Digital Magazines News Wire | 11.19.09

Conde Nast goes digital on iPhone, Quad adds digital publishing services, more.

By FOLIO: Staff
Thursday, November 19, 2009

GQ Goes Digital on iPhone; Launches New Initiative for Digital Magazines
In conjunction with its Men of the Year issue, Conde Nast officially released this week a mobile iPhone/iPod touch application of GQ.

The app goes beyond mobile access to content, acting like a “virtual magazine,” with a digital replica of the magazine with live links to advertisers’ products, links to read reviews and/or purchase music, video and more. “This medium enables new levels of advertiser integration. Not only will all print ads be replicated in the app, but we’ve sold special integrated sponsorship packages to Grey Goose and Gillette,” GQ vice president and publisher Peter King Husinger told the New York Daily News.

According to GQ editor Jim Nelson, readers trust GQ to keep them “plugged into what’s going on in the world of style and in men’s lives. This allows us to reach more people in new and different ways.”

The app is available for $2.99 from the App Store on iPhone and iPod touch, or here.

Meanwhile, Conde Nast also announced a plan to develop magazines for the next generation of digital devices. The publisher has formed a strategic alliance with Adobe to create new technologies and products, including a magazine application built on the Adobe AIR runtime, which lets developers use Web technologies to build rich Internet applications that can run outside the browser on multiple operating systems. The app is expected to be deployable to devices including laptops and nextbooks, next generation smartphones and the electronic color slate devices that will debut next year.

Wired magazine will be the first product to test the new initiative.

Quad Partners to Expand Digital Publishing Services
Sussex, Wisconsin-based Quad/Graphics recently partnered with YUDU Media, making the magazine printer a minority stakeholder in YUDU and adds the company’s digital publishing solution to its portfolio of services.

Quad plans to call the new service the Quad/Graphics Digital Edition. It offers video, audio, Flash-rich active media, zoom, search and archive functions, bookmarking, digital catalog order forms (that integrate and connect to a shopping cart), digital rights management, third part subscription/payment functions, and printing.

According to Richard Stephenson, CEO of U.K.-based YUDU, the partnership “will allow us to expand aggressively worldwide, especially in the fiercely competitive U.S. market.”

ALM Launches Digital-Only Publication
The Real Estate Media Group, a division of ALM, has launched Distressed Assets Investor, a digital magazine/e-newsletter serving commercial real estate, financial and investment professionals.

In addition to text, DAI features embedded video and active links to related content. Its interface allows readers to use multiple tools to read, scan and search content, the publisher said. Versions for mobile devices and an audio reader option are also available.

“We believe this newsletter will deliver a solid, interested audience and platform for practitioners interested in promoting their capabilities,” real estate media group vice president Michael Desiato said in a statement.

ALM also publishes Real Estate Forum and GlobeSt.com.

Zinio to Roll Out New Services
San Francisco-based Zinio is expecting to release two new product offerings.

One is the newest version of its reader (Reader 4.0—also called “AIR”). The second is a “state of the art” iPhone application. Further details weren’t immediately available.

Zinio recently released its first-ever gift card program, allowing users to buy $15, $25 and $50 “gifts” through its global newsstand.