The first issue of the magazine is out today. Publisher Cool Blue Company announced its availability at the Barnes and Noble bookstore chain in the U.S., as well as distribution in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark.

The publication is also available as a "standalone flash digital e-zine" and an iTunes app.

The debut issue's cover was designed by Yiying Lu, known for her design of Twitter's fail whale.

Robert Fine, the founder of Cool Blue, says advance orders of the second issue are up 20% over the launch issue. Single issues are on sale for $4.99 for a print copy and $2.99 for the digital version. A year's subscription runs $29.99 and comes with digital access. There is no information on how many copies of the first issue have sold.

It seems that, after a long period of expansion, with many products offered for free, we have now entered a period of contraction. Earlier today we wrote about the movement away from free online television content and maybe this magazine's approach is an expression of that same trend.

The articles in the first issue do not seem particularly compelling to me. (See graphic below.) But you may feel differently. Let us know in the comments.

More generally, I personally I love the printed page. But I'm unsure of its utility when it comes to the topic of social media. What do you think? Is there a reason for a print magazine on an essentially paperless topic?

So Y Combinator alum Chirply is taking on the greeting card industry by crowdsourcing stationery designs. Chirply had its soft launch a few weeks ago, soliciting designs and voting, and the startup is now ready to open its doors to the retail business.

Chirply's greeting card cost $4 (with shipping included in the U.S.) and users can buy any 10 designs in a mix-and-match pack for $25. The cards are all 100% recucled, 100% post-consumer waste. In addition to greeting cards, Chirply also offers the designs printed on notebooks and on wrapping paper.

This is great news for consumers (because, come on, we are socially obligated to buy greeting cards and we spend an inordinate amount of time sighing at the selection). But more importantly, Chirply is great news for designers.

Co-founders Gagan and Neel Palrecha care a lot about the design community, and they want to insure not only that the Chirply has beautiful designs for consumers to vote on and purchase, but that designers can participate in a site that showcases their work and compensates them fairly. Chirply doesn't ask designers to submit their original files, for example, just composites (until their submissions are voted on to be printed, of course). And Chirply pays artists a flat fee ($300) up front when their designs are selected, in addition to paying royalties based on sales.

Since Chirply's soft launch, this approach does seem to be working, as the startup has attracted some high quality submissions. That has piqued visitors interest, who on average cast about 30 votes, often over multiple sessions. The top cards on the sites have received well over 500 votes, in just under 5 weeks.

In addition to opening its retail store today, Chirply is announcing a round of funding, from a lost list of investors including Keith Rabois, Dave McClure, Mitch Kapor, Charles River Ventures, and others.

An added bonus: ReadWriteWeb readers can get 30% off their orders if they use the code "RWW" during checkout.

"This is historiography. This is what culture actually looks like: a process of argument, of dissenting and accreting opinion, of gradual and not always correct codification.

"And for the first time in history, we're building a system that, perhaps only for a brief time but certainly for the moment, is capable of recording every single one of those infinitely valuable pieces of information. Everything should have a history button. We need to talk about historiography, to surface this process, to challenge absolutist narratives of the past, and thus, those of the present and our future." -James Bridle

Of the printed collection, Bridle says: "It contains arguments over numbers, differences of opinion on relevance and political standpoints, and frequent moments when someone erases the whole thing and just writes 'Saddam Hussein was a dickhead'."

Of Wikipedia, Bridle says: "It's not only a resource for collating all human knowledge, but a framework for understanding how that knowledge came to be and to be understood; what was allowed to stand and what was not; what we agree on, and what we cannot."

I think that's pretty awesome.

Below: Bridle's talk at dConstruct, The Value of Ruins. Audio thanks to the wonderful podcast curation tool HuffDuffer. (Which, incidentally, was built by Jeremy Keith, author of HTML5 for Web Designers, who recently shook hands with James Bridle himself.)

In partnership with Entertainment Weekly, YouTube just announced the launch of a specialized site for getting a sneak peek at the new television season which includes "bite-sized previews of programs, reality TV, comedies, dramas and more."

The site, which is essentially just an EW-branded YouTube channel, isn't all that notable in and of itself . But it's just one of EW's many digital initiatives as of late. This print-mag-turned-media-company has also launched a number of other digital offerings over the past months, including a popular "Must List" app for the iPad and now iPhone, the integration of 2D barcodes into its print pages and experiments with video-in-print ads.

Entertainment Weekly, which also runs the successful digital property at EW.com, has never been one to shy away from embracing the digital age, and this YouTube channel is only a small part of that.

In a post on the YouTube blog, EW's editor, Jess Cagle, introduces the new YouTube channel, which arrives ahead of the magazine's Fall TV print issue, one of its most popular of year. Cagle says that, in addition to the previews of the new and returning shows, the channel will also offer exclusive interviews with both producers and actors from the hottest shows.

EW's Mobile Platform

Earlier this year, EW also launched its first iPad app called the "Must List," a weekly top 10 featuring the best in film, books, TV and music, where each item is linked to associated media like song clips or movie trailers. Not exactly a digital magazine own its own, the app hits a sweet spot for iPad users, taking advantage of the device's Internet connectivity to deliver streaming music and video, while also understanding how iPad owners want consume content - that is, interactively.

With the iPad app's success in hand, the company redesigned its content for the smaller screen and introduced the Must List app for the iPhone and iPod Touch last month. The magazine is now officially introducing the new iPhone app to its print readers via the Editor's Letter in the August issue.

What's more interesting, perhaps, about EW's mobile operation, is how it generates revenue for the company. As iPad and iPhone users peruse EW's content recommendations, they're offered the opportunity to purchase items immediately within iTunes. Although the purchases take place outside the app itself, Apple splits the profits from those purchases with EW in a revenue-sharing deal. In addition, the ads shown within the mobile apps are often a part of a multiplatform ad buy which also includes print and the EW.com website.

Experiments with Video-in-Print

Last year, EW experimented with technology that introduced video advertising in its printed pages, using wafer-thin screens that were used to promote CBS TV shows and Pepsi products. The small screens, about the size of a mobile phone's screen, each held their own chip that stored the ads. Only select issues of the magazine mailed to subscribers in New York and L.A. included these digital advertisements, however, and the video-print ads have not been seen since.

The ads were likely more of a marketing stunt than a realistic venture for magazine ads, but they were intriguing nonetheless. How many other magazines are willing to experiment like this? Very few. Outside of Esquire's 2008 anniversary issue which featured an e-ink cover, there aren't many other digital experiments like this of note.

2D Barcode Integration in Print Mag

More recently, though, the magazine released its Summer Movie Preview issue which came to life thanks to its inclusion of 2D barcodes. The barcodes could be snapped using the cross-platform Microsoft Tag mobile application which links a barcode to Web content. In EW's case, the barcodes linked to YouTube videos of sixteen official movie trailers. Also barcoded were ads from five big name brands including Absolut, HBO, History Channel, Honda and CTAM/Movies on Demand. In the latest (August 2010) issue, the Fall Movie Preview, EW has again included barcodes into its pages, but this time only eleven films are digitally linked. However, the advertiser lineup has expanded, with seventeen advertisers offering barcoded ads, some across multiple pages.

The digital initiatives EW experiments with have a lot to do with the EW audience, made up of "entertainment enthusiasts," explains Barrie Gordon, senior manager of public relations at Entertainment Weekly, New York. This sort of person "likes to be the first to try things and talk about it with their network of friends." In other words, EW caters to the entertainment-focused "early adopter." Given our own obsession with technology around here, we're calling EW one to watch for an example of a print company that's successfully navigating the waters of the digital age. In fact, we'll added it to our own "Must List."

The magazine, hitting newsstands this Friday, features several AR experiences littered throughout its pages that can be activated using metaio's junaio iPhone and Android apps. The cover of the magazine features a popular German TV personality who comes to life in an interactive video unlocked by holding a smartphone up to the magazine. Other augmented features in the magazine include an illustration that becomes 3D, an interview with additional exclusive quotes and a crossword puzzle whose answers appear when viewed through the smartphone.

The example I find the most compelling, however, is a photo essay about German farmers that are worried their country's bid to host the Olympics could spell trouble for their coveted farmland. In one photo, a farmer is shown standing before a large empty field. When a smartphone is held to this picture, a new image featuring a large parking lot superimposed onto the man's land is swapped into its place.

Augmented reality can not only add fun and interactivity to a print publication, but, as shown here, it can also vastly improve a journalist's ability to tell a story in a compelling way. This falls directly in line with metaio co-founder and CTO Peter Meier's vision for the future of AR, where kids will view interactive content on the side of their cereal boxes each morning.

The crux of this vision is that smartphones now allow publishers to build this type of interactive experience right into their existing print content. No special markers, no desktop computer, no webcams: All a user needs to interact with augmented magazines, newspapers or cereal boxes is a smartphone.

Holding a smartphone up to a magazine is a far cry from the flashy interactive newspaper seen in Minority Report, but it is perhaps a hint at how augmented reality can help the dwindling print publishing industry.

"Over the next five years digital technologies will progressively increase their impact across all segments of entertainment and media (E&M) as digital transformation continues to expand and escalate," a press release from PwC said Tuesday. "The uncertain economic background has done nothing to slow the pace of change, which has been far quicker than predicted 12 months ago. It is clear that the consumer is firmly in the driving seat of these changes."

According to the report, increased access to broadband has played a large role in helping boost online ad revenues. The Wall Street Journal reports that broadband penetration in the U.S. nearly doubled from 34% in 2005 to 64% in 2010 thanks partly to $7.2 billion in federal stimulus money put towards expanding broadband access. Additionally, PricewaterhouseCoopers expects that global consumer spending on Internet access will increase from $228 billion 2009 to $351 billion in 2014.

It was only a matter of time until online ad sales outpaced those of print, and once they do, they will only continue to gain momentum. Legacy media are driven by numbers and are slow to change their ways, and thus have not thrown their entire weight behind online initiatives. When the scales tip over to online advertising in the next year, those that have been reluctant to embrace new and online media will be forced to allocate additional resources to the winning market.

The ultimate demise of print media is still many years away, but it is pretty clear that ad revenues are slowly dropping away. It will take one of the predominant newspapers ceasing to print physical copies to set off the domino effect that will likely follow, but it is unlikely to happen any time soon. While newspaper ad revenues have been falling, they've been leveling out, and a balance between print and online is likely to exist for several years before print entirely fades away.

Harper's Index, the most thought provoking fun you'll find on one printed page, is turning 25 years old. Harper's Magazine, launched in 1850, is the 2nd longest continuously published magazine in the United States (behind Scientific American) but the Index is the first page that many readers skip to in each issue. To celebrate the Index's anniversary, Harper's has put the full index of biting trivia one-liners up on its website for searching and reposting on Twitter. Welcome to the 21st century Harper's Index, may you bring us as much joy and reflection in the future as you always have in the past.

New York Times City Room editor Patrick LaForge noted the new page's availability this afternoon and the official Harper's Twitter account announced a "Twitter sneak preview" yesterday. Search results are displayed just like a topically organized installment of the traditional Index, but with sources displayed and a link to Tweet each fact when you hover over one with your mouse. It's quite nice.

This is a great way to introduce the print publication to a new generation of readers. We hope it will help this institution continue to thrive into the next era of media.

PC Magazine has been publishing a digital edition since 2002, but at least in its current version, this digital edition only imitates the print version in its layout, which is definitely not the easiest and most convenient way to read text. Also, the problem for print magazines is not the fact that they are physical objects, but simply the fact that a publication which only appears once a month will always lag behind its online competition, especially in a fast moving business like technology news.

A number of publishers have been experimenting with digital editions similar to PC Magazine's. The New York Times, for example, has its Times Reader application, which allows offline access to the paper. However, in a world where online access is becoming ubiquitous, these products are at best bridges to a pure online experience.

PC Magazine, of course, already has a strong online presence and a number of very interesting blogs and online video shows. The value of PC Magazine often wasn't in its news content anyway, but in its reviews - all of which are available online, without the need to subscribe to a digital edition of the magazine.

Would You Subscribe to a Digital Edition?

While we are glad to see that a quality publication like PC Magazine is taking steps to secure its future, it is not clear to us why PC Magazine would put time and effort into producing a digital edition of its magazine instead of just focusing on the online experience.

German publisher Bertelsmann just released a printed, 992 page version of the German Wikipedia. It will sell for 19.95 Euros, of which 1 Euro will go to the Wikimedia Foundation.

Abbreviated

Of course, the printed version could not include every keyword in the online version of the German Wikipedia, so the publishers restricted themselves to about 50.000 keywords and 1000 illustrations. Overall, the printed version includes about 20.000 articles, which were abbreviated by the editors.

It's important to note that this printed version is not an encyclopedia, but instead a dictionary that is based on the 20.000 most read articles in the German Wikipedia. Most entries are only a few words long. If you wonder about what this book looks like, Google Books already includes a preview of the text and, in keeping with the GPL license, the publisher has made the text available for download.

Why?

The real question, however, is why anybody would want to buy a printed and abbreviated version of Wikipedia. After all, you lose all of the advantages of full-text search and the ability to edit articles in this printed text.

It is worth noting, too, that this is not the first time the German Wikipedia has been published. German publisher Zenodot tried to market a Wikipedia-based encyclopedia in 2005, but the project was cut short because there was simply no demand for it.

I loved that site and am very sad to see it go. The service was a lot of fun to use. Given how recently the company has received substantial media attention and how loyal its small group of users was, this was a real surprise. Can high-end websites for thinking people ramp up and monetize quickly? This news makes you wonder.

You've reached this page because, at the moment, Brijit is out of money and can no longer afford to bring you the world in 100 words. We're working hard to find a way forward for our service and hope to relaunch in the not-too-distant future. Thanks to all our loyal readers and writers. And to our Brijit writers: payments in full for all abstracts published through May 15 will be made next week.

As you can see from the Compete graph below, traffic was trending up at Brijit after an initial media spike. The company has a really compelling system of "assignments" for review writers and the end result is a great crib-sheet for anyone headed to the periodicals section of a local bookstore on the weekend.

Brijit content is still available on the website here. You can read our previous coverage here. A great article about Brijit in the Washington Post is here. The Post reported in October that the company had raised $1 million in funding. Did it already burn through that, $5 at a time, or has something else happened?

I really hope that this isn't another signal that only lowest-common denominator content is able to monetize and scale online these days. It's hard not to think that Brijit's management must have drastically miscalculated somewhere. A million dollars aint what it used to be, though. Either way, the web will be a less wonderful place if Brijit goes belly up for good.

Some background: Tabblo is a custom printing site that HP acquired in March 2007. In our meeting, Antonio described Tabblo to me as "Flickr meets blogger on steroids". Using Tabblo, you can mashup photos and add text, to create a kind of collage - which you then have the option to print out as a poster, book, card, etc. The collage is also available online, where other Tabblo users can comment on it. There are a lot of other features too, such as advertising options and widget-like tools. At the heart of Tabblo is its template engine, which allows users to output their creative photo collages both online and as printed materials. Here's a good example of a Tabblo collage, from someone's birthday party. Here's another example, via Flickr:

The tale of how Tabblo got acquired is interesting in itself - and a great example of the process a startup might take before being acquired by a big company. Tabblo got its funding in June 2005, went into alpha March 2006, then beta at the end of May 2006, finally hitting 1.0 in July 2006. It was acquired less than a year later. So from funding to acquisition, less than 2 years. But importantly it was a useful web app with a healthy user base. Om Malik summed it up well at the time of acquisition, noting that Tabblo had "made a tool that incorporated the best of social web and built a layer of usefulness on top of that. And focused their product on mainstream users."

So in summary, Tabblo was a great web 2.0 product that made the step up to big company app. In doing so, it seems to have inspired Print 2.0 inside of HP. Well, there is probably much more to the Print 2.0 conception, but Tabblo is what makes the concept make sense and come alive. Sometimes big companies come up with lots of PR bluster and crazy concepts (and nowadays there's usually a "2.0" in the PR), but at the heart of it there has to be something that connects with consumers. Tabblo is that thing, with HP's Print 2.0 story.

Printing Becomes a Service Too

HP acquired Tabblo with the aim of making printing from the Web easier. For example, webpages are sometimes difficult to print (R/WW is guilty on that count!). In terms of the big picture, Antonio explained to me that the print business is huge, but that HP is starting to think in terms of digital devices now - rather than the old model of [paper] pages. So in terms of products, HP's Print 2.0 strategy is about delivering products and services such as the Tabblo Print Toolkit - which enables publishers to provide template-based PDFs of their webpages for easy printing.

HP also wants to get into the on-demand printing business, where it will face competition from the likes of Amazon.com and Lulu.com. Antonio told me that the vision is for a self-serving site to create books. However he said that there are practical issues holding this up, such as DRM.

There are also partnership deals. At Web 2.0 Summit HP announce that its Print 2.0 technology has been integrated into Flickr, allowing Flickr users to easily print their photos. HP did a deal too with Disney, allowing users to combine professional Disney content with their own personal content - and print it out. The Graffiti Application for Facebook, where users can draw on their friends profiles, was also print-enabled by Tabblo.

Ultimately HP wants to make printing a service - I suppose much like Microsoft wants to make its software into services. HP wants to make printing more personal and social; which brings us back to Tabblo's legacy. It did precisely that, make printing personal and social. But HP wants to do it on a much larger scale. This is why big companies build startups of course!

What do you think of HP's Print 2.0? Does it make more sense now that you know the Tabblo story?