Geeking out: Gorgeous digital edition magazines

Who says magazines are dead? Not Fortune Small Business Magazine, Hearst Magazines, or Red Herring. And certainly not Olive Software, the Santa Clara, Calif., company responsible for creating the interactive digital twins of their print issues.

Fortune Small Business e-zine for November 2007

Like the best discoveries, I stepped into Olive Software's work by accident, while flipping through the digital leaves of Fortune Small Business Magazine. As a champion of downloadable and Web apps for consumers, I wouldn't normally seek out this kind of story, but the experience was too gratifying not to share. After all, would I hold back from you?

Click once and the magazine blooms in its self-contained online reader. Click again, this time on the right arrow, and the cover unfurls to reveal a faithful representation of the magazine's glossy, full-page interior, down to the shadowed hollow where the pages meet the binding. Flip through to read articles horizontally across multiple pages, each one adhering to the original layout, rather than dive-bombing into a vertical scroll that makes do with the Web's predilection for linear storytelling.

Best of all, the November 2007 issue of Fortune Small Business was free, the crisp, half-screen ads apparently financing the familiar, intuitive service.

OK, so I'm a sucker for the visual, tactile, and organizational qualities of flipping through a magazine. All that aside, the electronic magazine reader's usability is impressive. In addition to flipping, you can choose among layout views, quickly access the table of contents in a drop-down menu, search the text, and skip ahead. Olive Software's reader isn't perfect, however. For one, offline reading requires a list of directions for tweaking browser settings to allow pages to save; guidance, I should mention, directed only at Internet Explorer. That's going to become a problem for Firefox and Safari users, including iPhone evangelists, the latter whose devices' wide screens could beautifully accommodate this breed of e-zine.

While the digital handling of long, verbose works has been stirring for some time (I'm thinking of Google Books, Adobe Digital Editions, and Sony's latest e-book reader,) I haven't yet encountered a practical, well-implemented reader like this in the wild. I'm sure competing software is plentiful, some likely superior, and why not? It's time for ocular coziness to scrap for its place in our digital dynasty.

[Dr. Kevin Oneil]

Geeking out: Gorgious digital edition magazines

Your article was very piratical and interesting. I will check it out right away.I will use this magazine as a worthwhil addition to my website www.buddhismonline.us

Thank you very much,

Venerable Dr. Kevin Oneil

[Zebtab]

Talking Digital Magazines? Check out Ceros...

And no, I don't work for the company, I just think their solution is superb. Easier to read and engage with than the Olive solution, imho.

I think they have something like 200 titles already using their platform, mostly UK based titles I think (but I might be wrong).

Here's one to check out - http://dennis.cerosmedia.com/1G4730392e44836012.cde

Rich

[Zebtab]

Talking Digital Magazines? CHeck out Ceros...

And no, I don't work for the company, I just think their solution is superb. Easier to read and engage with than the Olive solution, imho.

I think they have something like 200 titles already using their platform, mostly UK based titles I think (but I might be wrong).

Here's one to check out - http://dennis.cerosmedia.com/1G4730392e44836012.cde

Rich

[Ricky4510]

Digital editions. The best? Got to be YUDU

There are now some good companies with Digital Edition software. The best in my opinion is from YUDU.com. Not only is it a great reading experience but they have jumped on the SaaS bandwagon and enable production to be done just with a login. It is pretty new but have done 2500 publications since March. Worth checking out!

[Mike in Dallas]

Have you seen Zinio yet...?

Zinio's quite amazing and reproduces magazines flawlessly, with a full "feel" of flipping through one effortlessly. You ought to see what they do with SAVEUR magazine and Caribbean Travel & Life! Not to mention U.S. News & World Report. ZINIO is a class act.

[Mike in Dallas]

Have you seen ZINIO?

Zinio's quite amazing and reproduces magazines flawlessly, with a full "feel" of flipping through one effortlessly. You ought to see what they do with SAVEUR magazine and Caribbean Travel & Life! Not to mention U.S. News & World Report. ZINIO is a class act.

[chrisjcollett]

Check out Texterity

I've been a subscriber to Game Developer Magazine and Make digital editions for a while. Both are done by Texterity (www.texterity.com). I like the fact that it's all done with javascript and xml, no flash necessary. Also, they have made magazines available on the iPhone, which Olive can't do because of the lack of flash support (for now).

[YishayYovel]

Olive does Mobile

Please see http://mobile.olivesoftware.com.

Not only does Olive do mobile, but offer it for Blackberry as well, in both text mode and page/image mode so you can access the content quickly regardless of network bandwidth constraints.

There is no prerequisite for Flash, it is all simple HTML. We can create web apps powered by our XML technology to re-purpose content for any device.

Yishay Yovel
Olive Software

[kdozer]

Adobe/Scene7 might be a good fit

I've used Scene7 in the past for eCatalog work and their advancing technology, combined with the financial backing of Adobe (who acquired them in spring 2007), might be a good play for online mags and newspapers. They cater mainly to the retail cataloging crowd like Lands' End, Crate and Barrel and Williams-Sonoma, but they are a leader in the print-to-digital conversion field in my experience.

[komrad7800]

Interesting. Worth checking out!
Income for Life

[airping]

Paperless newspapers are eco friendly. Check this for world wide online news papers http://www.pressmart.net

[Web-CRM]

Interestingly we have 2 magazines who use our <a href="http://www.WORKetc.com">Web CRM
</a> application, and neither is interested in producing online. Everyone is still focused on print magazines and print ad revenue.

[jeffdsmj]

New well integrated media fullsize magazines ( video & interactive ) like www,oceanamag.org and www.madmenmag.com are actually the state of the art for page turning and engagement.