Personalized iPad magazine application Zite has confirmed that it has been acquired by CNN. The sales price is rumored to be in the $20 to $25 million range. Zite will not be branded exclusively to CNN and will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the news network.
It is an interesting play by CNN. Zite is a powerful news reading iPad app with a lot of excellent functionality. It operates almost like a "Pandora for news" that gives users serendipitous resources based on inputted interest and usage. Yet, outside of being a cool iPad app, Zite is driven by some interesting technology that could be of great use to CNN.
A new service called MagAppZine was the subject of an interview by Jenn Webb on O'Reilly Radar today and is aimed to substantially lower the barriers to entry required for publishing content into the iTunes app store. It's a white label, DIY app-publishing platform that is limited to PDF uploads, website viewing in an in-app browser and in-app sales of multiple issues of any publication. It looks really well thought out, simple and accessible. The price is about to drop substantially, too with the Fall release of the 2.0 version of the service.
Co-founder Paul Canetti spent 3 years at Apple before leaving to launch a series of iOS training and development businesses. Then he started MagAppZine last July. It's a simple looking publishing platform that democratizes access to publishing online (we don't call this site ReadWriteWeb for nothing, folks, we love this kind of stuff) - a little like blogging but for an App Store world.
People love data visualization; when done well, it communicates new knowledge about otherwise inaccessible information in new and pleasing ways. Good visualizations can be efficient and effective; bad visualizations can be seductive and deceptive. That's why visually designed data-based content, both good and bad, is so popular online. People love infographics.
Today a startup called Visually drew back the curtains a little bit further on its data visualization technology and community. The company unveiled an index of 2,000 data visualizations, a cute Twitter visualization creation tool and promises to help anyone create their own visualizations with a series of self-service tools to be released throughout the year. Interest in the service is so heated that the Visually website melted early this morning.
Just as the Web has brought us untold advances in innovation, collaboration and productivity, it has also given us things like this Tumblr blog curating animated GIFs of Tom Hanks portraying various animals, not to mention Farmville, Twitter or the 35 hours of video that are uploaded to YouTube every minute.
With so many digital distractions, it's a wonder we can get anything done. For those of us for whom being productive means stringing words together, whether we're bloggers, marketing copy writers or aspiring novelists, the Internet can be a mixed blessing. Fortunately, there are a number of writing applications that attempt to block out the distractions so we can finally focus.
Content aggregation and ranking engine StumbleUpon is releasing a new widget for publishers today that can be placed on a website or blog to help users find meaningful content relevant to them.
The StumbleUpon Widget can be used by publishers to surface content on the site with the best shelf life. The widget will come in three sizes and requires a line of script to be embedded on to a webpage. The widget will surface stories and videos suited to the users' interest based on what has been rated highly by the StumbleUpon community of 15 million users.
Pete Erickson is trying to become the go-to man that brings innovators and industries together. Through his Disruptathon series, he travels North America, putting on one-day events where entrepreneurs compete in front of industry leaders to present disruptive ideas. The prizes are not large, but the opportunity for brand awareness in front of industry leaders can be invaluable.
Disruptathon came to the Washington D.C. area on Thursday evening with eight entrepreneurs in tow to make their pitches at USA Today headquarters in McLean, Va. When it comes to disruption, the news industry was hit hard by lack of innovation and forward digital thinking. As one presenter put it: "the foundation for the news business has shifted." Take a look at the eight startups trying to change the way we consume, produce or interact with the news.
What if you could create content as quick as you write a tweet? That is what startup Webdoc wants to know and it has created a tool where building a micro website or digital flyer is a relatively smooth and pain free project.
Webdoc is not revolutionary, but it is an interesting step in do-it-yourself publishing. It gives users a frame that they can do just about anything in and then embed that frame anywhere on the Web. For instance, if you want to create a flyer for your band, add an audio clip and YouTube video and canvas the Internet, a Webdoc may be just the thing you are looking for.
What is next for Flipboard? The startup is rapidly growing, hiring new employees and forging new partnerships with publishers to create dynamic new content platforms.
The next step is to make a jump off the iPad and start monetizing the company. These are easier goals to say than to do, but CEO Mike McCue and does not want to jump too far too fast. As such, do not expect to see an Android version anytime soon as the iPhone is the next platform in store for Flipboard.
"Blogging is largely dead."
"There are a lot of stupid people out there ... and stupid people shouldn't write."
"There needs to be a better system for tuning down the stupid people and tuning up the smart people."
Serial entrepreneur and publisher Jason Calacanis has never been opposed to saying what is on his mind. In fact, it is the characteristic that has helped him rise to the top of the Internet publishing world. He sat down with our managing editor Abraham Hyatt onstage at the ReadWriteWeb 2WAY Summit on Monday and dished on his thoughts about the state of publishing, what Google's Panda initiative is doing to websites and what Web 3.0 will be about.
Publishers are attempting to evolve in the Internet era to stay ahead of not only competitors but also the curve of technological innovation. Social media, rich media, syndicated media, aggregated media, wire service media ... there are a lot of different sources of content to keep track of and integrate into your website.
A new tool from Daylife - the Daylife Publisher Suite - aims to keep content creators a step ahead of the game. It is not a content management system but rather a dashboard of applications that can edit live websites in real-time. Want to drag and drop a photo gallery into a post without going into the back end of your CMS? The Daylife Publisher Suite has the ability to do that and more.
