The Appside

Mindshapes launches Magic Town virtual bookworld, apps to follow

Admin — Wed, 16 May 2012 13:56:58 +0000

We know Mindshapes best for its well-crafted educational apps and books on iOS, but the company has been pivoting to something new: a virtual world called Magic Town based on picture books. It launched today on the web with 70 books included from partners like Hachette, Egmont, Barefoot Books and Simon & Schuster. There’s a certain amount of free content, but then parents pay £7.99 a month or £49.99 a year for full access for up to four children. The ‘Livebook’ format includes audio narration and interactive questions to help children grasp the story. Although a website initially, an iPad app is coming this summer, with iPhone and other mobile devices to follow.
More - http://www.magictown.com/

Flipboard adds audio content with SoundCloud

Admin — Wed, 16 May 2012 13:55:41 +0000

Social magazine app Flipboard has a new partnership that should make the music industry’s ears prick up: SoundCloud. The companies are working together to put more audio into Flipboard’s apps, including shows from NPR and Public Radio International. Flipboard users can now sign into their SoundCloud accounts just as they would Twitter, Facebook or Instagram within the Flipboard app, and then listen to songs and sounds that friends have been sharing and uploading. The audio is independent from other content in Flipboard too: so users can browse their regular feeds while listening to SoundCloud audio, using a Music icon in the corner of the screen to play and pause tracks. The partnership could spur more artists to get involved in Flipboard as a distribution and/or marketing channel for their music. Artists including MC Hammer and Duran Duran (SUPERGROUP KLAXON) have previously used Flipboard for promotion.
More - http://tinyurl.com/d5so2ew

The Economist moves onto Apple’s Newsstand

Admin — Wed, 16 May 2012 13:53:49 +0000

It took a while, but The Economist is joining Apple’s Newsstand on iOS, after weighing up the pros and cons of the magazine storefront. “We wanted to see what impact it would have and just spend a little time thinking what impact it would have on our readers and the experience of consuming The Economist,” global digital publisher Nick Blunden tells Fierce Mobile Content. “We came to the conclusion that there were enough benefits to our readers to justify to moving into Newsstand.” He praises the store’s auto-download feature, and its benefits for discoverability. Blunden also talks HTML5, following The Economist’s experiment with its Electionism app. “At the moment our view is that HTML5 doesn’t quite have the same capabilities to create a compelling user experience as native apps in iOS and Android have…”
More - http://tinyurl.com/bpr72ex

Adobe updates its Digital Publishing Suite

Admin — Wed, 16 May 2012 13:53:43 +0000

Magazine publishers using Adobe’s Digital Publishing Suite tools to make iPad apps now have a few more features to play with. That includes the ability to make iPhone versions, as well as repurposing a single issue for multiple devices, including Amazon’s Kindle Fire. There are also new features to help publishers make their in-mag content more shareable. “Publishers can decide what content is sharable, set up a paywall, and control how many times a person can read articles from an issue before being prompted to buy the app,” explains VentureBeat. The suite’s analytics have also been beefed up.
More - http://tinyurl.com/cyzslu8

Spotify has more than 20m monthly active users

Admin — Wed, 16 May 2012 13:51:10 +0000

Spotify appears to have passed the 20m monthly active users mark, according to AppData.com – which only measures users whose accounts are connected to Facebook. Analyst Mark Mulligan, who spotted the milestone, notes that Spotify appears to have added 500k active users in the last two weeks alone, and 1.5m since the end of April. Meanwhile, if Spotify has kept up its 20% conversion rate from free to paid users, it could be nudging 4m paying subscribers – although for now, the company is sticking to its increasingly long-in-the-tooth 10m active users and 3m paying subscriber figures.
More - http://tinyurl.com/cqs3cmf

Justin Bieber gets half-naked for Viddy

Admin — Wed, 16 May 2012 13:49:01 +0000

Video-sharing app Viddy just had its Bieber moment. Justin Bieber has joined the service, tweeting his handle yesterday and encouraging fans to follow him on the service. And just to amp up the buzz, he then posted a video of himself in a topless photo-shoot. “Photoshoot was….well u will see. #viddy #abouttogoIN,” tweeted Bieber. He already has more than 20k followers on Viddy, with that first video getting 12k likes and nearly 3.5k comments. Previous social services to have high-profile Bieber moments include Twitter – which famously had an entire server devoted to Justin-related traffic – and Instagram.
More - http://viddy.com/justinbieber

Smule launches Songify music app on Android

Admin — Wed, 16 May 2012 13:47:54 +0000

Comedy Auto-Tune music app Songify has made the leap from iPhone to Android courtesy of music apps publisher Smule. Well, courtesy of Khush, the developer of the original version which was subsequently acquired by Smule. The app has been downloaded more than 9m times on iPhone, and used to create 120m vocoder-voiced songs by users, according to the company. It involves speaking into the phone’s microphone, then having your words turned into an Auto-Tuned epic. The launch is significant, as it marks Smule’s proper on Android – until now, the company has been an iOS-only developer, aside from an Android ‘preview’ of its Magic Piano app.
More - http://tinyurl.com/bsl5rag

BBC reveals plans for four-screen Olympic Games feast

Admin — Wed, 16 May 2012 13:46:21 +0000

The BBC is going all-out for this summer’s Olympic Games, with plans to provide 24 alternate HD streams of the events. They’ll be shown across four screens: a new video player on the BBC Sport website, iOS and Android apps plus a dedicated mobile website, a connected TV application and the regular broadcasts (okay, three screens, but separate connected TV and traditional TV for a moment). “It’s the first time our audience gets total control,” the Beeb’s Phil Fearnley tells PaidContent. “We’ve tested it every day for months. The biggest single event we’ve ever seen was in the World Cup when England played Slovenia. Take that and double it – that’s what we’ve been planning for the Olympics.”
More - http://tinyurl.com/cdxk45w

50k tags for Shazam-enabled Britain’s Got Talent ads

Admin — Wed, 16 May 2012 13:45:04 +0000

Last weekend, the first two British TV ads aired with Shazam-tagging features, for Pepsi and Cadbury. The 30-second spots were shown during the final of Britain’s Got Talent, and Shazam has now announced that around 50k viewers tagged the ads – not bad for a minute of airtime. Although as context, the average audience for the final was 11.9m people, meaning 0.4% of viewers took up the tagging challenge. Still, broadcaster ITV – which is selling the functionality to advertisers – seems happy. “We’re thrilled that the first UK Shazam-enabled ads achieved this level of interaction in Saturday’s amazing Britain’s Got Talent final,” says group commercial sales director Simon Daglish.
Source: Shazam

Gamevil reports 160% growth for Q1 revenues

Admin — Wed, 16 May 2012 13:42:06 +0000

Korean mobile games publisher Gamevil has reported its latest quarterly financials, generating 16.6bn KRW of revenues in Q1 2012 – that’s around $14.7m – with a net profit of 5.2bn KRW (around $4.6m). That’s up 160% year-on-year for revenues and 105% for profit. The detail: 91% of Gamevil’s revenues now come from in-app purchases, while 92% come from iOS and Android games on smartphones. The company says it has passed more than 120m downloads in its history, and is planning to release 40 mobile games in 2012, with 16 coming in the second half of the year. Gamevil also notes that its non-Korean sales rose 437% year-on-year as it made inroads into the US and other app stores.
Source: Gamevil