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While almost every major label now streams fashion shows live, the phenomenon looks set to enter a new phase this October when the world's first digital-only fashion week takes place.
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When it comes to digital magazines, why should tablet owners have all the fun? That’s the sentiment Adobe was espousing earlier today at an event held in New York where they officially pulled back the curtains on their updated Digital Publishing Suite.
You’d be forgiven if you haven’t stumbled across Adobe’s DPS before — as the name sort of implies, it’s meant for publishers to prepare digital editions of their print content for consumption on all sorts of gadgetry. Given their size, tablets have been the obvious focus for content creators, but Adobe’s new update brings (among other things) the ability for them to whip up digital magazines that work well on the iPhone too.
One publisher has already signaled their commitment to tailoring their digital magazine experience to the iPhone — Conde Nast leans pretty heavily on Adobe’s Digital Publishing Suite to layout their digital editions, and they revealed that an iPhone-friendly makeover for The New Yorker was in the works. Here’s hoping that some of Conde Nast’s other properties (my fingers are crossed for the exceptionally handsome Wired) get the same treatment, though the shift toward smaller screens will force designers to rethink how users read and engage with that content.
Even with the process for creating rich media content for smaller screens streamlined (Adobe offers up their own best practices here), it’s still no easy feat to devise a handsome, thoughtful way to dive into that content on a smaller screen. That lack of real estate means that publishers will have to get really creative in order to deliver the sort of experience that make digital magazines more compelling than their dead-plant counterparts.
[via Gizmodo]
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Isis, the carrier-led joint venture between AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon, is gaining steam and has today announced a new addition to its mobile wallet: American Express. The Isis Mobile Wallet will now support American Express’ Consumer, Open Small Business and Serve cards, joining Chase, Capital One and Barclaycard, which have previously committed to the program.
A mobile wallet leader has not yet emerged – Square is growing, and Google Wallet has been floundering – but the space is still really new. Although half of the U.S.’s mobile population use smartphones, making transactions via the phone has yet to establish itself as a real, or more importantly, as a better alternative to the swipe. But if there’s a piece of the mobile payments pie to be had, you can be sure the carriers want in. Hence, Isis.
The initiative is slowly moving forward, with its bankcard partnerships having been announced in February, new POS partners Verifone, Ingenico and ViVOtech announced in March, and last summer, its partnerships with payment networks (Visa, MasterCard, Discover, American Express) and device makers (HTC, LG, Motorola, RIM, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson).
Of the new AmEx relationship, the Serve addition may be the most interesting. Serve, as you may recall is American Express’ new digital payments and commerce platform which is, in effect, its own digital wallet of sorts. Serve integrates a variety of payment options into a single account that can be funded by a bank account, debit or credit card. With Isis, the Serve digital platform becomes a bit like a mobile wallet within a wallet. This actually makes more sense, as a real mobile wallet should mirror our offline counterpart and include all the bank cards we use, not just those from a single entity.
Later this year, Isis will roll out its first pilot tests in Salt Lake City, Utah and Austin, Texas, in advance of its public availability. While the moves seem slow to those watching the space, you have to acknowledge that building up the partnerships in advance and then thoroughly testing the product before hyping its launch, maybe be a smarter way to encourage eventual consumer adoption of the Isis wallet over..well, Square perhaps, and whatever Apple might announce one day, if it chooses to do so.
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Hot on the heels of its $70 million round, Evernote is making quick use of the new funds: today it announced that it has bought Penultimate, a digital handwriting app designed for the iPad. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
While many acquisitions of this kind often lead to the original app getting shut down, that doesn’t appear to be the case here: Evernote says that it will extend Penultimate to become available on “more platforms and devices,” while at the same time using Penultimate’s technology to enhance handwriting functions on its own app.
Penultimate is a clever buy for Evernote because not only does it give the company new technology — but also potentially an opening to a wider base of users. Penultimate is the fourth-best-selling app for the iPad of all time, the company says, and most definitely the best-selling handwriting app.
“We have big plans for Penultimate that will both enhance the app and bring more capabilities into Evernote,” said Phil Libin, Evernote’s CEO, in a statement.
Penultimate, if you are not familiar with it, is a nifty app that looks like a notebook and lets users write with their fingers or with a stylus, with the ability to change paper and pen styles. It already had some integration with Evernote before today’s news: users could save notes directly to Evernote from the app.
It also dovetails nicely with Evernote’s own integrated, multi-media approach: users can incorporate pictures and other things into their hand-written notes, which as you can see from the picture above, sometimes are the only thing that will work for a note-taker.
Penultimate sells for $0.99 in the App Store.
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AT&T has just announced a new security and home-automation system called Digital Life, which will be an IP-based platform that allows users to monitor and detect activity throughout their house remotely, and “take action” (as AT&T put it) on devices like PCs, tablets, and smartphones.
AT&T actually goes so far as to say “there are no capacity limits to the number and variety of devices [they] can connect to and integrate,” since it’s an all-digital system.
Functions include access to automation, energy and water controls, and security systems. AT&T will thus be introducing a new branch called the Digital Life group, which will work in “AT&T owned-and-operated 24/7 security monitoring centers.”
You’ll be able to “try before you buy” at an AT&T store or through other unspecified AT&T distribution channels, and no matter your current wireless provider, you’ll still be able to get in on the service. That is, of course, if you live in Dallas or Atlanta, where the first round of trials will begin.
Just a few weeks ago, we got a chance to check out the AT&T Research Labs, and it’s clear that AT&T has high hopes for pushing itself into every corner of your life. They already have a major share of the pie when it comes to wireless subscribers in the US, but then there’s AT&T U-Verse and now AT&T Digital Life.
In the labs, developers are already working on ways of registering who’s approaching a home through bio-acoustical transmission (the detection of vibrations in the bones through sensors in a phone or wrist watch) and having the home automation system decide whether or not to automatically unlock the door or announce a guest.
And AT&T wants access to your car, too. We saw prototypes for Got My Stuff, a system that scans the car for a list of pre-determined and RFID-tagged items to see if you’ve remembered them. The idea is that a customizable dashboard would be available via an app across multiple devices.
AT&T is already working on “the car of the future” in collaboration with Porsche, QNX, and Panasonic, so a push into the home right now only makes sense in preparation for a push into our automotive lives.
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