Magazines tread carefully with iPad development

Magazines, like their newspaper counterparts, have moved aggressively to develop software for Apple's iPad. But the gadget, now in its fifth month of availability, represents a much different distribution opportunity for magazines than it does for newspapers.
What to do
The challenge facing magazine publishers, said Jerry Beilinson, deputy editor at Popular Mechanics, is determining the right mix of features to add.
Popular Mechanics last month debuted an iPad version of its monthly magazine, using software developed by publisher Hearst Magazines.
The prototype app, priced at $1.99, was engineered to illustrate some of the features Popular Mechanics may include in its monthly version, expected to be launched later this year. Hearst will use the software to underpin iPad apps supporting its other magazines, including O, Esquire, Harper's Bazaar and Cosmopolitan, later this year.
The Popular Mechanics app contains embedded video, 3-D building plans, interactive animations and other elements, said Beilinson. Among them: an interactive earthquake tracker and an animated illustration of an extreme free fall without a parachute to accompany a story.
Users, meantime, can send e-mails, update their Facebook accounts and use Twitter from within the app, further increasing its flexibility.

Will papers’ plans to block content backfire?

Paywalls are becoming a more common feature of the newspaper landscape as publishers begin making legitimate attempts to rein in their previously free-running Web content. But it will take at least a year to determine whether these attempts will translate into tangible revenues or merely another example of a last-ditch effort gone awry.

Within the past month more than a dozen papers, ranging from The Times of London to the Chico (Calif.) Enterprise-Record have erected paywalls to block non-subscriber access to their online content.

Still to come: The New York Times, which will roll out its paywall early next year. The paper is developing its own software to govern access, based on a metered approach.

As the deployment of paywalls ramps up, however, so does the debate surrounding their worth and which models will ultimately be the most effective.

Are Motorola and Verizon Building a Boob Tab?

Motorola and Verizon are reportedly cooking up a tablet TV to work with Verizon's FiOS service. It "likely will network with the FIOS DVR system in the home and either cache or stream content from it," said Rob Enderle, principal of the Enderle Group. The device in question "apparently will be able to capture and send video back over the air to the FiOS DVRs as well."

AOL can't shake decade-long malaise

Tim Armstrong, AOL's CEO (right) during an interview last year, doesn't seem to have the company turned around yet.



(Credit: Ina Fried)



Nobody epitomized the AOL of the late 1990s better than David Colburn, the foul-mouthed, bully-boy deal maker who oversaw the company's ad empire. Soon after the $5 billion AOL acquired the $20 billion Time Warner--a deal that was presented to the public as a merger--a Time Warner executive scolded Colburn for being disrespectful.

Schmidt on Google Wave, Net neutrality

Google CEO Eric Schmidt talks Google Wave, Net neutrality, and society's connection to technology at the inaugural Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, Calif.

For Kevin Mitnick, staying legal is job one

Hacker Kevin Mitnick is conscientiously working on his image.
Kevin Mitnick was eager to participate in a social-engineering contest at the Defcon hacker conference in Las Vegas last weekend and was told he would target Microsoft in the event.



He figured it would be fun to show off his schmoozing skills, which he so easily used to trick employees at tech companies in the 1990s into handing over passwords and other sensitive information, ultimately landing him in jail.