woodwing

Digital magazines

A lot has happened since I wrote my last post here. In case you didn't notice it yet, the last couple of months we have been very busy working on our digital magazines solution. Now that we finally have our hands on the device (we were crazy enough to be waiting in line at the 3rd of April at 6 AM), lets look back at the last couple of months with a quick peek of what's to come.

TIME Magazine

TIME Magazine was chosen as a pilot project that we started working on some 2 months ago. Time managed to quickly roll out Enterprise 7, on top of which the digital magazine solution is build. Starting with just one section, a week later a complete magazine was produced and sent to Apple for review. Last weeks we have seen massive improvements in performance allowing you to quickly flip through the magazine without hiccups. The vertical view evolved from a plain html view to a page with a beautifully designed header and body text that can be scaled by pinching. A new, digital magazine only, section called TimeFrames was added. Full screen images, with a small hint to scroll down to show the caption. Advertisers were very eager to be part of the first release and came up with creative solutions to present themselves. Check out the beautiful Korean Air ad in the 5 April issue to see what I mean.

Scrum

This was also the first project done using an Agile process, called Scrum. No acronym, but taken from rugby. Instead of running into each other head first, it provides a way to run short and structured development cycles. For me as a product manager it is easy to keep track of the progress, and allows us to quickly change direction when needed. For developers it helps to get a clear focus and makes sure they can work without being disturbed.

The iPad

Although developing for a device without actually having one in our hands proved to be quite a challenge, our App runs great now. The iPad is an amazing device and is perfectly suited for reading magazines. Although other hardware vendors have announced tablets (HP, WePad), I doubt they will be able to provide the ease of use, let alone the integration with the App store that is needed to make these devices a success.

Feedback

So far feedback has been great, both for the iPad App and our creation tools. At our Open House more than 50 people showed up, while we only announced it two days in advance. The first webinar had over 500 guests joining in. Our workshops where we teach you how to build a digital version of your magazine are also very popular. Within two days we show you how to build it and you'll walk home with an iPad running your own magazine.

More to come

We will be releasing a beta version soon, followed by the first public release in Q2. This will also contain in-App purchases and our so-called hotspot feature. With that you can build menu structures or image maps with pop-ups, all in InDesign. Many more features will be added as we go along. Think of search, subscriptions, and social media integration. Can't wait to get it out on the market and see what others will come up with using our software.