Newspapers are making the headlines this week, if that’s an acceptable phrase! The Independent’s “i” newspaper was born, and PrintWeek informs us that it was the first new paper to hit the UK streets since 1986. Priced at 20p the publication is all about bringing bite sized news items to the younger reader in a tabloid format. Seems to focus on many of the issues raised in a link in last week’s PIND under the “Designing World Class Media” heading.It was also an interesting week for those publications that have already bitten the online bullet, especially The Times. The Wall dissects the Neilson research which suggests that 360,000 punters are behind the pay wall. Its conclusion The Wall suggests that this number could actually be more like 100,000 good folk actually parting with an online subscription and real £££’s, but the article does suggest that there are a lot of smoke and mirrors in this market still at the moment! Marketing Week says that The Times is keen to get advertisers to look at new innovative digital solutions.
Meanwhile, what The Wall describes as the tabloid pay wall wars are set to take place between the Sun and the Daily Mirror. It suggests that the Mirror is likely to be giving away more elements for free in its efforts to entice readers into the subscription service. Should be an interesting battle.In the magazine world, Mashable takes a look at how iPad magazine sales are stacking up, with some six months of data to examine.
One item that I was especially excited to take a detailed look at is a publication from the US entitled “Disrupting the Future”, a set of suggested strategies for the print-based business of the future. It really is a worthwhile read for any print business that thinks that it might want to be around five to ten years from now! The best bit of news is that the publication is available as a free PDF right now! You can read it this weekend and then start your new business come next Monday morning!As a suitable postscript to the above entry, “What They Think?” Is also hitting the nail on its head with its review of the Graph Expo show, which it sees as the watershed for the world of digital. If you don’t get where digital sits in the world of print production now, you might never get it, is the gist of what they are saying!
Another way perhaps of bringing both of those last two items into the clearest focus possible is provided by Kindle, with further advancements in the sales of digital books according to Amazon. Further emphasis on growth of this market is also provided by the introduction of a two-week loan period facility. You buy the book, I can borrow it for two weeks to read, you then get it back! Just like the real paper version!Need help with your colours? Pantone is providing a digital colour reader; a neat bit of kit. It will cost you some $649 in the US, translating to a substantial £408 or so, which is not over the top if colour is critical to your world.
Two tablet tales top our look at this week’s slates, with BlackBerry taking the number one slot when Mike Lazaridis did what might be described as an impromptu demo (not sure that it was really). Note how he skilfully avoids the release date question! At two, Asus gives us not too distant promises of PC tablets, with a November 23 launch date, and some rather tempting looking prices.Last week Apple got plenty of exposure for its new MacBook Air launch; PC fans might prefer one of CrunchGear’s top five alternatives; mostly not significantly cheaper, just a different take on light.
Last week also I brought to your attention an app called Jot Agent. No sooner had I proclaimed this a great bit of work, than something comes along to trump it. Forget what I said last week, and turn your thoughts instead to Textforce. Again this app interfaces well with Dropbox, but it also offers an editing capability, which was something noticeably missing from Jot Agent. Again it works across both iPad and iPhone, and then, because it sync’s with Dropbox, its effectively sync’d across any other platforms where your Dropbox account is installed (or via the Dropbox public folder of course for work colleagues or whoever to get the info too!).Finally, I thought it might be fun to add Marketing Week’s article on what the board room thinks of marketing. It’s a fun read for folk on both sides of the fence!
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