but that is just a personal opinion. The folks in and around Pottsville, Pennsylvania would probably claim that the publishers of their daily newspaper, the Republican Herald, win hands down.

Yesterday the newspaper announced that it would put its website behind a metered paywall, pointing to such papers as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal to justify the move.

"For pennies a day, Web readers will be able to access the most complete news report in Northeast Pennsylvania, with all the investigative energy and in-depth coverage that no one else provides. Web readers can still get the gist of the news with free access to our home page, obituaries, classified ads and blogs, as well as any 12 articles a month they choose to read," publisher Henry H. Nyce said in the newspaper's own online announcement.

Readers, allowed to comment online on the announcement, were not thrilled.

"Nobody is going to pay a penny for an online subscription. The Republican Herald is not the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. I'm shocked that you would be so arrogant to make the comparison," wrote one commenter.

One commenter used a bit of snark to write "What, you mean people aren't going to pay to read articles like 'Local Housewives Raise $35 at Ghost Mall Bakesale'?"

With The Republican Herald's flavor of paywall will require even print subscribers to pay, though only $1.99 per month, or $14.99 annually. It is hard to figure why the paper would want to risk losing that traffic for so little revenue gain.

For non-print subscribers, the cost will be $7.99 per month, or $74.99 per year.

The paper also announced an e-edition, but here again the digital publishing solution is a bit lacking: a flipbook from Newspaperdirect.com which will cost the same price as the website.

Like most newspaper announcements regarding metered paywalls, the paper's own story plays up the amount of content that will remain free – "he home page, section fronts, obituaries, blogs, classified ads, photo galleries and paid Lifestyle announcements like engagements, weddings and anniversaries will continue to be free – while pointing to other papers who are launching similar paywalls to justify their actions. It is a measure of the weakness of the industry as a whole that no one seems to think these moves are collusion within the industry, such is the desire to see the industry find some sort of solution to its revenue woes.

But the moves are also a sign of the seriously conservative nature of the newspaper industry, rather than try to find inventive digital publishing solutions, the industry generally concentrates on trying to protect print, while trying to get readers to pay for online access (and let's not forget these incredibly weak efforts at e-editions).

Although many of the comments on the story announcing the move, which were universally negative, tried to use logic to talk the paper out of its decision, the one that probably points to the future simply said "See Ya."