What do you do after working for Apple, a company whose mission seems to be nothing less than disrupting entire industries? Easy. You start a company to create your own ding in the universe.
That’s the idea behind Push Pop Press, a digital creation tool designed to blow up the concept of the book. Frictionless self-publishing is a fertile new space, but this particular startup got a little help from former vice president Al Gore, whose exacting demands on an app version of his book Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis gave this would-be company its first real boost.
Developed by former Apple employees Mike Matas and Kimon Tsinteris, Push Pop Press will be a publishing platform for authors, publishers and artists to turn their books into interactive iPad or iPhone apps — no programming skills required.
“The app is the richest form of storytelling,” Matas said. “[Push Pop Press] opens doors to telling a story with more photos, more videos and interactions.”
This article is part of a series of profiles about hit apps and the successful programmers behind them.
See Also:
App-Powered Car Service Leaves Cabs in the Dust
How Angry Birds Is Becoming the Next Super Mario
How Flipboard Turned Web Noise Into iPad Gold
Push Pop Press is pushing into a widening niche within the print industry, which is scrambling to produce digital versions of books, magazines and newspapers in hopes of reversing declining revenues.
The platform comes as a slew of competitiors seek to upend the book publishing business, a shift that once seemed improbable but now inevitable, thanks to the success of new devices such as the iPad, Kindle and Nook. Notably, Amazon began selling more e-books than printed editions just 33 months after its Kindle launched.
If e-books have been flying off the “shelves” for years, Push Pop Press aims to bring a new dimension to the platform, adding high-end graphics to the largely unadorned text offered in popular e-book editions like the Kindle. It’s the latest bet — still unpaid after some 25 years of digital publishing– that plain old text is about to undergo a major evolution as authors and readers demand more interactivity.
For magazine publishers and newspapers, one of the trendiest technology solutions involves creating iPad or Android editions of publications — for which advertisers, so far, seem to pay at rates which rival print dollars instead of web pennies.
The 800-pound gorilla in this digital space is Adobe, whose tools are used to create some tablet 280 periodicals (including the iPad version of WIRED magazine). But the complexity — and expense — of Adobe’s Creative Suite is an opportunity for new entrants in the self-publishing game.
Problem is, it’s neither easy nor cheap for dead-tree publishers to hire app programmers, or to purchase the resources necessary to digitize their publications with sexy code. And after factoring in the hefty costs of development and time spent on production, mobile apps have hardly proven a goldmine for major publishers.
If successfully scaled, Push Pop Press could become the easiest and quickest way for publishers and independent artists to turn their media into iPhone and iPad apps and take a whack at making money in the App Store.
Book apps created with Push Pop Press can take advantage of the iPad’s and iPhone’s advanced sensors, touchscreen gestures, microphone and powerful graphics chip to turn reading into a rich, interactive experience, Matas said. Videos, interactive diagrams and geotagged photos are just some elements that can be embedded in a book produced with Push Pop Press.
Read More:
http://www.montrealpersian.com/articles/entry/Computer-clean-up
http://www.wsuswiki.com/SUSLinks
http://wiki.awn-project.org/User:Drendi
четвер, 28 квітня 2011 р.
South Park takes on Apple location tracking in ‘HUMANCENTiPad’
South Park's new season opened by making fun of Apple hysteria and the crazy controversy over location tracking that has erupted in the last week or so. Prepare for Steve Jobs's newest creation: the HumancentiPad!
Apple location tracking has only been an issue for a week or two, but South Park has already weighed in with a full episode dedicated to the location tracking debate.
Small spoiler: In the first episode of its 15th season, everyone at school is using their iPads until Apple “G-Men” come and start following Kyle down. When he says he doesn’t want them following him, they simply point out that he already agreed to it when he signed the latest iTunes terms and conditions. Poor guy. Eventually he is abducted by Apple and forced to become a part of Steve Jobs ultimate creation: the HumancentiPad. Meanwhile, Cartman desperately tries to get his mom to get him an iPad so he doesn’t get made fun of at school.
You have to hand it to Matt Stone and Trey Parker, they sure stay relevant. While we haven’t seen the full episode, we know Kyle’s pain. Is it really fair to be forced to agree to more than eight pages of lawyer-language terms and conditions before you use any electronic product or service? Nobody reads it all. Who knows what crazy things we’ve agreed to over the years.
Read also:
http://www.vmworld.com/thread/4936
http://www.montrealpersian.com/articles/entry/How-can-i-speed-up-my-computer-
http://www.vmworld.com/docs/DOC-5452
Apple location tracking has only been an issue for a week or two, but South Park has already weighed in with a full episode dedicated to the location tracking debate.
Small spoiler: In the first episode of its 15th season, everyone at school is using their iPads until Apple “G-Men” come and start following Kyle down. When he says he doesn’t want them following him, they simply point out that he already agreed to it when he signed the latest iTunes terms and conditions. Poor guy. Eventually he is abducted by Apple and forced to become a part of Steve Jobs ultimate creation: the HumancentiPad. Meanwhile, Cartman desperately tries to get his mom to get him an iPad so he doesn’t get made fun of at school.
You have to hand it to Matt Stone and Trey Parker, they sure stay relevant. While we haven’t seen the full episode, we know Kyle’s pain. Is it really fair to be forced to agree to more than eight pages of lawyer-language terms and conditions before you use any electronic product or service? Nobody reads it all. Who knows what crazy things we’ve agreed to over the years.
Read also:
http://www.vmworld.com/thread/4936
http://www.montrealpersian.com/articles/entry/How-can-i-speed-up-my-computer-
http://www.vmworld.com/docs/DOC-5452
Apple rejects iPhone game about smuggling immigrants
Apple has turned down a proposed iPhone game called Smuggle Truck that features users driving a truck full of immigrants through the desert while trying to keep them from getting thrown out, The Associated Press reports.
Although Owlchemy Labs drew fire from immigrant advocates when it announced plans to create Smuggle Truck: Operation Immigration, developer Alex Schwartz insists that wanted to bring attention to immigration issues, The AP says.
The game can still be downloaded on PCs and Macs, and includes a "legal mode" that portrays immigrants sitting in a waiting room for 20 years.
But not to worry. With a little deft artwork and sound-effects tweak, the company now offers Snuggle Truck, which did pass muster with Apple, according to Joystiq's Alexander Sliwinski.
"Essentially, instead of smuggling immigrants over the border, you're now bringing animals from the wilderness into the comfort of a zoo, where they are provided plenty of food, water, shelter, and state of the art health care," developer Schwartz tells Joystiq.
Read also:
http://innisfilexaminer.ca/Community/NewsDisplay.aspx?c=142348
http://www.azcentral.com/members/Blog/darrendionisio
http://heraldsun.com/pages/full_story_your/push?blog-entry-Time+Saving+Tips-+Fasten+Your+Computer+To+Doing+The+Quotidian+Plans+Efficiently+%20&id=12973327&instance=recent
Although Owlchemy Labs drew fire from immigrant advocates when it announced plans to create Smuggle Truck: Operation Immigration, developer Alex Schwartz insists that wanted to bring attention to immigration issues, The AP says.
The game can still be downloaded on PCs and Macs, and includes a "legal mode" that portrays immigrants sitting in a waiting room for 20 years.
But not to worry. With a little deft artwork and sound-effects tweak, the company now offers Snuggle Truck, which did pass muster with Apple, according to Joystiq's Alexander Sliwinski.
"Essentially, instead of smuggling immigrants over the border, you're now bringing animals from the wilderness into the comfort of a zoo, where they are provided plenty of food, water, shelter, and state of the art health care," developer Schwartz tells Joystiq.
Read also:
http://innisfilexaminer.ca/Community/NewsDisplay.aspx?c=142348
http://www.azcentral.com/members/Blog/darrendionisio
http://heraldsun.com/pages/full_story_your/push?blog-entry-Time+Saving+Tips-+Fasten+Your+Computer+To+Doing+The+Quotidian+Plans+Efficiently+%20&id=12973327&instance=recent
40 percent of Apple game downloads are free titles with in-app purchases
Free-to-play games have become huge on Apple’s App Store in the past 19 months. Almost 40 percent of game downloads are now free titles with in-app purchases, according to a study by Xyologic, a startup which indexes and searches through App Store data.
In March, there were more than 99.9 million downloads of free iPhone games from the App Store. About 80.8 percent of all app downloads in the month of March were free. In many of these games and apps, the free-to-play model is used, where a user can pay real money through the in-app purchase feature for virtual goods such as better weapons in a game.
The scary part is that Apple has made a lot of the developers of these apps and games nervous because of its shift in stance on a particular kind of model, known as pay-per-install. In games that use this model, an app will offer an incentive for the user to install another app as a kind of cross promotion. But a couple of weeks ago, Apple cracked down on the pay-per-install model because it can be used to artificially inflate a game’s ranking in the top 25 apps in the store. That has affected pay-per-install marketing firms such as Tapjoy.
The problem is that the free-to-play model (of which the pay-per-install model is one part) has become a bigger and bigger part of the total number of app downloads and it has become a bigger percentage of revenues for developers. Those developers used pay-per-install marketing to help their apps stand out among 350,000 iOS apps. Apple feared it was leading to market manipulation. To ease Apple’s concerns, Tapjoy has limited certain promotions using the pay-per-install model.
“It may make Apple’s platform possibly less attractive vis-a-vis Google Android if developers can’t find a suitable alternative to offer walls,” the report said. “This is the biggest interference by Apple into the app economy in recent months. Its effects, at this point, are unclear.”
While Apple makes much more money with the App Store than Google does with the Android Market, the number of apps is another story now. Xyologic says that in March, 28,963 new apps debuted in the Android Market, while 18,787 debuted in Apple’s store.
Apple has to be careful about how it resolves the pay-per-install problem, if it wants to hang on to its developers. The top developers affected by Apple’s decision likely include Glu Mobile, which saw 2.48 million downloads of free games with in-app purchases in March. The second-ranked company was Pocket Gems, with 1.55 million downloads. That was followed by TeamLava (part of Storm8) with 1.41 million; Craneball Studios with 1.41 million; Gameview Studios with 1.41 million; Sunstorm Interactive with 1.18 million; Capcom Interactive with 969,000; Backflip Studios with 933,000; Storm8 with 752,000; and BayView Labs (DeNA) with 723,000.
Xyologic says that almost all of the paid games on the App Store are priced below $3.99. Of the 8,017 iPhone apps offering in-app purchases in the App Store in the U.S., some 2,156 of them were free games with in-app purchases. That was up from 709 in September. Overall, about 4 percent of game apps account for 40 percent of all downloads.
Of the 150 top free games on the App Store, 94 games, or 63 percent, are games with in-app purchases. These are some of the observations based on the data that Xyologic dug out through its search service. Berlin-based Xyologic indexes 610,000 apps in the App Store, the Android Market, and the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace on a monthly basis. It can rank the number of downloads for each app and publisher in the month, according to Matthaus Krzykowski (an occasional VentureBeat contributor), co-founder of Xyologic.
Read aslo:
http://thoroldedition.ca/Community/NewsDisplay.aspx?c=142344
http://thoroldedition.ca/Community/NewsDisplay.aspx?c=142345
http://innisfilexaminer.ca/Community/NewsDisplay.aspx?c=142347
In March, there were more than 99.9 million downloads of free iPhone games from the App Store. About 80.8 percent of all app downloads in the month of March were free. In many of these games and apps, the free-to-play model is used, where a user can pay real money through the in-app purchase feature for virtual goods such as better weapons in a game.
The scary part is that Apple has made a lot of the developers of these apps and games nervous because of its shift in stance on a particular kind of model, known as pay-per-install. In games that use this model, an app will offer an incentive for the user to install another app as a kind of cross promotion. But a couple of weeks ago, Apple cracked down on the pay-per-install model because it can be used to artificially inflate a game’s ranking in the top 25 apps in the store. That has affected pay-per-install marketing firms such as Tapjoy.
The problem is that the free-to-play model (of which the pay-per-install model is one part) has become a bigger and bigger part of the total number of app downloads and it has become a bigger percentage of revenues for developers. Those developers used pay-per-install marketing to help their apps stand out among 350,000 iOS apps. Apple feared it was leading to market manipulation. To ease Apple’s concerns, Tapjoy has limited certain promotions using the pay-per-install model.
“It may make Apple’s platform possibly less attractive vis-a-vis Google Android if developers can’t find a suitable alternative to offer walls,” the report said. “This is the biggest interference by Apple into the app economy in recent months. Its effects, at this point, are unclear.”
While Apple makes much more money with the App Store than Google does with the Android Market, the number of apps is another story now. Xyologic says that in March, 28,963 new apps debuted in the Android Market, while 18,787 debuted in Apple’s store.
Apple has to be careful about how it resolves the pay-per-install problem, if it wants to hang on to its developers. The top developers affected by Apple’s decision likely include Glu Mobile, which saw 2.48 million downloads of free games with in-app purchases in March. The second-ranked company was Pocket Gems, with 1.55 million downloads. That was followed by TeamLava (part of Storm8) with 1.41 million; Craneball Studios with 1.41 million; Gameview Studios with 1.41 million; Sunstorm Interactive with 1.18 million; Capcom Interactive with 969,000; Backflip Studios with 933,000; Storm8 with 752,000; and BayView Labs (DeNA) with 723,000.
Xyologic says that almost all of the paid games on the App Store are priced below $3.99. Of the 8,017 iPhone apps offering in-app purchases in the App Store in the U.S., some 2,156 of them were free games with in-app purchases. That was up from 709 in September. Overall, about 4 percent of game apps account for 40 percent of all downloads.
Of the 150 top free games on the App Store, 94 games, or 63 percent, are games with in-app purchases. These are some of the observations based on the data that Xyologic dug out through its search service. Berlin-based Xyologic indexes 610,000 apps in the App Store, the Android Market, and the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace on a monthly basis. It can rank the number of downloads for each app and publisher in the month, according to Matthaus Krzykowski (an occasional VentureBeat contributor), co-founder of Xyologic.
Read aslo:
http://thoroldedition.ca/Community/NewsDisplay.aspx?c=142344
http://thoroldedition.ca/Community/NewsDisplay.aspx?c=142345
http://innisfilexaminer.ca/Community/NewsDisplay.aspx?c=142347
Підписатися на:
Дописи (Atom)