The FT launched a new version of its iPad offering, a move that reinforced the publication’s contrarian web-only mobile strategy, and an FT executive predicts that the problem of collecting mobile payments outside of app stores will soon be solved. Read more »
A book club reading app that supports Kindle, and two other e-reading tools I’d love to see. Read more »
When it comes to discoverability and walled gardens, there’s a flip side. Read more »
The long-delayed Bookish, a website backed by Hachette, Penguin and Simon & Schuster and designed to promote book discovery and sell books, launched Monday night and is designed to be a one-stop shop for readers looking for their next book. Read more »
Two years ago, Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner criticized magazine publishers’ “premature” rush to iPad. Now, the 40-year-old music magazine is launching an iPad edition that includes a music purchase partnership with iTunes. Read more »
In an effort to aid book discovery and battle Amazon’s dominance, iOS publishing platform Inkling will allow its roughly 400 ebooks to be fully indexed through Google search. The company plans to add a thousand more books this year. Read more »
News Corp. has said it is finally shutting down The Daily, the iPad-only newspaper it launched in 2011. Although the media giant should be given some credit for experimenting with a new medium, there were obvious signs that The Daily was doomed from the start. Read more at GigaOM »
Backed by Skype co-founder Janus Friis, Futureful is a content discovery tool that’s not dissimilar to StumbleUpon, only more heavily based on semantic tagging and machine learning. It’s due to launch in the U.S. in January. Read more at GigaOM »
Creator Scotty Iseri describes his new educational interactive web series and app experience as “gamified narrative” — he also approaches it as a start-up. The Digits, available on Android and iOS, frames math concepts for the elementary school set. Read more at GigaOM »
Apple introduced a bunch of new products Tuesday, October 23rd, including the anticipated debut of the iPad Mini as well as a new iPad, extremely thing new iMac, and a new 13-inch MacBook Pro. Here’s how events unfolded in San Jose, Calif. Read more at GigaOM »
I spent a week testing Amazon’s new e-reader, the Kindle Paperwhite, which starts at $119. The verdict: The front-lit screen improves the reading experience all day long, not just at night, making this a big step up from the Kindle Touch. Here are my review and video. Read more at GigaOM »
Barnes & Noble’s new Nook HD tablets, priced starting at $199, aim to stand out from the pack with reader-centric features and enhanced reading experiences for magazines and catalogs. The company’s goal is to drive book discovery and purchasing through the tablets in new ways. Read more at GigaOM »
Amazon says the Kindle Fire is sold out, meaning the company will definitely announce a new tablet at its press event next week. Meanwhile, Amazon says the Fire makes up 22% of the U.S. tablet market — suggesting actual sales far lower than early analyst estimates. Read more »
The implications of Apple’s recent billion-dollar victory over Samsung in a patent-infringement case go beyond the specifics of this particular battle — the reality is the war over software and design patents is bad not just for individual companies but arguably for society as a whole. Read more at GigaOM »
Amazon launched a “Send to Kindle” extension for Google Chrome that lets users send articles to their Kindle. Other services, like Pocket and Instapaper, can do the same thing. Which one should you use? Read more »
Market research firm IHS iSuppli shows that iPad shipments surged in Q2 2012, as Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble’s Nook Tablets saw major drops. Kindle Fire’s share of the media tablet market fell to 4.2 percent, with B&N’s at 1.9 percent. Read more »
Barnes & Noble dropped prices on its Nook Tablets and Nook Color on Sunday, bringing the price of the Nook Tablet 16 GB in line with Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Google’s 8 GB Nexus 7. The bookstore chain has failed to gain much tablet market share. Read more »
There are a lot of comic book readers out there. Here are the best tablet apps I’ve found for reading them, both commercial readers (apps that let you buy comics as well as read them), and an app that supports CBZ and CBR files. Read more at GigaOM »
The Huffington Post has dropped the price of its iPad magazine to zero, and News Corp.’s The Daily has chopped almost a third of its staff — more evidence that the dream many publishers had about the iPad being their savior is still far from reality. Read more at GigaOM »
Amazon takes another step on Apple’s digital media turf: Amazon Instant Video is now available for iPad, bringing another media option for movie purchases, rentals and television shows to Apple’s tablet. For now, Amazon is keeping this away from Android tablets, save its own Kindle Fire. Read more at GigaOM »
In a move aimed primarily at users of its textbooks, iPad publisher Inkling is making all of its titles available for the iPhone. The company’s interactive ebook publishing platform, Habitat, now works for iPhone as well. Read more »
Amazon is expected to introduce up to 6 new tablets, including a 10-inch model. Why not? Few besides Amazon have the consumer data, shopping experience and content to make multiple screen sized tablets, proving that one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to mobile devices. Read more at GigaOM »
Trapit, an AI-based discovery engine for Web content from the group behind Siri, is releasing its iPad app Thursday after launching a Web version last November. Trapit wants to compete against news reading apps like Flipboard by offering better content. It’s planning publisher partnerships, too. Read more »
A British judge raised eyebrows last week when he ruled that Samsung’s tablets did not infringe Apple’s patents because they were not as “cool.” Now, the same judge has followed up with an unusual order. Read more at GigaOM »
New York-based startup Open Air Publishing, which sells original books for iPad, has raised $800,000 in seed funding and is expanding to the iPhone. Read more »
Conference organization TED already publishes ebooks. Now it’s selling them through a new app, Ted Books for iOS. Readers can also buy subscriptions. Read more »
News Corp. billionaire Rupert Murdoch has confirmed that the company is considering splitting itself in two, with the newspaper assets spun off as a separate entity. What would — or could — the digital future look like for that standalone newspaper unit? Here are a few ideas. Read more at GigaOM »
News-aggregation services Flipboard and Pulse have both signed deals this week to distribute content from a mainstream outlet — one the New York Times and the other the Wall Street Journal — but they are taking very different approaches when it comes to monetizing those relationships. Read more at GigaOM »
How timely: right as we seem to be reopening the debate over whether or not the iPad is a consumption or creation tool, Martha Stewart, the high priestess of crafty creativity, debuts a brand new iPad app called CraftStudio. Read more at GigaOM »
The distinctive three-dimensional globe is giving way to a new three-edition iPad app strategy for ABC News. The new version relies not on ideas about what iPad users might want — as was the case when it first launched in July 2010 — but on nearly two years of usage. Read more »
Berlin startup Readmill’s iPad-based social reading app has got plenty of attention. Now it’s getting a significant update that will make it simpler and easier to use for everyone — including making it more useful for independent publishers to hook themselves in to. Read more at GigaOM »
The biggest challenge for a media company like Meredith is shifting focus to consumer engagement across platforms, Meredith’s Liz Schimel said at paidContent 2012. Part of that means making the brands available on the right platforms, but not all platforms. Read more »
Tablets may be a hot item now, but they’re just getting started. At paidContent 2012, Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey noted that it’s not just a “tablet or iPad world” coming, but an “everything world.” Read more »
“Virtually every publication in the world right now would desperately like to be 100 percent digital,” said Flipboard editorial director and Time Inc. vet Josh Quittner said at Internet Week this week, as publishers debated how to monetize digital magazines. Read more »
While Spotify has been churning out news, one question kept popping up: when are we going to get an iPad app? Well, Spotify is finally obliging, giving premium users a polished iPad version that it hopes can rule the living room. Read more at GigaOM »
The Financial Times is preparing to kill off its iPad and iPhone app for good, signalling its final conversion from executable-app to web-app publishing. Read more »
Inkling, which started out as an iPad textbook publisher and recently launched an interactive e-book publishing platform called Habitat, is moving further into the consumer realm with a new series of Frommer’s interactive digital travel guides. Read more »
Children’s e-book reading is still in very early stages — but with parents increasingly handing iPads down to their kids, publishers see room for fast growth. A new iPad app offers children’s books from brands like My Little Pony and Curious George. Read more »
Apple says it had to cut an agency-pricing deal with publishers in order to weaken Amazon’s monopolistic control over the e-book industry. But wait — didn’t Apple behave exactly the same way towards the record labels as it is accusing Amazon of behaving towards book publishers? Read more at GigaOM »
If you are one of the 64 percent of people who read in bed, do you need a dedicated front-lit e-reader? Yes, says Barnes & Noble, so that you don’t disturb that special someone sleeping beside you. Hence the new $139 Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight. Read more »
