The New York Times responds to user complaints and issues update for its iPad app

Only yesterday reported on that The New York Times had issued updates for its mobile applications. Unfortunately, the complaints rolled in as users found the new app performing horribly.

But late last night the NYT issued another app update for iPad owners that supposedly address the bugs introduced into the previous update. This update also comes with some important instructions for users in the app description:

IF YOU EXPERIENCE PROBLEMS AFTER UPDATING, PLEASE DELETE THE NYTIMES APP, RESTART YOUR DEVICE, AND REINSTALL FROM ITUNES

I did not encounter any bugs in the update only because I know longer have the NYT app on my iPad. The company's absurd pricing of its new pay wall pretty much forces users who own an iPhone and iPad to decide which app to use. It's no contest: the mobile app is essential for reading the NYT on a smartphone, while the iPad app is only a modest improvement (if that) over reading the site on the iPad's Safari browser.

Morning Brief: The U.K. phone hacking scandal widens; LetterMpress app recreates hand-driven printing press

While much of the British (and even American) press points its fingers at News International, the British arm of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., over the phone hacking scandal, the real loser here is the media's credibility, in general.

While the public's confidence in the newspaper and broadcast news industry has increased slightly, still barely a quarter of the public trusts the news media. Things are going to get worse, at least in England.

Yesterday the Prime Minister David Cameron vowed to hold a public inquiry into the scandal caused by the revelation that News of the World, a News International tabloid, had hacked into the cell phone message systems of victims of the 2005 London bombings. A private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, was employed by the paper to do the hacking.

But all the handwringing in the world will do little to change the media landscape, as even Cameron admitted when he said that the News Corp. takeover of British Sky Broadcasting Group, known as BSkyB, would go forward, uninterrupted. Cameron recently met one-on-one with Rupert Murdoch, and in 2008 a mini scandal erupted when it was learned that Cameron took free flights to Greece to meet with the head of News Corp.

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Released yesterday into the App Store, LetterMpress is an app for the iPad that recreates the experience of working with a traditional letterpress. The app costs $5.99 to download and originally was a Kickstarter project, raising $39,495, though their goal was only $15,000.

The app replicates traditional printing press techniques, with users assembling wood types and art images, even hand-cranking a virtual letter press to create prints, posters, books, invitations, greeting cards and photo albums.

"As someone very familiar with letterpress, I was amazed and thrilled to see the creators took time to accurately and respectfully integrate the traditional tools and processes into the user experience, said Mary Austin, Co-founder and Board President, San Francisco Center for the Book in the company's app launch announcement. It's also a fun and playful introduction to the art of letterpress and typography."

Neenah Paper, the world's leading manufacturer of fine printing papers, is sponsoring the introduction of the LetterMpress app.

Microsoft updates its Bing for iPad app, adding 'lasso' feature that proves far easier way to copy text

Microsoft's Bing app is one of many apps that I have downloaded and then deleted at some point. The app has gotten pretty good reviews inside the App Store, but I've never really seen the point of the app.

My problem is simply that I don't want to have to open up a new app when doing a search. Since most of the time I already an using the browser with its built-in Google search function, the idea of going into another app never really appealed to me.

However, Bing for iPad is really for those occasions when you grab your iPad to do a search exclusively. Yesterday, for instance, a friend was asking me about the name of a song with certain lyrics. I simply grabbed my iPad and opened Safari to find the answer – a very common thing with tablet owners (instant on being the big advantage tablets have over PCs).

But the new Bing for iPad has me installing the app once again. The updated app adds a "lasso" feature that makes searching much easier than the copy and paste feature built into the Apple iOS, and it retains its voice activated search capability.

"Today, it can be somewhat painful to search on a tablet when you’re engaged in reading something; just copying and pasting pieces of text from a webpage to a search box can take up to nine steps on the iPad," the Bing Team wrote on its blog page. "With Lasso you can circle and search in just two steps."

One huge negative, however, are the ugly pop-up adds that Microsoft has in its search feature. They are ugly, intrusive, and really an outdated way to introduce advertising.

Although Apple did not talk about voice command upgrades that it plans for iOS 5, the word is that Apple is heading in this direction. This will make the Bing app once again a bit less useful once these features are built into iOS, but the lasso feature is one that Microsoft might have for their own for a little while at least.

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Microsoft remains a strange company. The promo video below is a good example: it is shot well, but couldn't they afford an external microphone?

NBC Universal's mobile apps for enhanced viewing of the Tour de France angers viewers by 'double dipping'

Despite the lack of an American leading the pack, there is still quite a bit of interest in cycling's premier event, the Tour de France. The race, first staged in 1903, covers about 2,000 miles, and can be seen live and taped on Versus, the NBC Universal owned cable channel.

No surprise then that NBC would want to put out an iPad app to capitalize on the event by offering its viewers an enhanced experience.

The problem is that quite a number of cycling enthusiasts had already signed up for the network's online enhanced video package, costing $29.95. The package gives online viewers live and exclusive video, live GPS tracking of the race, and the ability to follow your favorite rider.

But the day before the race was to begin, NBC launched a universal app for the iPad and iPhone, as well as an Android version. While the apps are free, to access the live video you have to pay $14.99.

The iOS version found in Apple's App Store makes this additional purchase very clear, but Google's Android Market does not spell out this little detail.

But users in both stores are trashing the app for basically the same reason: if you paid the $29.95 to gain online access and then downloaded the mobile app you will find that you will have to pay once again to access the content on your mobile device. Reviewers have accused NBC of "double dipping" by requiring the separate payment for the mobile app.

Reviewer "Jeffrey Jones" writes "I already paid $29 online to watch live, why is the app asking me to upgrade and pay $15 to watch live video?! Can't I sign in w/ the username to my existing online acct and be able to watch w/ the app???"

Another writes "it now seems clear why NBC did not release this app until the day before the Tour de France 2011. They must have been trying to dupe as many people as possible into purchasing the Silverlight PC/Mac version access for twice the amount of the app."

It's a ripoff, no doubt about it. But this situation is caused by not being clear with the customer, and Apple's own requirement that apps not contain direct links to out of app purchase mechanisms. A little creativity can get you around this, but the rules are pretty vague. If the app had simply been a "reader" app, where an already existing subscription would instantly give you access to the content without an in-app purchase, this would have avoided this mess.

But if they really wanted to go this route – with two different purchase options – it would have been better to have had the app ready several weeks early, and then test the app review teams with a more customer friendly approach. In the end, it is always better to have to deal with the app review teams than to purposely make your own customer's angry.

Narratives for Digital Distribution

Pedro Monteiro passed along this in-depth look at digital narratives. Monteiro is a consultant for INNOVATION Media Consulting and coordinates tablet publications for Impresa Publishing (Expresso, Visão), a division of Portugal's largest media company. This article first appeared on Monteiro's own website Digital Distribution.

The way we tell stories in the print media has been, mostly, the same for some time now. Space constraints and graphic layout have made the narrative flow a broken one. With the advent of digital devices and rich new ways of shaping content, it is time to rethink how we produce and present our stories.

With this article I want to explain why the broken narrative experience happens and how we can find ways to prevent it on digital publishing. Furthermore, I will propose a way of planning, producing and designing narratives that won’t suffer from this problem. In the end, I’ll take a fictional story and share how I would plan it, from production to presentation, using the ideas proposed on this article.

For this article I will refer to linear narrative – that with a beginning, middle and an end. Think of it has going to the theater to watch a movie. You go into the room and the movie starts. You can be watching Memento, a traditional non-liner screenplay. The movie goes forward and backward in time. But as a part of the audience when you experience the going to the theater to see Memento, you’ll be in a linear narrative: you go, you watch the movie (regardless of it’s timeline narrative), the movie ends, you get out of the theater and your linear experience ends. You went to the theater and watched a story, without interruption, regardless of how the story was told.

Likewise, when describing non-linear narratives, I will not be focusing on their timeline, but on interruptions of the narrative itself. Like going to the movies to watch Memento – and being interrupted in the middle by a documentary about the film itself, and then having the main film start again where it was interrupted. You went to the theater to watch a story, but the experience was interrupted by another story, regardless of the way both stories connected.

Let me start with a simple story. Think about a lecturer who may have inspired you – if you can’t remember one, I advise you to visit TED’s website, where you will find amazing people, with amazing ideas, telling amazing stories.

OK, now that you have a lecture as an example, let’s analyze it. What makes it such a brilliant storytelling experience? Apart from the speaker’s ability to deliver a good story and from the talk’s content, a good lecture is a linear flow of information, with a beginning, middle and an end, or conclusion. That’s the basic of a story; we’ve learned how to do it from an early age.

Let’s look a little deeper. At the beginning of a talk, the speaker will tell you the subject of her story and what she will try to achieve (teach you something, share an experience with you, etc). She will then introduce the subject in small steps. Most talks these days are accompanied by visual aids – the speaker will share either the key points of her talk or some visual information to help explain the knowledge that is being shared.

From the beginning of the story, the speaker takes her audience into the talk’s theme, stopping for visual aid whenever it is needed. The audience experience is like being walked through a garden, the speaker holding each person’s hand while they stroll. At the end of the talk, with the conclusion, the audience has been told a story. Just like the ones we were told as children; just like the ones we are told everywhere, in movies, books, TV shows, by our friends at a bar or by our family, during supper, at the end of a story full day.

Now allow me to tell you yet another story. Imagine yourself in a lecture hall. The room is packed and the upcoming talk is the one you came to hear. The subject is something you are interested in, and the speaker is the best in the field.

The light goes out, the audience is quiet except for a cough here, another there. The speaker takes the stage with an ovation. This is the talk everybody has been waiting for!

The talk starts with an introduction about the subject. The speaker is taking the audience by the hand, strolling around. All of the sudden, in the middle of a sentence – “and so we can conclude that…” – the speaker stops. She then says “you know what? I’ve just remembered that I have this amazing picture, somewhere on my computer that relates to this subject.” She finds the picture and displays it for the audience. It does make sense and the picture has added another layer of information. But then, after the picture is shown, the speaker starts talking again, right where she stopped the sentence before – (“and so we can conclude that…”) “subject A will give us a light about subject B…”

Now imagine that this talk, the one you and the rest of the room were really looking forward to, keeps having such interruptions. The speaker will keep ‘throwing’ stuff that relates to the subject, to the story being told, but with no regard for the interruptions.

The storytelling would be awful. The narrative would not be linear. It would be a mess.

Here is a graphic visualization of such a narrative:



This last example shows how we either present, or consume, news on most distribution channels right now. In print, because of physical space constraints that pages impose and the way graphic design copes with it, the presentation and consumption of a story is a non-linear narrative experience. Pictures, text, captions, etc., all relate to the story being told, but the way the bits of the story are laid out reinforces its non-linearity. Let’s look with more detail into this.

Consider the following magazine layout of a story. It has some of the content you would expect from a magazine: flowing text in columns, pictures with captions, graphics, and a ‘box’ with a related story.



Every aspect of this story is related and enhances the information being communicated. But since we are presenting all of this content on 8 pages, some compromising must be done. Graphic designers must find the best way to make this story presentable, readable and compelling. Working within the physical boundaries of pages, the text is set on columns and flows from one spread to another without much control of where it breaks from one column to the next, from one page to the next, or even from one spread to the next.

Furthermore, in order to lay out all of a story’s elements, designers must ensure that a graphical ‘important’ element is presented on each spread. This means that the pictures of the story will be placed on the spreads to favor visual enhancement. The same happens with the secondary story and the graphic of our example.

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Morning Brief: NYT updates its apps, will be doing so again; Italian media, opposition claim measure hidden inside austerity bill will save Berlusconi millions

The New York Times began the Independence Day holiday weekend by launching updated apps if iPhone and iPad users.

Unfortunately, users of the apps, especially the iPhone app, have been complaining about the new apps performance. As of this morning, there lots of complaints inside the App Store of slow load times and crashes.

My update went fine without any crashing, and while the initial launch was a bit slower, due no doubt to the added sections, every else seems normal. It is possible that some uses continue to reboot their devices occasionally. This is a common issue among iPhone and iPad users as they tend to see their devices more like old fashioned feature phones and not like mini computers that need to be rebooted every once in a while to keep them running quickly.

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The Associated Press is reporting this morning that Italian media companies, as well as the political opposition, are upset with measures hidden inside a 47€ billion austerity bill that would allow the holding company of Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s family, Fininvest, to avoid paying 750€ million to a competitor. The payment was ordered following the takeover of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Italy's largest publishing house.

The AP story fails to mention dirty details of the Fininvest acquisition of Mondadori,you can read the details here.