Tag Archives: Mobile

Economist launches apps for iPad and iPhone

The Economist has today launched apps for the iPad and iPhone. The apps can be downloaded for free and offer users a weekly sample of articles chosen by the editor.

The full issue of the Economist will be available to purchase through the applications every Thursday evening for £3.49 each week for a single issue.

Digital and print subscribers to the Economist will receive full access to the print edition and website’s content via the apps.

Oscar Grut, managing director of digital editions for the Economist, says in a release that he expects digital downloads to match the title’s print circulation of 1.5 million “in a relatively short period of time”. He hopes the free apps will help attract new readers to the title, who will be encourage to take out subscriptions to the full edition.

Says editor John Micklethwait:

We have reformatted the newspaper to make the most of iPad, iPhone and iPod touch while retaining the familiar feel of the Economist, with all the articles, charts, maps and images from each week’s print edition. And we have integrated our audio edition, read by professional newscasters, for easy switching between reading and listening. We have put a lot of work into making sure that these new versions of the Economist are not just easy to use, but also make our readers feel at home.

Google News redesign for smartphones

Yesterday Google announced a global rollout of its redesign for Google News on smartphones, which applies to Android, iPhone and Palm Pre handsets.

New features include an expansion of the story space to make tapping on articles easier and more accurate, as well as a “collapsed” initial view of news lists, offering one source as a default to cut down on scrolling. To view related articles from other sources users can tap on ‘More Sources’ for a list of other reports.

Full announcement on Google’s blog

Washington Post launches iPad app

The Washington Post announced the launch of its new iPad app last night, which is now available from the iTunes App Store.

In a press release, the Post said the app will combine “trusted reporting and analysis with innovative social media and sharing capabilities and award-winning multimedia”.

Users who subscribe to the app will receive free access until mid-February next year, when print newspaper subscribers will be charged 99 cents a month and non-subscribers $3.99 a month.

Features on the app include a ‘Live Topics’ component which brings together news, commentary, aggregated social media comments, multimedia and photos on the top stories of the day.

Guardian to relaunch iPhone app with new charges, revamps mobile site

The Guardian has announced significant developments in its mobile plans today. The first is a new mobile site for Guardian.co.uk, with more content from the website, topic pages, bookmarking options and faster updates as some of the key new features.

Our aim is to improve the service for those of you with smartphones, who make up the majority of our growing mobile audience. At the same time we are committed to maintaining an accessible service, optimised for smaller screen sizes and slower connection speeds, for anyone using other handsets.

According to a release from the Guardian, its mobile site in September generated an average of 507,000 page impressions a day – almost double the figure for September 2009 of 217,000. More than five per cent of Guardian News and Media’s total digital page impressions now come from mobile devices.

But perhaps more significantly the publisher has announced plans for an updated version of its iPhone application. The app initially cost £2.39 –  a one-off charge since its launch in December. Critics at the time questioned the economics of introducing an app without a subscription or renewal model. The new app, which is currently awaiting approval by Apple, will charge £2.99 for six months or £3.99 for an annual subscription.

The UK app has been downloaded more than 205,000 times since its launch. A free version of the app will be launched for US customers and the Guardian says it is experimenting with different models for different markets.

New Media Age: Mail Online launches paid-for mobile app

Mail Online has become the latest UK newspaper site to launch an iPhone app. But the title is offering six-monthly or annual subscription packages, at £4.99 and £8.99 respectively, rather than a 30-day or monthly model.

Mail Online MD James Bromley said the title’s mobile strategy would hinge on developing paid apps as an additional revenue stream.

Full story on New Media Age at this link…

The Upshot: Washington Post forms new ‘leadership team’ for mobile

The Washington Post has put together a mobile leadership team to develop the availability of its content on portable devices with a new app for the iPad currently being created, according to a report on The Upshot.

The latest developments which were allegedly detailed in a staff email sent out earlier this week and a statement given to The Upshot are part of the Post’s ongoing attempts to increase access to its content through mobile and open up new revenue streams.

Commenting on the news Dawn Osakue advised on the Editors Weblog that newpapers do not simply aim to offer access to their content on as many platforms as possible but remember to be creative.

Going mobile is a bold step for newspaper publishers, but they have to keep in mind that creativity remains very important. Recent research confirmed that newspapers still have a long way to go in exploiting the potential of mobile platforms.

OJB: What online publishers can learn from Ofcom’s internet research

Writing on the Online Journalism Blog, Paul Bradshaw shares key points from the internet section of Ofcom’s latest report on The Communications Market 2010, analysing the implications of each for online publishers.

1: Mobile is genuinely significant: 23 per cent of UK users now access the web on mobile phones (but 27 per cent still have no access to the web on any device).

Implication: We should be thinking about mobile as another medium, with different generic qualities to print, broadcast or web, and different consumption and distribution patterns.

Full post at this link

Video: CNN mobile event, the Frontline Club

“Mobile is as different to online as television is to radio,” CNN’s vice-president of mobile Louis Gump told an audience at the Frontline Club, in an event supported by Journalism.co.uk.

You can now watch video of the event below, including discussion of the role of mobile journalism in the newsroom and the opportunities offered to journalists by mobile technologies:



Related coverage on Journalism.co.uk:

Podcast from the CNN Mobile event

Blog round-up of mobile journalism discussion

CNN launches free international news app for iPhone and iPod Touch

NYTimes: US startup to launch weekly niche magazine for mobile

A new US-based digital magazine will feature the work of freelance journalists in mini-editions, produced and designed for mobile phones, reports the New York Times.

Subscribers to Nomad Editions, produced by a startup company of the same name, will receive a weekly edition focused on their area of interest and delivered via a mobile application. Each issue will take between 20 and 30 minutes to read. Writers will earn up to 30 per cent of revenue subscription from each edition with different shares for editors.

A niche, mobile, and freelance model? A new launch worth watching when it goes live in October.

Full post on NYTimes.com at this link…

‘Apptop publishing’ technology targets bloggers and independents

London-based Publisha has launched a new product and coined a new digital media term in one fell swoop – the company is targeting bloggers and independent digital publishers with its ‘apptop’ publishing device, designed for distributing content across a range of mobile devices and social networks.

Essentially it provides one content management system to create a basic website, Facebook ‘articles’ tab on your fan page, an iPad and smartphone application and is developing analytics, Twitter integration and an ad-serving platform.

“Publisha offers a new way of bringing content to readers. Unlike PDF readers, we’re not trying to replicate print magazines, but rather focus on offering a service to bloggers, writers and publishers who don’t want the constraints of a traditional magazine layout. Publisha allows even small teams to easily publish across multiple digital platforms, gain readers effectively and monetise their work in a complete ecosystem,” says Publisha’s CEO Ian Howlett in a release.

But the company is particularly interested in Facebook applications – it sees these as a way for specialist and more niche publishers to find readers with common interests and open up a network. Creating news feeds to Facebook fan pages is at present rather unintuitive and clunky – tools like Publisha could offer an easier way around this, though more customisation would be a plus. See it in action on the Facebook page for US bridal magazine Bodas USA: