Friday media app updates: Nomad Editions tweaks its UI; SF Chronicle and Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin updates

For some reason it seems that many of the media app updates land on Friday. I'm sure this is purely a coincidence, but once again this week a slew of my media apps got updated today, here is a look at a few of them:

Nomad Editions had their app update released last night (so technically it was Thursday when the app update hit the App Store).

The updated app description says it has a "complete UI redesign", as well as a new icon and some bug fixes – and I was able to notice some nice changes to the app.

There are now seven magazines available through Nomad, though Good Dog did not reveal any issues currently available even though the website seems to imply that there should be two issues out.

One of the smarter things the folks at Nomad have decided to do is to offer the first issue of any magazine for free. This encourages readers to explore the company's offering before subscribing. The cost is still very reasonable, as well: 99 cents per issue or $9.99 per year.

(If you are not familiar with the Nomad business model you can start here, there have been numerous posts about Nomad that have appeared on TNM.)

The two problems I continue to see with Nomad are fairly minor and can, I believe, be corrected. First, the current app is "sticky", making navigation a bit herky-jerky – a little WD40 applied by the developer should correct that.

The second remains magazine design, the very thing that was touted as the company's strength. I find that the magazines look to me like those issues in Quark or InDesign just before the editors get to them, with articles that are a paragraph too long or short. In short, the magazine's look unedited. The very system created by Nomad may be at fault here but the solution seems clear and rather obvious: the editors of the Nomad Editions need to be encouraged to look at their magazines before "publications" so they can make the necessary adjustments – if they are already doing this, then there are even deeper problems to be worked out.

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Hearst Newspapers have released an updated version of its San Francisco Chronicle for iPad app. I like the overall look of the app in that it retains the look of a newspaper, while performing like a tablet edition. The update supposedly brings in navigation enhancements and fixes bugs and improves stability – all under the hood things.

One of the annoying things about the app remains its auto-refreshes. Touching the sections "cover flow" device and then returning to the home page forces a refresh, which is complete unnecessary and makes the app appear buggy. Also, while some sections have images, others simply have text – this is probably an error that will be corrected. I also find the load times pretty slow, but not too bad.

The app still offers downloaders the first 30 days free, with the subscription at %5.99 per month or $59.99 per year.

I used to work at Hearst many years ago and always thought it was too NYC oriented to succeed on the west coast. Today Hearst Newspapers is producing its apps from NYC, and call it a west coast bias, but I don't understand why they haven't created a new media division in San Francisco.

Having said that, I think this is a pretty damn good app – I especially like the way they have built their 'Download & Go' feature. Still having a property in San Francisco in the middle both the Internet boom, and now the mobile media boom, and not taking advantage of the situation is a sin.

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Three other updates to mention:

CBC News has updated their universal iOS app: Read news even without a connection. Turn on "Offline Reading" to save articles to your device. The app saves Top Stories, plus the sections you read the most. Turn either of these options on or off: iPhone users can find the options by tapping "More", then "Edit Home". iPad users can find these options in "Settings".

Also from Canada The Globe and Mail: News app has been updated. It promises "substantial stability improvements", as well as the usual bog fixes.

Finally, Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin has been updated once again. The first time the app appeared in the App Store it was pulled, then reintroduced. So technically this update only brings the app up to version 1.0.1.

Nothing major here, just some bug fixes. The first look at this app from Germany can be read here.

Penguin Group begins to fulfill vision set out by its CEO last March with release of app version of 'On the Road'

A year ago in March, Penguin Group CEO John Makinson gave a speech in London where he outlined his vision for how the company would take advantage of the new tablet Apple soon would be launching.

“We will be embedding and streaming audio, video and gaming in to everything we do. This will present us, and the platform owners with technology challenges," Makinson said.

"The ePub format, which is the standard for ebooks at the present, is designed to support traditional narrative text, but not this cool stuff that we’re now talking about. So for the time being, at least, we’ll be creating a lot of our digital content as applications, for sale on app stores and HTML, rather than as ebooks."

The CEO of the book publishing concluded: "The definition of the book itself is up for grabs."

One year later a look inside the App Store reveals that Penguin has been extremely slow to fulfill its promise. It's first book, The Pillars of the Earth, was released long ago and since then its app efforts have been modest to say the least.

Last week Penguin released its first real effort at book app building with its Jack Kerouac's On the Road app. Regularly priced at $16.99, the app is available now for $12.99 through July 5th.

The book app has gotten only a small amount of press, probably due to the fact that those most interested in the app are not on the company's list of reviewers, while those who are on that list probably are in no position to properly review the effort. In the year since Makinson made his speech, the wheels at Penguin appear not to be grinding on but rusty and stuck.

I have not downloaded the Kerouac book myself – how many copies of On the Road do I really need – but the initial reviews have been somewhat positive, if lacking in real detail. One can tell that some of the articles were written by people, like me, who were not looking at the actual app but at the screenshots provided by Penguin.

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When you look at Penguin's effort at book apps one is reminded of the first CDs that were released. At first they were straight conversion of LPs, then some efforts were made to accomodate the new format.

Blue Note Records, for instance, started putting alternative takes on its CDs. But one annoying thing they would inevitably do, was to put the alternative take of a song right up against the original, the idea being that one could compare the two side by side. But to avoid hearing two nearly identical songs in a row one would have to "program" the CD. But that is a bother, and how many people choose to do that?

Then there were the liner notes and photos that could and should be included with a CD release. Eventually the record producers got the hang of it and their CD packages got better and more imaginative. But the best releases only came after the record producers starting thinking about their CD releases from day one, rather than converting them from the LP.

The same is true right now for book publishing: the very best book apps being released are from publishers who are thinking about the app from the beginning, and often are not planning a print issue at all.

"Books" like NYPL Biblion: World's Fair, or Above & Beyond: George Steinmetz are way ahead of what many print publishers are doing right now. A great example of this is the fact the Joe Zeff Design, the producer of Above & Beyond, recently updated the book, adding more photographs and enhancing the audio. Print books, once published, are considered finished products.

An app, on the other hand, is an evolving product, meant to be updated to fix bugs, add content, and most importantly, respond to the input from readers. Are print publishers creating a culture internally that will be able to think like an app developer and constantly innovated and improve its products?

Morning Brief: Conrad Black, faces resentencing hearing in Chicago; Recorded Books to bring Zinio's digital newsstand to libraries in U.S., Canada, Australia & U.K.

A U.S. District Judge will today conduct a resentencing hearing today in Chicago for the former head of Hollinger Inc., Conrad Black. For Black it could mean a return to jail following his conviction for fraud and obstruction of justice, or it freedom based on time served.

The Chicago Sun-Times, at one time part of Black's media empire, reports that the prosecutors are calling for more time for Black.

“He fails to acknowledge his central role in destroying Hollinger International through greed and lies, instead blaming the government and others for what he describes as an unjust persecution,” the Sun-Times quotes a recent filing from prosecutors. Prosecutors also allege that Black had inmates clean and cook for him during his time in prison and insisted that he be called "Lord Black", the honorary title Britain saw fit to give the media man.

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Public libraries in the U.S., Canada, Australia and the U.K. will have access to Zinio's digital newsstand through an agreement with Recorded Books, a producer of audiobooks. The new service, Zinio for Libraries, will allow patrons to access to the Zinio newsstand through their library cards.

“People love going to their public library to read a large selection of magazines, but printed copies can easily get damaged, lost or destroyed,” Rich Freese, president and CEO, Recorded Books in the press release announcement. “Books, music and audiobooks are transitioning to digital formats and now with Zinio for Libraries, we can offer thousands of digital magazines from most every major global publisher.”

The new service will launch at the American Libraries Association conference on June 24.

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TNM readers have probably already seen this video of Conan O'Brien talking on his show about the new version of Final Cut Pro released recently by Apple. If not, here it is below.

I have not tried the new Final Cut Pro simply because my video editing needs are rather simple. But I hated when Apple updated iMovie and based on reports concerning the new Final Cut Pro, I can sympathize with those who regularly used the professional grade editing software in the past and are now faced with adapting to a new, dumbed down version of the vital software.

Bonnier's tablet strategy appears geared more towards ease of production than the reader experience

At first blush one might be led to believe that Bonnier, the Swedish media group which dramatically expanded in 2007 with the acquisition of 18 Time Inc. titles, is one of the more committed publishing companies when it comes to tablets.

After all, the publisher now has 44 iPad apps inside the App Store, releasing 21 new apps in the month of June alone.

But for loyal readers of Bonnier titles, their apps continue to be a mixed blessing. For one thing, a print subscriber is still forced to buy a tablet edition even though Apple now allows publishers to give their iPad versions away to print subscribers. If you are a print subscriber you are forced to make a choice – and maybe this is on purpose.

But for the company originally behind the Mag+ digital publishing system, many of their own magazine apps are little more than replica editions, with no landscape layouts, and no added interactivity. So while Bonnier may have solved the problem of how to create tablet versions of their print editions quickly and easily, it is clearly struggling with the challenge of utilizing the new platform to create unique reader experiences.

One of the newly released magazine apps is Spa Mag. Despite the lengthy app description, the actual app is simply the print magazine digitally reproduced. As a result, the first two-page spread reveals the problems that lay ahead.

In the end, the only reason readers might be attracted to these tablet editions is to save trees and save a few dollars: a one-year subscription to Spa, for instance, is $9.99 on the iPad, but $14.97 for the print edition.

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The one Bonnier magazine conspicuously missing from the App Store is the one that has the most potential on a tablet: Saveur. The cooking magazine would be wonderful on the iPad if, and this is a big "if", the publisher committed to approaching the tablet in a more New Media way than other Bonnier titles have.

A look at the magazine's attractive website shows that the team at Bonnier has a good eye for design, but is still committed to using its website mostly to promote print. For instance, the Techniques section screams out for cooking videos to show readers these cooking techniques. Instead what the reader gets is a short blurb with a photo (or two).

(I suppose the one thing New Media about the site is the huge amount of content that is actually aggregated from its competitors. Under "grilling", for instance, there are ten short articles from Saveur and 11 from others sourced from outside the property including from Bon Appetit.)

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Update: SZ Magazin app back in the App Store

Yesterday afternoon I wrote a post about two tablet editions: Food Network Magazine and the magazine app for the German daily newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. Unfortunately, right around the time I was ready to post the story I found that the German app was no longer available in the App Store.

I speculated at the time that the reason might be that the app description did not mention that an in-app purchase was necessary to download the latest issue. I also found that the issue download was a bit slow.

Well, now the app is back in the App Store (German link here, US store link here) and the revised app description seems to allude to the previous download issue. It also now includes the in-app purchase information, as well: .79 € in Europe, and 99 cents per issue in the US.

Wehaa brings out a replica edition for the Athens News, but sadly it isn't 'that' Athens News

For one brief moment I got pretty excited when I saw an iPad app for the Athens News. I've been reading the online version of the Greek English language newspaper every day in order to stay up on events in the economically troubled nation. But alas this new iPad app was not for that Athens News but was for the Athens News that is in Ohio.

This Athens News app is a free download produced by the digital publishing company Wehaa of Franklin, Wisconsin. That means replica editions.

Wehaa has been business launching replica apps for weekly papers since late last year. Today the company released new ones. In addition to the Athens News app there are replica editions for Illinois Times, El Planeta (a Spanish language newspaper from Boston), San Diego CityBeat, and the B2B magazine Irrigation & Green Industry.

(I really wish the B2B magazine app had been around when I was the publisher of the Green Media group. Now, as a competitor, one can more easily keep track of the ads appearing in it!)

Each of the apps are released not under the publisher's names but under Wehaa, which limits each publisher to offering the apps and access to the content for free.

For free distribution publications, that is, ones that tend to distribute their newspapers at restaurants, grocery stores, vending machines, a free replica edition probably makes sense – the new iPad version is just another way to gain distribution; and this appears to be Wehaa's target market, free distribution publications.

But for B2B this model doesn't really make sense – most B2B try to "qualify" their readership in preparation for a BPA audit. But with so many B2Bs dropping their BPAs, or in the case of Irrigation & Green Industry, bypassing BPA for the far less stringent VAC, this might not be an issue.

As for these particular replica editions, I find them poorly created, with pages that don't fit the display because of variations in page sizes. In addition, the swiping between pages is sticky and difficult. While one can zoom into the page the action is clunky, with the page redrawing every time one touches screen.

But my guess is that the publishers chose to let these replica apps appear in the App Store because they were simply part of the package of services offered by the vendor, and caused no additional work on the part of the publisher. Cheap and easy, it is what far too many publishers go for when it comes to tablet editions.