Undercover Agents

In a bizarre move, reminiscent of the newsstand, Zinio have created a separate business unit called (wait for it) Undercover Mags. Effectively, this is a "top shelf" site which is only open to 18 year olds and contains um.. "adult material".

Not unreasonable you might think, but get this - Penthouse is being flogged through the new site, but Playboy remains on Zinio.

Eh ? Is Playboy more consumer friendly or is it a contract issue.

I think we should be told.

The Times (they are a changin')

Times Online is this week soft-launching its first e-magazine, called Select, using repurposed content from the paper's weekend magazine and the Sunday Times.
Designed by Tomaso Capuano, the man behind the FT's luxury monthly colour magazine How to Spend It, the "e-zine" allows viewers to "turn" pages and interact with articles via the paper's website.

Select will include travel pieces and interviews with the likes of Frank Lampard and Gordon Ramsay. Times Online has signed up Jaguar as its sponsor and partner.

Digital readers "highly engaging" shocker !

Texterity, which offers digital magazines, has released the results of a BPA Worldwide-certified survey showing that 91% of readers take action after reading an ad in a digital edition. The survey was sent to 31,596 digital magazine readers of 45 different publications, both b-to-b and consumer. More than 20% of recipients completed the survey. According to the results, 83% of digital readers looked at an advertiser’s Web site; 41% forwarded information about an advertiser to a friend or colleague; 37% contacted an advertiser for more information; and 32% recommended a product or service. Perhaps most important, 24% of recipients said they purchased a product based on the ad in a digital edition.

FreE Books

Celebrate the 35th anniversary of free eBooks and the Project Gutenberg. For its birthday month of July, Gutenberg plans to offer free, permanent download access to over 1/3 million books.

So, save yourself about £10 a pop and get literate !!

Google goes Olive ?

From John Battelle's excellent Searchblog...


Despite rumors the past few weeks that Google was going to buy Olive for $75 million, after looking the software company up and down in a week of intensive interviews Google then walked away. Olive software converts various data files (like PDFs, microfilm) into xml, accessible to search.

Is it a coincidence that a large portion of Olive's employes are based in Israel and Google is opening new offices in Israel? Silicon Beat muses: Is Google turning into a Microsoft? Checking out the goods, and then going back and building it themselves? Or hiring away the better employees? Here's what one person said: "Google learned a LOT about Olive... everything."

Catalogue the future

A good report on eMarketer here, which demonstrates the rapid pace of catalogues moving online.

Last year in the US, emarketer estimates that online - only catalogues more than doubled from 2004.

The reason ?

Well print costs would be one, but the response from online catalogues is now outstripping their print cousins.

Over the past ten years, the three catalog categories showing the strongest growth were Automotive, which grew from 270 to 542 titles; Education, growing from 334 to 513 titles; and Apparel & Accessories, up from 677 to 750 catalogs.

De Tijd is turning

Well the Belgian newspaper of the same name is anyway...

This month, De Tijd, started testing versions of electronic paper, a device with low-power digital screens embedded with digital ink — millions of microscopic capsules the width of a human hair made with organic material that display light or dark images in response to electrical charges.

This is only one test of new e-paper devices competing to become the iPod of the newspaper business. Other e-paper trials are being undertaken by the paper Les Echos,and the Guardian here in the UK.

While it is still very nascent technology - at this point, the e-paper cannot display color, offering just 16 shades of gray, and the screens are rigid - there is no doubt we are moving toward the type of accessible device outlined in Minority Report.

Oh well, enough dreaming, back to the 18th century broadband...

E by Gum

There's a interesting piece on e-book adoption from the BBC here.

Well worth a read, but its findings could well have been published 2/3/4/5 years ago, namely..

"But the biggest barrier to e-book world domination surely has to be the screen. An LCD display has much lower resolution than paper."

Polarisation

I came across a great new counter culture magazine today - www.polarinertia.com.

Some great pictures.

Keeping Counsel

ALM, has just announced the launch of digital editions of Corporate Counsel and Law Technology News. Access to the sites is free to qualified subscribers. Corporate Counsel, with a print circulation of 43,000, targets general counsel and in-house attorneys. Law Technology News, with a print circulation of 40,000, covers legal technologies, products and services.

Should stop them chasing ambulances anyway.

In Exact

In a move to have erstwhile editor Boris Johnson spinning in his grave (when he eventually reaches it), The Spectator has gone digital.

Using the Exact Editions platform, The Speccie hopes to provide overseas readers with a wb based solution to keep them in touch with whats happening here in Blair's Britain.

Expect a lot of expats in the Algarve will now be apoplectic over their screens instead of their Telegraph.

Join The Q

Its been a while since I looked at Q Mags site, but a recent conversation with Scott Johnson, their VP of sales made me check back with them (as my American cousins would say).

Its small steps, but they seem to have a few specialist titles on board - Armchair General, Tennis Magazine and Top Pair - which I was disappointed was actually a gambling magazine - to name but a few.

It'll be interesting to see how they manage to build on this toe hold against Zinio in coming months.

Penthouse View

Good news for the vertically challenged - those fruitless trips to newsagents, only to find the top shelf is out of reach, will soon be a thing of the past.

Penthouse Magazine is going digital.

Now styling itself as a "men's lifestyle magazine", Penthouse will use the digital platform of Zinio who already handle both Playboy and Mystique.

Who is going to be first to try the ultimate online/offline co - promotion ? A packet of screen wipes is the obvious thing....

Military Intelligence ?

Yes, yes I know - its an oxymoron.

However, Penton have found a use for it in their latest digital magazine,
Military Electronics.

Now I warn you ; this isn't at the cutting edge deisgn wise. But it is packed with useful information.

If you happen to be in a cave in Afghanistan for instance, with er "limited" access to a library, finding out about the capabilities of the latest American listening devices via a downloadable magazine could be very useful.

Just a thought.

Reading with Sony

I'm in Las Vegas for the annual techfest that is CES. Some interesting stuff in amongst all the usual parties, boozing and ahem "distractions"

In particular, I'm very interested in the Sony Reader. For years now, companies like Microsoft have been trying to get people to read content on a proprietary reader - with little success. Sony have tried before, but the difference this time is that the device is small, (about the size of a paperback), avoids backlighting (and hence eyestrain) and critically, they have a number of major publishers on board - specifically Random House and Penguin.

It'll be interesting to see how this does..

Happy Christmas

I'd like to wish all readers a very happy Christmas. Hope you can keep away from your screens for a few days !!

Back online in January.

Hard to Digest

Friend of the terminally unemployed and perennial draft excluder Readers Digest is going digital.

Zinio will be producing the digital copies, but before you get too excited, remember that once you are on the list, you'll never get off !!

Every page tells a story

Talk about revolutionary.

CNET, the website that talks tech (at shuddering length) has developed a new feature called - wait for it- "page turn".

This new feature allows users to, yes, turn the page of catalogues direct on the site.

Now if only Zinio had thought of that...

Get into the Grooves

Its enough to put the industry into a spin...

In December, Grooves Magazine, which is now 6 years old, is going digital only. It is of course being driven by ever increasing print costs, but like many of the turntablists the magazine covers, its editor is spinning the move to both fans and advertisers as a positive.

They are offering full colour pages to advertisers at a fraction of the cost of print pages, and readers of course will get a nice shiny new digital magazine on their desktops, courtesy of Texterity.

Now where's my copy of Dark Side of The Moon....

Can we go to the Zoo ?

Thats what all the kids will be asking once they get their hands on a digital copy of lads mag Zoo, EMAP's leading mens weekly here in the UK.

Its packed with fun features, giveaways and....

Oh alright then, yes its got lots of naked girls....

Oh well.