Creating moving pictures on the iPad

Following up on my posting on Tuesday,about Video and iPad, the killer content for magazines? I've now found the featurette about the making of this content for Viv, an all digital magazine.

VIV Mag Featurette: A Digital Magazine Motion Cover and Feature for the iPad from Alexx Henry on Vimeo.

Of particular poignancy to me is Andrew Gant's narrated comments about the content on the iPad being "living art" and "This is not motion for motion's sake. This is still print in spirit. Motion allows us to enhance the story, just like photography, but gives us the ability to take it one step further".

Publishing & social media

With the recent announcement that Condé Nast Digital Britain (their UK New Media division) has hired a Social Media strategist to elevate its digital brands online, I've got to conclude that glossy publishing seems to be taking social media more seriously these days.

Now you might say that with online forums and the ability to comment on all manner of articles in different Condé Nast digital titles, that they have been "embracing social media since the beginning" or other such stuff. But this is clearly an obvious step for them towards embracing the conversation online.

Yes other publishing areas have been getting into the benefits of social media for a while back. One obvious approach that takes the two to in a new direction is True/Slant, run by a former news executive at America Online who worked at a variety of publications, including The Wall Street Journal. It covers a wide range of topics, such as politics, culture, sports, business, health, science and food.

It launched with 65 journalists, or "knowledge experts," assigned to specific topics who are only paid a small amount, but the aim is that they each become a "minipublisher" under the True/Slant brand. However they are also offered a share of advertising and sponsorship revenues generated from their individual pages (and even equity has been mentioned).

The site has been running since April last year, but has been criticised for being boring (by Paul Boutin at The Industry Standard) but it has provided some insight such as when Facebook changes their account privacy settings, therefore exposing the profiles of Facebook's executive team. In itself a great piece of opportunist journalism...

Wired magazine UK launch

If you read The Register's review of the magazine that makes a long awaited (well, by me for 2 months at least) re-appearance after 12 years you'd think again about buying the print copy.
Note:
It seems that at least some of the content in the taster edition is taken from past US issues.

But at least the new website seems well done, doesn't it? http://www.wired.co.uk/
Errrr... maybe, although I assume the blogs and other additonal content that the US version has are on their way soon? I hope so!

Wired UK Magazine - When will it arrive?

In the middle of last year, I was very glad to hear that Wired Magazine was planning on relaunching in the UK. (For those who didn't know it had been here already, it originally launched in 1995 and closed a few years later by Conde Nast).

But since the publishing of a few articles (e.g. here in Digital Lifecycles) announcing it re-birth we've heard relatively little more about it ... until now.
An article in Press Gazette says that it will arrive on newstands (and online) on 2nd April 2009:
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=42863&c=1

(Note: Potentially still edited by David Rowan and the digital version by Holden Frith from the Times Online)

Well... lets hope this is correct and that it's the grown-up technology magazine we started reading back 14 years ago.. and doesn't instantly lose paper like its USA cousin reportedly has.


Oh, one final note:
You'd have thought they would at least have put something up on http://www.wired.co.uk/, even a link through to UK-specific articles on http://www.wired.com/ would have helped. (They do own the domain)