Exactly and Precisely

Exact Editions began with the goal of delivering magazines, issue by issue, as subscription services for web browsers. For various reasons, some of which I may have forgotten and some of which are deeply ideological, we took the view that the service had to be a pure web service. Every page of every magazine should be rendered as a web page, so that it could both link and be linked to. This is still the underlying, database-driven, system that underpins the apps that Exact Editions delivers for the iPhone O/S.

It is a year since Apple accepted our first app and it appeared in the app store (a year and four days), so it may be a good moment to take stock and review progress. One thing to say, loud and clear, is that we think Apple has built a great system. A system that is great for publishers, good for developers and very good for consumers. Apple gets stick, and its share of mockery, (and we occasionally mutter oaths under our breath when they inexplicably delay approval of a great revision to one of our/their apps) but they are doing a great job. Thank you Apple and thank you also for designing and building the iPad! The iPad is the crowning glory of the system that Apple has constructed and it is going to be very good for magazine publishers.

Exactly was our first app and it remains in some respects the lynch-pin of our offering. Through it anyone can read sample digital magazines on the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad and they can access their own Exact Editions account to read the current and archived issues of magazines that they subscribe to. We have been steadily adding functionality to Exactly in the course of the year. Six months ago we added content sync-ing so that the latest issue in an account could be stored on the iPhone/iPod Touch. This ability to sync has greatly improved the readability and speed of interaction with the apps on phones. Currently we have a further improved version of Exactly with the Apple approval process and this will allow double-page spread viewing and navigation on the iPad. Exactly will continue to improve as we move forward and as the Apple O/S develops -- multi-tasking is one of the features that Apple-followers are looking for in the imminent release of OS/4.

Exactly is a lynchpin in the Exact Editions product offering, but from our initial exploration of the iPhone platform we had taken the view that most magazines will benefit from having their own 'branded' apps in the iTunes app store. We have recently started viewing this complementary development of branded apps as a kind of co-relative of the Exactly proposition. Whereas Exactly allows the user and the subscriber to read and access her magazine subscriptions on the iPhone platform exactly as digital counterparts to the print subscription, the branded apps solution allows the publisher to project the title precisely branded for the iTunes market place. For the consumer a branded app works precisely as the Exactly app works, but with better branding for a particular magazine or title. But for the publisher the branded apps project the PRECISE brand associated with the magazine (or book).

Exactly is a 'white label' solution, it is neutral between the brands of the magazines that might be viewed through it, but the precisely 'branded apps' target and carry the design of the particular magazine. We are not going to make the 'precisely' label even a sub-brand for Exact Editions, because we think that the specific brands for the magazine itself is what matters to the integrity and brandedness of magazines. Precisely is an extension of the underlying Exact Editions app platform, a non-brand or place-holder for magazines that need their own brand in the iTunes economy. And that is the key point about the 'precisely' proposition, a magazine app which is branded for the magazine itself can be moved into the iTunes app store, with its own price, its own content offering, its own front cover etc....The magazine publisher who can place the magazine directly in the iTunes app store takes advantage of the existing brand recognition of the magazine itself and by selling subscriptions through the efficient Apple system the brand is of course further developed. Having the magazine directly in the iTunes app store, means that the magazine app can be sampled and bought by the 70 million people who already have iPhone O/S devices. The magazine sits directly in iTunes and there is no need for the subscriber to come to the content via the Exact Editions web service.

There are some additional immediate gains from this approach. First, the magazine app can be sampled (and in this way the App store becomes a very effective digital kiosk where some parts of the magazine can be browsed before the title is bought). Second, magazine subscriptions can be sold as 30-day subscriptions, which is a huge advantage because the iTunes market is still quite sticky about buying apps for $15 or $30 (typical prices for annual subscriptions) but much more accommodating about buying subscriptions (albeit only for 30 days) at the price of $1.99 or $2.99 that might seem appropriate to a publisher who sells print subs at $15/30. The Apple system of in-app purchasing works fine, and the low threshold for subs and renewals at modest prices are huge advantages of the iTunes e-commerce system. Apple is getting a lot of this stuff right!

A Summary of the Strengths of the Exactly/Precisely Platform

Exactly has:

1. Full digital fidelity for magazine issues and archives
2. Interactivity and in-page and in-issue navigation (live links for urls, phone numbers etc)
3. Search
4. Offline syncing
5. iPad and iPhone support

Precisely has all of that from Exactly and more:

1. Full digital fidelity for magazine issues and archives
2. Interactivity and in-page and in-issue navigation (live links for urls, phone numbers etc)
3. Search
4. Offline syncing
5. iPad and iPhone support
6. Branded app name
   
7. Branded icon
8. Branded splash screen
9. Branded app-store presence
   
10. Current issue preview
11. In-app purchase
12. 30-day subscriptions
13. Data on consumer up-take
    
14. Revenues from iTunes
    

That is all rather a big deal for magazines that want to have their own direct presence in the iTunes economy. The Exactly/Precisely platform can get a magazine up and running in the app store within two or three weeks (allow at least one week for the approval process), and most magazines which look for a strong consumer presence should be doing that now! However, we do emphasise to our partner publishers that we are offering them a branded solution from an underlying technology platform. We are not building customised app solutions. Sure there are plenty of choices and there are many issues where there can be some fine-tuning, but the platform is database driven and largely automated. It works the way it works.

Exactly and precisely that way.

Exactly Reviewed Ecstatically?

AppShouter has one of those reviews that tells you the reviewer really enjoyed him/herself.

As a journalism major, I was thrilled, perhaps ecstatic is a better word, for how I felt when I came across this app. Exactly is literally like having a newsstand in the palm of your hand. It is amazing. I can’t put it down!
.....................

The interface is also easy to navigate as it looks a lot like the jukebox feature of iTunes. Stroke left or right to turn pages, double tap the screen to zoom…I could go on, but I am sure you get the picture. Exactly is easy! I’ll also say, that as a journalist, in an industry that is continually pooling resources and charging more and more for content, Exactly is definitely a friend to my pocketbook. I cannot thank it enough.

Thank you Yantezia P for having some fun with the Exactly App.

PageFlow on the iPhone

I have been taking another look at PageFlow in the Exactly App on the iPhone. Here are a few screenshots taken while using the App to skim through the current issue of Dazed & Confused:

Starting at the frontcover

By stroking the pages you pull them across the screen

Picking up the bead on the slider is a way of zipping through the magazine

The slider bar indicates how far through you are (here 98/132pp)

Exploring this PageFlow is a most enjoyable experience, but it is also leading me to think some more about the uses and advantages of pagination in the magazines and books that we read as digital editions.

1. First, a note of thanks to Apple. The new o/s 3.0 for the iPhone is nifty and is making Apps like Exactly much faster and more fluid. Exactly must be using a fair amount of computation to throw those perspectival views of pages through the small screen at a rapid rate. The images in PageFlow mode are only thumbnails, but they are after all images...
2. The Exactly App provides the page-flow view of the publication when the iPhone is oriented 90° counterclock-wise. This is 'natural' to the extent that the horizontal iPhone is appropriate for an open book/magazine. But it is very handy that the device can also be used (the other way up) for reading a selected page with a full horizontal screen (more space for long lines, which one finds in magazines and large format books).
3. It turns out that Exactly needs to know whether pages are recto or verso..... it is funny the way that even small corners, and seemingly recondite corners, of our traditional understanding of what a book is, turn out to be important. The reason in this case is that the way Exactly works, recto and verso pages have different perspective views projected on the screen, verso pages only flow on the left of the screen and the recto flow on the right, as is only to be expected! Of course that matters, but who would have thought that mattered when we started out. Why (in abstract) should digital editions care about recto and verso?
   
4. This idea of a magazine or book with its PageFlow coursing through the device is compelling. So it is completely appropriate that the pages are indeed flowing into and 'out of' the device as the App is being used. The magazine is not stored on the device. The cloud is delivering the flow and, although pumping out richly illustrated pages may look like an 'expensive' solution for a mobile reader, the fact of cloud-based delivery means that what was expensive is now 'cheap'. The iPhone is turning out to be a general-purpose device which is wonderfully complementary to cloud-based services.
   
5. Although the Exactly App does not store the magazine or book on the iPhone, it does 'remember' where it was the last time the App was used. This ability for the App to open again at the page (in PageFlow mode if that is where the reader was) is a charming and personal touch. The reality of books and magazines is that we remember where we are in them, and if our software does this for us that is a lot better than dog-earing the paperback.
   

Twittering Friends and eMail Friends

One of the really great things about Twitter is the way that it enables you to build up real, but virtual, and in some cases one-sided, friendships with people in other countries that you would otherwise never have met. I now have about 30 such Twitter friends (as well as 100+ Twitter acquaintances) whose postings I usually look out for. Here are a few of them, in an East to West order: Virginie Clayssen, I like that her tweets are mostly in French, Ian Davis, whose technical tweets are worth attention, Eoin Purcell, whose taste in sandwiches is probably reliable,, Jose Antonio Furtado, with an unrivalled stream of topical epublishing tweets, @Personanondata, who should probably be forgiven for being a Man U supporter, Fred Wilson, a NYC VC with lots of ideas, @MikeCane whose tweet stream is sometimes too fast and fran/phrenetic for me, Don Linn who has a dry sense of humour and a touch of Damon Runyon in his tweets, KatMeyer who has a Pacific Coast style of tweeting, as does DannySullivan (roller blades) and Kirk Biglione (shades and cocktails), who in typical Californian style, between them know so much more about search engines and DRM than I could ever get to grips with.

Thanks then to my Twittering friends and twitting aquaintances (are there really 124 of them?). I learn a lot from them every day. This is all by way of also thanking an email friend (Alain P) who sent me a link today to a blog post by Bill Hill, all about advertising in newspapers and magazines. I like this line in the blog:

Web technology today doesn't yet support ads you really want to view.

Bill Hill thinks that getting this right -- making ads really glossy and seductively attractive is one of the next big tricks for advertising on the web. I wonder if he thinks that this free and open service from Dazed & Confused is yet doing that? The Exact Editions platform is pretty close to delivering high quality photo-shoot ads such as are found in Dazed & Confused in such a way that you really want to look at the ads. These rich visual ads are of course even more seductive to subscribers who get the full size page. Put this rich visual delivery onto the iPhone and the fact that all the phone numbers in the directory are clickable, is a step which delivers exceptional value to customers and advertisers alike. I dont think magazine and newspaper publishers have yet taken stock of the fact that iPhone digital editions will greatly leverage the value of direct response from the ads themselves. See this direct customer response from printed phone numbers in the Exactly App video. The screen of an iPhone is already crisp and bright enough to deliver a really good view of a glossy ad, the trick which the advertising and publishing industries now need to solve, is how to make those phone numbers as valuable to the advertisers as they are convenient to readers. This is not a big step.

Dazed & Confused in page-flow mode in the Exactly App

Exactly: A Magazine App for the iPhone

Exactly is a free App for the iPhone which can be downloaded from the Apple iTunes Store here.

If you have an iPhone and are in the magazine business you should download it and check it out with the hundreds of free sample magazine issues that are open to any user of the Exact Editions store.

If you dont have an iPhone this short (c. 5 minute) video will give you a good overview of the power of digital magazines on this platform.

There are three major advances which magazine publishers should focus on:

1. First, PageFlow (similar to CoverFlow for CD collections) allows users a rapid and compelling way to browse the whole magazine and feel its richness and visual quality. You need to see this segment of the video for this alone.
2. Second, all the phone numbers, email addresses, web links, and Post Codes (Zip Codes) will be live and clickable and this gives the user/reader many more ways in which to respond to and interact with the magazine and its advertisers. This is a digital magazine which is much more responsive and dynamic than any 'page turning' or 'brochure-ware' version that one may have seen a few years ago. (Small qualification: a few of these links may not work. This will almost certainly be because the page, or the area of the page, on which the 'dumb' phone number appears, was vectorised before the PDF was printed. In this case information is wiped from the file before the Exact Editions database has access to the information).
   
3. Finally, this highly interactive digital extension to the magazine really just IS the magazine in a digital format. Because the Exact Editions process is largely automated, it is -- in principle -- rather straightforward and efficient to create a digital version of any magazine. In fact we will do a sample issue that can be trialled through the Exactly App for free (offer open to all mainstream magazines). It also follows that the existing audience will recognise and respond to the magazine in its digital form pretty much as they do in print. There is not a big learning curve for users (there is a small learning step as they figure out how to use the touch screen and the orientation of the device -- but this is the kind of 'playing' that iPhone users like to do with Apps).

This last point is particularly important to magazines because of the crucial importance of branding in the magazine world. Magazine publishers often talk about their digital activities as 'brand extension', but the prospect of being able to simply park your magazine (with all its back issues) on the iPhone platform is really as much a matter of brand consolidation as of brand extension. Publishers have to do this to defend and to extend their presence in the consumer's mind-share.

The key importance of branding and the need for magazines to develop the value of their brands (usually corresponding to the magazine's title: Vogue, The New Yorker, Wired etc are all bigger brands than their owner Conde Nast). Enabling a publisher to put their own branded magazine App directly in the iPhones App store, and for sale in the Apple e-commerce environment will be our next step. Stay tuned.

Why the iPhone is a Better Reading Environment III

The Berkshire Encyclopedia of China in coverflow mode

The Page-turning feature that one frequently finds on Flash solutions for digital magazines or digital book readers, has always struck me as a dire software innovation. Unecessary, slow, boring -- because the page turning is always the same experience. Gimmicky: I have even seen versions which emulate turning a creaking page of parchment! An example of software ingenuity which is orthogonal to the direction of travel. I suspect that the method was originally introduced because Flash can be quite slow with large book files and the page turning covers up the download delays.

So, I was not overjoyed to see the first Dutch review of Exactly comparing the App's 'pageflow' feature to page-turning Flash catalogues (read the review in Google's englished version here). The review is otherwise OK, (I think its quite polite, but Google or I may have misunderstood something), but this seems to be a false comparison. Pageflow has some crucial advantages which page-turning does not match:

1. The context of the book or the magazine is preserved in pageflow because the reader actually sees the pages flowing past in rapid sequence (it will be rapid if the connection is good) This is giving us a lot of information and it is preserving and in some respects enhancing the utility of the print object. The codex was a great invention! With a book you have a sense of 'how far' through the book you are. Using the slider button in Exactly you can actually navigate, slide through, the whole package and you can't do that with the merely serial page-turn in Flash.
2. Although thumbnail pages do not give you enough detail to read a page properly, they give a surprising amount of information, even in books that are mostly full of plain text. The advertisements in magazines or illustrations in fancy books are clearly very handy in the thumbnail mode.
3. Connected point: some of the puritanical types who argue for eBooks, seem to assume that the only point of a book is to read it. Perhaps because we have also lived with magazines, we think that skimming is good. There are many ways of reading a book or a magazine, and reading some of it and skimming the rest is OK (in my book). The pageflow mode is ideal for skimming. Please skim with a good conscience using pageflow.
   
4. Final point: the ergonomics of the iPhone. Taking advantage of the iPhone's shape and size, pageflow enables the iPhone to be useful in different ways according to the way you orient it. The portrait mode (right way up) is obviously the right way to read a portrait page. With Exactly the reader has two landscape options, 90° anticlockwise which puts the App and the iPhone in pageflow mode, and 90°clockwise which gives the best landscape mode for reading close text. I hope that this option set (which I have only as yet seen in Exactly) becomes a general convention for iPhone Apps that want to use pageflow or coverflow. Notice that the small size of the iPhone makes this use of orientation as giving alternative modes of navigating the text an even easier and more attractive option. I am sure that the mooted iPhone/tablet will also support these features and gestures, but if Apple had started with a tablet the size of the MacBook Air, we might not have seen orientation as such a strong element in their 'touch' interface.

Using pageflow to find a specific page

Swing the iPhone to read the page selected

Once again the small size of the iPhone is, in a curious way an advantage, in that it has pushed Apple and App developers to innovate. The Kindle did not originally offer a landscape mode, but perhaps under the influence of the iPhone it now does. It is a matter of some interest to me that the 4th side of the iPhone (180°rotation), the portrait mode -- wrong way up, has not yet been found a use within the Exactly App. Perhaps this should become a way of navigating a library, of switching between books or magazine titles within a subscription? I am sure that the development team will think of a better use and a better solution.... but turning the book upside down surely has its uses?

A New iPhone App: "Exactly"

Apple yesterday accepted the digital editions App that we have been developing for some months. It is now has in the App Store. Exactly is the Free Exact Editions App, from which any title on the Exact Editions platform can be read on the iPhone.

Search for 'Exactly' in the iPhone App store and you will find it there, with this brief description:

Exactly brings magazines and books to the iPhone in their original full-colour format. Each page is delivered just as it appeared in the print edition, but with live links to web sites, phone numbers and more. Access free content from over 80 titles, or use your www.exacteditions.com subscription to read the latest issues on the day they're published.

• Pinch or double tap pages to zoom.
• Swipe pages left and right, or tap the page edges to flip to next/previous page
• Use the animated thumbnail view to flick through the pages.
• Tap any page links to web sites, email addresses, phone numbers or maps.
• Tap contents-page links to jump to a particular article.
• Network connection required.

Free, gratis, etc

More stuff will be added to the App in the coming months, and we expect to deliver Branded Apps through which magazines and books (maybe newspapers?) will be sold directly on subscription through the App store. This is an exciting new stage in the development of the Exact Editions reading platform. We think the iPhone has a lot going for it and we aim to make it work well with digital editions.

Maybe the coolest feature of the Exactly App is the way that it gives the user a new way of accessing a publication. 'Pageflow', similar to the 'coverflow' with which users can skim their CD covers on the iPhone. The 'pageflow' feature comes when the iPhone is twisted 90° anticlockwise.

Pageflow of the magazine Opera

When the iPhone swings back to the portrait mode the publication will be open at the page reached in skimming the pageflow. If you close the Exactly App and then open it a few hours or days later, it will open at the title that you last looked at, exactly at the page you had reached when last reading the magazine or book. I find this most helpful. The framework Apple have built for making these Apps is ingenious. I am sure that there will be lots more good stuff coming, from Apple and from the Exact development team.