Tag Archives: subscriptions

Aug 14

Digital Newsstand Zinio Offers Customers Bundles, ...

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with the rise in popularity of digital magazines, consumers have still missed out on the perks that go along with print subscriptions. Aside from the ability to bundle their subscriptions, digital subscribers can now take advantage of some of the offers like subscription gifting, renewal incentive pricing, and discounts on other titles for being a subscriber of a similar magazine. a recent announcement from Zinio has opened up those options for subscribers.

“It’s been really interesting because in the print world the publishing industry has built such a great history of benefits and features, but for some reason when everyone went digital, that didn’t come with it,” explained Zinio’s Chief Marketing Officer Jeanniey Mullen in an interview with GoodeReader. “That bundling and price incentives are now there. It’s so early that we still consider the digital consumer experience to be in its early stages, but there are so many people exploring what the digital magazine experience can do for them.”

“We focus on understanding what people are purchasing when they buy with Zinio. we can see what other titles customers are likely to purchase once they subscribe to one title, so it helps us make connections for the publishers. we really love doing that because what we see from the consumers’ side is we’re building relationships and allowing consumers to explore their passions through their magazines.”

Zinio currently supports over 6,000 magazine titles from every country and recently announced it had made its 1000th fully interactive digital issue.

“There are about five demographics of magazine readers. the oldest demographic of magazine subscribers really want the magazine the way they remember it, all the way down to millennials who’ve never seen a magazine other than what they’re seeing on a tablet with the features. We’ve had to work very carefully with publishers to strategize on what kind of features are best for their target audience. No other digital magazine platform had reached that 1000 threshold.”

Digital Newsstand Zinio Offers Customers Bundles, Incentive Pricing

Jul 17

Hands On with Apple’s iOS Podcasts App

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To date, podcast support on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad has been very fragmented and poor, a sad state of affairs for the company that created the medium’s namesake device and then gave Adam Curry, Leo LaPorte and Molly Wood wings. although there were whispers that a stand alone podcast app would arrive with iOS 6 this Fall, Apple has stepped up and delivered the app “early.”

To use Podcasts 1.0 you will need an iPhone (3GS or newer), iPod touch (third-generation or newer) or iPad (any) running iOS 5.1 or later. Syncing podcasts to a Mac or PC requires iTunes 10.6.3 or later, as well as a Wi-Fi or 3G connection.

That said, if you have set up iTunes to automatically sync podcasts downloaded on your Mac [sic] to your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad, it will list those items in the new Podcasts app. Contrariwise, if you haven’t set up automatic podcast syncing in iTunes on your computer, the Podcasts app won’t even list your subscriptions.

However, with syncing set up, not only do your existing subscriptions automatically populate, you can listen to a podcast on your iPad and then pick it up seamlessly on your Mac, and vice versa.

When it comes to finding content, you can’t browse the full iTunes Podcast Catalog within the Podcast app itself — tap the “Catalog” to do that. this, however, kicks you out to the iTunes app — an inelegant way to do things, but more on that in a minute.

Podcasts 1.0: Top Stations

Scrolling in two directions and many icons don’t load, not exactly intuitive.

Browsing Top Stations, Apple’s recommended podcast listing, is a hit and miss experience. That is, browsing is structured so that you can simultaneously side scroll (left to right) through podcast categories and subcategories (i.e. Arts: Fasion & Beauty, etc.).

The miss here, though, is that checking individual podcasts requires you to scroll down and, given that many of the icons aren’t showing up, you don’t know what you’re looking unless you tap the “i” (i.e. information) button. There’s also no way to how many items are available in a subcategory — sometimes two or three, sometimes more — until you bump into the last podcast.

Howwever, individual stations are, in fact, individual podcast listings and not stations per se. so, whereas you will come across TWiT’s iPad Today, that listing doesn’t tie into the TWiT Network’s more than a score stable of podcasts.

To locate TWiT, 5X5, CNet, G4, etc. network podcasts en masse, you must tap the Catalog button, which kicks you out to iTunes. When you subscribe to an individual podcast, back you go to Podcasts — lather, rinse and repeat for each podcast you subscribe to, inelegant.

For folks with higher capacity i-things, you can configure individual shows to download automatically.

Podcasts 1.0: Playback

When playing an audio podcast, tap the avatar to reveal the above skeumorphism.

Another (potential) compromise is the display of video podcasts. Yes, audio-only podcasts get played within the Podcasts app and you can watch the above skeumorphic reel-to-reel deck (!!!) go through the motions.

Podcasts has been very inconsistent in how video playback works. Sometimes, and I can’t get a handle on what the variable is, video podcasts only play as audio regardless of whether or not they’re fully downloaded, streamed and/or synced from my Mac.

Right now, it’s working well and I am smiling.

If you have difficulty — make sure you’ve downloaded and/or sync first — then you’ll need to leave Podcasts, navigate to the iOS Video app and view it there — not intuitive, not seamless, but it gets the job done.

Yes, this is a version 1.0 app and there’s plenty of room for improvement, notably video podcast playback as well as finding/subscribing to new podcasts. for what it’s worth, Stitcher (free podcast app) users will want to stay where they are.

Nevertheless, Podcasts 1.0 is a very, very welcome addition to my iPad’s homescreen — I can’t wait until Apple finishes it (some more)…

What’s your take?

Hands On with Apple’s iOS Podcasts App

Jun 01

Popular Science Accepts Apple’s Terms, ...

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NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — popular Science has become apparently the first magazine to accept the iPad subscription plan that Apple detailed this morning.

People who want to subscribe to popular Science’s iPad edition can now do so by tapping a button within the app itself.

popular Science had originally planned to introduce iPad edition subscriptions last summer, but Apple and magazine publishers wound up spending the rest of the year wrangling over terms for a subscription mechanism. Magazine publishers wanted the same subscriber information that they’ve always used to pitch related products and describe subscribers to magazine advertisers, but Apple didn’t want to share that information.

under the plan Apple announced today, publishers who sell an iPad edition subscription on their own websites or through direct mail can have all the consumer information they gather. But when subscribers sign up within iTunes, Apple will keep their information to itself — unless they specifically opt in. Apple will also keep 30% of the revenue in that case, but that’s not publishers’ sticking point. They want to know who their subscribers are and how to reach them.

People who subscribe to popular Science’s iPad app from within the app are greeted with a prompt headed “Share your information?”

“The publisher would like your name, email and ZIP code so they can send you messages about related products in accordance with their privacy policy,” the dialogue box says. Subscribers then must choose between “Allow” and “Don’t allow.”

Some publishers are afraid that very few consumers will press “Allow,” but popular Science called this a good start.

“What we are excited about is the fact that people will be able to opt in and share their email addresses and allow us to communicate with them,” said Gregg Hano, VP-group publisher of the Bonnier Technology Group, whch includes popular Science. “In this evolving space, we think this is a great move in the right direction.”

The magazine can also go back to subscribers and ask them again later whether they’d like to share their information, mr. Hano said. “We look forward to having a closer relationship with both our readers and our partners in Apple to continue to grow this ecosystem and this business,” he said.

Time Inc., the publisher of giant titles such as People and Sports Illustrated, suggested Tuesday that it is not ready to accept the subscription plan that Apple has described. “It seems like Apple is taking a step towards our position on subscription offerings, but the announcement also raises many questions around consumer data we would need to work through and agree on,” a spokesman said.

Another publisher suggested that it, too, wasn’t satisfied yet. “We’re waiting to see how Apple’s sub model will evolve before jumping in,” an executive there said.

Popular Science is selling its new iPad subscriptions for more than a print subscription costs — $14.99 per year for a limited time and $19.99 per year after that, compared with $12 for 12 issues in print. That’s still a reduction from popular Science’s ambition last year to price iPad subscriptions closer to $29.95, arguing that it would be easy to lower prices if necessary.

The subscription will renew automatically every year unless the subscriber cancels it. a single issue of popular Science still costs 4.99 on the iPad.

Follow Nat Ives on Twitter.

Popular Science Accepts Apple’s Terms, Starts Selling iPad Subscriptions

Jun 01

Cloud business intelligence tools offer SQL Azure ...

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Sometimes, built-in tools don’t cut it. in the case of SQL Azure Reporting, customers may ask about a better tool for analyzing their data, especially if that data resides outside of SQL Azure, Microsoft’s cloud database service. Solution providers can help customers find a good fit in an alternative cloud business intelligence tool.

Indeed, SQL Azure Reporting, Microsoft’s foray into cloud business intelligence (BI), has a significant drawback: Reports can only retrieve data from SQL Azure databases. there are other limitations, including a lack of support for subscriptions, scheduled deliveries or Windows Authentication.

Solution providers can help customers determine which cloud business intelligence tool will work best for their needs…

These drawbacks are enough cause to look for alternative BI services. either that, or invest in the resources necessary to move all of a company’s data into a SQL Azure database — an option not particularly attractive to many organizations, even if they’re already SQL Server converts.

Solution providers can help customers determine which cloud business intelligence tool will work best for their needs and provide services around customizing these tools to produce useful custom reports.

Cloud business intelligence has its advantages

Like any cloud-based tool, BI services have been touted for their flexibility and cost-effectiveness. Organizations of all sizes have access to vast computing and storage resources without having to invest in costly and time-consuming onsite infrastructure.

BI projects can be expensive endeavors, when you take into account the infrastructure and IT resources necessary to support them. With cloud business intelligence services, business users don’t have to rely on IT to set up equipment, generate reports, create dashboards or perform other tasks integral to implementing and supporting such a project. Customers can also save on hardware infrastructure costs.

Cloud business intelligence services allow businesses to acquire the resources necessary to deliver reports when they need them, while paying only for the services they require at the time. this model lets decision-makers respond quickly to changing trends and produce reports that target specific users. As a result, rather than having to implement large, complex projects, organizations can take a piecemeal approach to BI. Managed service providers and cloud providers can set up these solutions for their customers and offer the reports or the BI solution as a service, helping even small businesses take advantage of powerful amounts of data.

Cloud business intelligence can also be an effective solution for geographically dispersed organizations because these services generally deliver better performance worldwide, compared to an on-premises application, which is often restricted to a single location. most cloud-based services have data centers available in various locations around the world. consequently, a global infrastructure is available to any organization using the BI services, which can go a long way in eliminating many of the network bottlenecks inherent in an in-house solution.

Cloud business intelligence is already here

You don’t have to go far to find companies that offer cloud business intelligence services. GoodData Corp. provides a platform that lets customers load and transform data and generate analytical reports. Its services also include collaboration features that let team members work together remotely to analyze and transform data. And its operational dashboards can deliver reports and key metrics based on data from a variety of sources, including cloud-based systems, data integration platforms and on-premises resources.

Another company that offers cloud business intelligence services is Indicee Inc. Its platform includes an application programming interface (API) that lets developers embed complex analytics into their applications that build custom dashboards and reports. the API makes it possible to import and synchronize data that originates from different types of structured files, SQL feeds and other APIs.

PivotLink Corp. also offers cloud business intelligence services through its PivotLink 5 platform, which can deliver reports to mobile devices such as Apple’s iPad, Android phones and the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, making analytic solutions available to remote workers across the globe. the mobile apps available on these platforms provide visual reports based on data from a variety of structured and unstructured data sources.

But just because such services are available doesn’t mean that cloud-based BI is the best alternative for your customers. Solution providers can help customers understand the inherent risk in the loss of control over data. in addition, BI solutions often require a high-degree of customization that makes it necessary to invest significant resources in developing framework for getting meaningful information, even if a BI service is used. but if you can work around such limitations, a cloud-based service can help customers deliver effective BI reporting.

About the author Robert Sheldon is a technical consultant and freelance technology writer. He’s authored numerous books, articles and training material related to Windows, databases, business intelligence and other areas of technology. He’s also published the novel Dancing the River Lightly and the step-by-step guide Ebook Now, and has recently begun working on the 5-Spot ebook travel series. 

Dig Deeper

This was first published in May 2012

Cloud business intelligence tools offer SQL Azure Reporting alternatives

Apr 11

Magazines Introduce a Netflix for Tablet Editions

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the country’s biggest print publishers are introducing a Netflix-style service for magazine tablet editions, offering unlimited titles and issues for a flat monthly fee.

the next Issue Media newsstand

the service, from next Issue Media — a joint venture of Conde Nast, Time Inc., Hearst, Meredith and News Corp. — prices unlimited monthly and biweekly titles at $9.99 per month. A premium version that also includes weeklies costs $14.99 per month. Consumers will read the titles on next Issue Media’s new app.

the service is initially limited to certain Android devices, including the Samsung Galaxy Tab and the Motorola Xoom, but next Issue Media plans to seek Apple’s‘s approval for an iPad version in coming weeks.

Subscriptions to many monthlies’ tablet editions cost $1.99 a month, so consumers could get their money’s worth from the basic $9.99 monthly plan if they read five or more tablet editions.

But consumers who prefer print can still find very competitive pricing there. Fitness magazine is available in print right now, for example, at $5.99 for a whole year. And subscribers to Time Inc. and Conde Nast magazines already get their corresponding tablet editions at no extra cost.

whether all that unnecessarily limits the plan’s appeal or productively protects print editions will depend on your perspective. Wenner Media Chairman Jann Wenner warned last year that publishers might be unnecessarily rushing to tablet editions at the expense of their print products.

But the Netflix-style plan could also expand magazine consumption.

Consumers seem happy enough buying print magazines title by title — much the way they rented or bought DVDs individually before Netflix — but digital delivery’s instant gratification could make a buffet approach more appealing.

“What we know from consumers in other categories is that when they have an option to pay for something on an unlimited basis, they consume more in that category as a result,” said Steve Sachs, exec VP-consumer marketing and sales at Time Inc.

next Issue Media’s new app also lets consumers read each participating magazine’s tablet edition in one place, hopefully eliminating some of the friction that comes with downloading a different app for each magazine and figuring out a new navigation scheme for many.

the monthlies and bimonthlies covered by the basic $9.99 plan are all You, Allure, Better Homes and Gardens, Car and Driver, Coastal Living, Conde Nast Traveler, Cooking Light, Elle, Esquire, Essence, Fitness, Fortune, Glamour, Golf, Health, InStyle, Money, Parents, People en Espanol, People StyleWatch, Popular Mechanics, Real Simple, Southern Living, Sports Illustrated Kids, Sunset, this Old House and Vanity Fair. the weeklies in the premium plan are Entertainment Weekly, People, Sports Illustrated, the New Yorker and Time.

next Issue Media’s app also sells titles on a single-copy basis.

Magazines Introduce a Netflix for Tablet Editions

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Mar 22

VIPRE Internet Security 2012 Review: Better Value ...

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Reviewer Rating:

Pros

    • Proactive in PC protection
    • Good UI
    • Ten-pack is a great value

Cons

    • No parental controls

 

A competitor to products from Symantec, McAfee and Kaspersky, VIPRE Interent Security 2012 offers to safeguard up to 10 PCs for $69.99. the VIPRE suite combines a firewall with protection against malware, including rootkits. Does a lack of parental controls kill the value proposition?

Product Overview

VIPRE is GFI Software’s security solutions line. the VIPRE Internet Security 2012 suite we’re looking at here adds a firewall and anti-spam tools to differentiate it over the base VIPRE Antivirus 2012 product. Prices for VIPRE Internet Security 2012 are as follows (all one-year subscriptions): one computer, $49.95; two computers, $59.95; three to ten computers, $69.95. Two- and three-year licenses are also available. 

Obviously the ten-computer license is the best deal. For a one-year license, the price amounts to about $7 per computer if you install it on ten PCs, much less than the cost of rival suites. the more PCs you own, the sweeter the deal can get. 

The one- and two-computer licenses don’t stack up as well pricewise, considering that a one-year subscription to McAfee Internet Security 2012 for up to three computers costs only $39.95, for example. Yet how does VIPRE’s suite compare with the others in terms of user interface (UI), features, and performance, for instance? Read on to find out.

Download and Installation

An Internet connection is required for the installation. the VIPRE installer pulls the latest files from the company’s website. the install process took significantly longer than expected since the program wanted to perform a quick scan of my computer before completing.  on the other hand, the whole download totaled less than 100MB  — which is relatively small — and it took only five to ten minutes over a standard cable Internet connection.

User Interface (UI)

VIPRE’s UI is somewhat busy. still it’s functional, and it provides a clear overview of the status of your computer. I like how it’s easy to change the firewall settings, add exceptions, and un-block applications and ports.

Other settings are easy to change, as well. There’s a link to change these settings next to each of the components in the Overview section. we use the default settings for all of our security software reviews.

Features

VIPRE includes some minor extra features such as a file eraser, which is nice to have for deleting files like monthly bank statements.

Parental controls, though, are missing from this suite. all of the competing solutions we’ve reviewed in this series –including McAfee, Norton, and Kaspersky — have included them.

Performance

We conduct a series of extra tests on Internet security suites as opposed to basic anti-virus suites.

Firewall

We used PCFlank’s Exploits Test to test the firewall component; detailed test information can be found here. the tests essentially bombard your system to determine its reaction to various types of attacks and unexpected packets. in this test, VIPRE Internet Security 2012 successfully defended itself.

Anti-Virus (AV)

To test the AV effectiveness of VIPRE Internet Security 2012, I used several virus files from Eicar.org, an IT security Web site. Please see the test description for extensive information on the tests.

VIPRE performed very well in this test, preventing me from downloading the files to my PC hard drive. this is the level of pro-activeness we like to see in an Internet Security suite.

Anti-Spyware

We use Spycar.org to test the anti-spyware module. this test mimics spyware behavior on a computer, determining whether the anti-spyware component can block or detect it. we run all available tests.

I ran the tests and VIPRE successfully blocked all of the attempted exploits.

Performance Impact

We measure the performance impact of security software using Futuremark PCMark.  Again, VIPRE did well here. I witnessed less than a five percent difference between the before and after scores; this small of a difference can be attributable to benchmark error. I did not notice the computer feeling sluggish in everyday use after installing VIPRE.

Conclusion

VIPRE performed well in just about every area of our tests save for parental controls (and that’s because it doesn’t have any). the lack of them destroys the value proposition for those interested in such features, but not for those who aren’t concerned with parental controls — people who don’t have children at home, or who only plan to use the software in a small business setting, for instance.

In every other area, we didn’t have issues with VIPRE. the software is proactive, and it prevented me from downloading malicious files. the interface isn’t pretty, but it’s quite functional.

If you don’t need parental controls, the value prop is best for the $69.95 ten-license pack, which brings the cost down to only a few dollars per license for those who take full advantage of the ten licenses. That’s a better deal than you can receive with any of the competing suites we’ve reviewed in this series so far.

Pros:

  • Proactive in PC protection
  • Good UI
  • Ten-pack is a great value

Cons:

  • No parental controls

Individual Ratings: *Software & Support Upgrade Capabilities Usability Design Performance Features Price/Value Rating * Ratings averaged to produce final score

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Nov 19

Black Friday Kindle Fire Most affordable Up to ...

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Sep 14

Sound Familiar? Philadelphia Newspapers Subsidize ...

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It’s a familiar pitch in the wireless game: buy a phone at a deeply discounted price — if you lock yourself into a service contract. You get that phone you almost certainly can’t get any other way, but the savings is dwarfed by the total subscription cost or the hefty fee you’d have to pay to get out of the contract.

It’s an idea we love to hate, but put up with to get that thing we must have for not a lot of money up front. The wireless companies have pricing power, because you don’t have anywhere else to go.

Not so much in the news game.

That’s not preventing the company that publishes The Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily News, and Philly.com from taking a page from the mobile phone company playbook in a bid to increase digital tablet subscriptions — a fine idea which they are the first to attempt. The trouble is nearly every part of the deal makes no sense for the prospective buyer, and a 5th grader could tell them that their math is absurd.

Let’s leave aside that the promotion involves an Archos Arnova 10 tablet, an underwhelming $200 device that registers on nobody’s radar.

The deal cuts the MSRP of the Archos Arnova 10 in half, to $100, for a two-year subscription, or to $130 for a one-year subscription. On the street, if you really wanted to, you could get an Arnova 10 for $160. so, at best, you are saving $60 off the price of a tablet you almost certainly wouldn’t buy otherwise, and at worst, a mere $30. All to get a digital subscription you can get as easily and as cheaply elsewhere (more about that later).

To get your greedy little hands on that tablet you are required to subscribe for $10 a month, for two years, or $13 a month, for one year.

Total cost for a two-year hitch: about $360, which the company says is a $151 discount. For one year, the total cost is about $300.

I wish I could tell you what it costs to subscribe to the newspapers on, say, an iPad, or a Xoom or a Galaxy Tab, which you may have heard of. The iPad app doesn’t tell you (I didn’t bother looking further on an office Xoom) and doesn’t allow in-app purchases. Live operators at the first two toll-free numbers I called had no idea, and the third number the second nice person I spoke to suggested only has live operators until 1 pm ET.

I can tell you that you can get the Inquirer for $10 a month, with no contract, on an Amazon Kindle — a device you might actually want, and can purchase without any fanfare for as little as $114.

Subsidizing hardware as a way of accelerating software sales — be it for razor blades or e-books — makes perfect sense. but this promotion has both pieces wrong. Newspapers aren’t competing against themselves on different platforms, but with the competition that the mobile internet and different platforms have helped to proliferate. any deal to re-capture in the digital realm people who are or used to be print readers needs to be very big and very bold, not the equivalent of giving away dishware with a tank of gas.

At the very least, there should be a selection of hardware devices available (the wireless model), including at least one tablet somebody has actually heard of. The hardware should be running current operating system software — which for Android is the tablet-optimized Honeycomb, not the smartphone-specific Gingerbread the Arnova 10 runs.

The iPad perhaps notwithstanding, tablets are getting cheaper all around, so you probably don’t need a tiny discount on a cheap device anyway. Speaking of Amazon, they’re rumored to be coming out with a $250 tablet soon. And you might even get another shot at a $100 HP Touchpad.

The best news may be that this offer is limited to 5,000 beta testers. so it’s either very unlikely that you’ll be able to get in on it or, if they don’t sell out in the week publisher Gregory Osberg seems confident they will, unlikely that you’ll want to.

Sound Familiar? Philadelphia Newspapers Subsidize A Tablet To Sell You A Subscription