magazines

Top news-reading apps for the iOS touch screen

The iPad is great for many things, but one of the best uses for me is relaxing on a Saturday and flipping through the latest news. There are plenty of basic news apps that grab all the latest headlines for you, but some offer a sleek layout that lets you browse the news using an elegant interface.

I recently reviewed Trapit for iPad, a fairly new newsreader you can train to give you the latest stories about any subject. You simply search for a keyword and Trapit makes a "Trap" of the latest news stories on that subject … Read more

Lights turning off at Nintendo Power?

Before Google, many young'uns (such as myself) relied on magazines, telephone hotlines, and other old-world forms of communication to learn more about upcoming video games, hints, or cheats. One favored source of Nintendo game information for many people, Nintendo Power, will end its 24-year run this year, reports Ars Technica.

Supposedly, the magazine's parent company, Future Publishing, could not strike up a new contract with Nintendo to keep the publication going. An Ars source cites Nintendo as "difficult to work with," uninterested in expanding online content for the Nintendo Power brand, and even unwilling to retake the magazine from Future (which gained rights to the magazine in 2007 from Nintendo).

Future Publishing did not immediately respond to CNET's request for comment. … Read more

With AV receivers is sound quality more important than features?

A couple of years ago I wrote a blog post about AV receiver feature glut. Today's receiver manufacturers put an inordinate amount of time and money into designing feature-laden receivers, and feature glut might be part of the reason why today's receivers don't sound as good as receivers did in the 1980s. I get it, today's consumers rarely compare one receiver's sound with another receiver, but they can count HDMI connections, so that's where the money goes.

It's not that Denon, Onkyo, Pioneer, Sony, and Yamaha aren't trying to make great-sounding receivers, … Read more

Steve Jobs one of Time's 20 'most influential Americans'

Steve Jobs has been named as one of the 20 most influential Americans of all time by Time magazine, placing his name with iconic historical greats such as George Washington, Alexander Graham Bell, and Albert Einstein.

The list, a chronological listing of "the trailblazers, visionaries and cultural ambassadors who defined a nation," refers to Jobs as the "high priest of the digital age." In a brief summary, Time recounts some of the career highs and lows of the late Apple co-founder.

Jobs was a visionary whose great genius was for design: he pushed and pushed to … Read more

Is 'Netflix-for-magazines' app Next Issue worth the money?

I'm a magazine junkie. I grew up reading titles like Games, Omni, and Starlog, then moved on to every computer magazine I could get my hands on. (Show of hands: Who remembers Amiga World? PC/Computing?)

Eventually I started writing for them, and even went so far as to start my own magazine: Tap, a PalmPilot enthusiast rag that later became Handheld Computing. Good times.

Needless to say, it was with great interest that I learned of Next Issue, a Netflix-style magazine service that's now available for Android and iPad.

Although a growing number of magazines offer their … Read more

How Next Issue can rescue magazine publishing

Yesterday I posted a review of the news aggregator News360, which I like as a product but fear for as a business. I feel this way about a lot of content aggregation plays.

Zite, for example, was acquired by CNN, otherwise who knows where it'd be. And then there's the heavy-hitter, Flipboard: can $60 million in funding make this business work? If not, it's overpriced for acquisition.

But there is one professional content aggregator that is not just a great product, but a nice business, born of cooperation between rivals. It's also possibly the only way … Read more

Next Issue magazine app lands on iPad

Earlier this year, Next Issue Media introduced a unique approach that could revolutionize the way digital magazines are sold.

In what has been referenced as a Netflix-for-magazines-like scheme, tablet owners can essentially pay $10-$14 a month for all the magazines that they want to read -- not just one title but any of the "premiere" titles from the likes of Conde Nast, Time Inc,. and Hearst.

Initially, the platform has only been available for Android tablets running Honeycomb. CEO Morgan Guenther noted in an interview last week that the service already has approximately 40,000 accounts signed … Read more

Flipboard is more than just a news reader

If you're not familiar with Flipboard, it's a magazine-style news reader that has been wildly popular on iOS for quite some time. What gives it extra cool points is its ability to handle social media. See, Flipboard can integrate your social accounts into its feed, and present tweets or other status updates just as it would news stories or blog posts (complete with images and video thumbnails). Couple this with Flipboard's gorgeous tiled interface, and it's easy to see why the app is such a fan favorite.

With its clean design, vibrant display of photographic tiles, … Read more

Time turns page on iPad subscriptions

Skype's got ads, Vizio's got PCs, and we got issues (a whole Newsstand full of 'em):

Time Inc. has had a change of heart with Apple and will now begin selling magazine subscriptions through iPad's Newsstand app. Previous apps for Time Inc. magazines, like Sports Illustrated, only allowed for one issue to be purchased at a time. It also gave print subscribers free access.

Last year, Time Inc. opposed how Apple handled subscriptions, such as taking a 30 percent cut of sales and not releasing data on subscribers. But since then, Apple has lets readers opt-in to … Read more