Tag: Reading »

The iPad has been heralded by many as the future of magazines and the savior of the publishing industry. Magazines like Newsweek are losing circulation and being purchased at fire sale prices. The iPad provides a blank canvas for publishers, content producers, and anyone who wants to innovate. The problem is that the opportunity has not yet been realized.

I remember being thrilled at the prospect of iPad magazines even before the device itself was announced. Sports Illustrated has showcased a great teaser video of their application, and Bonnier's Mag+ platform also appeared to have potential. The arrival of the iPad shows unrealized potential. Reading apps, like iBooks and Stanza, have shown great ability at translating the book reading experience for a tablet.

PDFs for iPad?
Many publishers have simply translated their magazines to the iPad by making them into PDFs of the print version. Some, like Wired, have added custom UI layers and slight multimedia additions to spruce up their publications. The vertical and horizontal reading interface present in magazines like Wired show that publishers are trying to think out of the box, but they haven't quite succeeded yet. Unfortunately, the current workflow may not work. A series by Ad Age this week shows that magazine publishers are taking the content from their print editions and dropping them into templates for the iPad. What would happen if magazines were custom designed for the iPad? If the content was specifically designed to take advantage of the iPad's features? I hope we'll be able to find out in the coming months.

A Roundup
I've reviewed six iPad magazine apps so far, each with their own set of pros and cons:

Wired: An interesting first attempt that falls short due to download size, quirky navigation, and its underlying architecture.
Time: Interesting effort tying live content (News Feed) with magazine content but this is essentially just a PDFed magazine.
Newsweek: The iPad-only edition it includes makes boastful claims, but the app itself can't compete with the others listed here.
GQ: The men's interest magazine's first iPad edition includes a bizarre navigation system but some useful innovations.
Zinio for iPad: The popular and experienced magazine digitizers bring their platform to the iPad and make it one of the few viable options for those interested in magazines.
Popular Science+: Like Wired's app, bizarre navigation makes Pop Sci difficult to enjoy on Bonnier's Mag+ platform.

Conclusion
So far, it appears that even lackluster efforts are producing success for publishers. There is clearly more potential for the medium and I'm sure content producers aren't resting. I can't wait to see what comes next.

[caption id="attachment_38764" align="alignright" width="225" caption="Stanza\'s Options and Reading Screen"]

[/caption]Lexcycle, acquired last year by Amazon, released a version of their popular iPhone/iPod touch eReader Stanza for the iPad last week. Stanza was my eReader of choice on my iPhone and I'm thrilled it's finally been ported to the iPad. It's a terrific reader that's compatible with a wide variety of different formats. Before Stanza for iPad was released, I used Calibre to convert my eBooks to iBooks' required ePub format. Stanza allows users to read in a whole bunch of formats, and the 3.0 release adds PDF, DjVu, and Comic Book Archive support to Stanza's already extensive library of readable files.

Stanza includes the most customizable reading interface I've seen on a mobile application. It allows you to customize nearly everything, from the page turning animations (a slide like the Kindle's or a page turning animation like iBooks') to the background and color of the text. Stanza really does make the experience all about the text - the user is able to customize everything about the way the book is viewed. Barnes and Nobles' app was lauded earlier this week for including the same customization but their application locks you into using their bookstore. Stanza lets you load your own books onto the iPad or iPhone. It also, however, allows you access to a variety of other eBook stores directly from the phone.

[caption id="attachment_38765" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="Stanza\'s Text Descriptions"]

[/caption]Perhaps the application's best feature is Stanza's Detail views for text. Highlighting text using the traditional copy and paste mechanism in iBooks yields a tooltip that lets you bookmark (highlight) and look things up in the dictionary. It's a more complicated scenario in Stanza but one that offers one additional option - the ability to share text on Facebook, Twitter, and through email. The detail view pulls up the paragraph in question in an iPhone-sized window and makes it easier to select text.

Stanza works perfectly with Calibre, my app of choice for eBook conversion. It now allows for a really simple workflow to get eBooks from the desktop to an iPad. It's possible to move books by utilizing a computer as a wireless server, or by pushing them from Calibre into iTunes. It's also possible to drag books into iTunes and into Stanza.

Stanza is the ideal reading experience, with customizable colors, animations, and more and compatibility with dozens of different formats. The Lexcycle team has succeeded in bringing the great iPhone app to the iPad and I, as an avid reader, am glad they did so.