Review: iPad Apps With Animal Characters

JEREMY FISHERBuddy EditionBy Beatrix Potter, illustrated by Beatrix Potter, developed by Sideways SoftwareAge Range: 4 - 8KURKIS REVIEW

Potter's tale of a hapless frog who sets out to catch a minnow for dinner and almost ends up being dinner himself gets several useful extras in this unabridged app.

It also receives a design upgrade that increases the original's cramped trim size and eliminates its blank pages while pairing text and pictures more closely together. There are three reading options: silent; read aloud in a pleasantly measured and low-key way by a female narrator with a British accent; and, through an online connection, a mode that allows an absent parent or other reader to be the voice and to turn the pages remotely. This last option even includes a button that enables two-way conversations. The illustrations are sharply detailed, clear of hue and expandable with a touch to full-screen size. There is little animation (a dragonfly here, a water bug there), but touching some figures produces an audio tag. A coloring book and connect-the-dots activity complement the story. A retractable navigation bar at the bottom provides thumbnail images of each page of the tale for easy skipping around, plus a button to open the table of contents. The remote Buddy mode requires a relatively involved prior setup, but it should prove a boon to families with absent parents.

High production values and a story-centered design give this a leg up over flashier, more game-like e-books. (iPad storybook app. 4-8)

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Ad Pepper Media CEO Schmidt Says Affiliate Marketing Remains Biggest Growth Driver

Q&A with Ulrich Schmidt, CEO of Ad Pepper Media, international online advertising marketersAdExchanger.com: When you established ad pepper media in '99 with your founding partners, did you think you'd be where you are today?  Any memorable strategic shifts?US: When we founded ad pepper, from the outset we had the idea and concept to build an international network focusing on Online Marketing. In one of our very first sales decks we introduced DR concepts -- combining socio-demographic and online usage data by way of our proprietary ad serving technology. We were early investors in Adforce and co-founders of Adtech, so the importance of technology was always key to our strategy. What we didn’t predict at that stage were the different waves of market consolidation and how certain concepts and companies would emerge as dominant players. The landscape quickly became hypercompetitive and many of our initial competitors couldn't keep up and ultimately went out of business. We are proud to be one of the very few remaining (and most importantly profitable) international and independent networks.What's your strategic approach today?Our strategic approach has not changed too much over the past few years; ad pepper media universally focuses on technology and worldwide scale. We want to provide global clients with global solutions while offering specific, customized features as well on a local, regional and national level. We offer diversified formats and continuously optimize based on performance in whatever we do, regardless of advertiser size or a campaign’s scope.  This makes for happy clients who are able to best monetize marketing dollars and drive results.Key to this strategy again is proprietary technology -- especially owning an ad server like ours where the engine targets, optimizes and generates best campaign results. In a world of enormous media fragmentation and endless inventory supply, automation of targeting and optimization is one part of the equation. The other is client service and campaign customization (whether it is in design, consulting, or multilingual creative). Regardless of advertiser goal -- branding, DR, or order fulfillment -- we are able to help.You have a dedicated North American team led by Jonathan Slavin.  What are your expectations in that region?Our U.S. team has had tremendous success over the past two years. The same strong reputation ad pepper media has maintained in 10+ years as a European market leader is now being equaled by our North America division with growth and attention to detail. From New York City to Los Angeles and everywhere in between, feedback from advertisers has been great. Our U.S. clients benefit on many levels from our proprietary technology, targeting solutions, and outstanding client service. The U.S. market is by far the biggest worldwide market and we expect nothing less from our team here to reflect that market size in success and continued revenue growth -- one day making the U.S. entity bigger than all the other countries combined. We have achieved an important milestone already last year when the U.S. surpassed Germany and the UK -- the other two top global markets -- in terms of revenue.Our new product, the "Semantic Behavioral & Retargeting (SBR) Platform," is unique and has really exciting potential for the U.S. marketing community -- for branding and DR campaigns alike. Advertisers can now segment audience by expressed interest and relevant content environment. The results are outstanding in many cases and will give our U.S. team a big advantage in 2011 and onward.Beyond display, what do you see as key digital formats to exploit going forward and why?  Does it vary by country?We see a lot of growth in the following areas: video, ads within applications and of course in social media. We have begun several M&A activities in all of those areas in the past two years and added three new start-up investments to our portfolio; two of them are based on the West Coast and have already gained significant traction. SocialTyze offers social media campaigns and concepts and to U.S. advertisers, Brand Affinity Technologies provides celebrity endorsement strategies and technologies and has been voted as one of the hottest tech and media companies in the U.S.   We own a minority stake in those two companies and will serve as their international roll-out partner. The importance of different formats varies from market to market because each is in a different stage in the online evolution, where some markets are early adopters, others more followers, but in the long run this will level out.In general, what's your take on the state of the ad server? It seems that given the number of years that have passed since the first ad server, there hasn't been as much innovation as in other areas. Ad server technology is still the backbone of online media and will remain the core system. After the scaling and bandwidth issues challenged the industry, some media companies realized that the real value of an ad server lies in the data mining. That’s why Google and AOL paid considerably for DoubleClick or Adtech. I believe both acquisitions were among the smarter ones. As ad serving is a classical economies of scale business, the prices dropped to almost nothing and serious new players were not able to enter the market. But right now we see another turning point in this market.With more open systems and platforms that are combining ad serving with third party data enrichment, media plan verification and targeting, the offering and naming might change, but whether you call it DSP, SSP, Exchange or something else, the basic functionality is still ad serving.Over the past four years, ad pepper media built up an international well-respected ad server called Emediate. We have expanded the classical functions with semantic targeting, retargeting, media plan verification and brand protection tools where the client can choose which feature he deems suitable on a modular basis. This is the way to go.Do the affiliate marketing and lead generation businesses remain a core part of your business? How do you see this evolving?For the fourth year in a row, affiliate marketing has been the biggest growth driver in our company. Webgains, our affiliate platform, has achieved international status with offices in eight countries including the U.S. The model is simple and convincing -- the client pays commissions if an order has been generated. It will continue to grow alongside the ecommerce growth curve.Lead generation is the most important preceding step in a campaign strategy. We believe, however, only in premium lead generation concepts, where individual users sign up for individual products of interest. We believe that quality lead generation and affiliate marketing will grow more and more together and through our long and broad experience in both sectors, we will be able to play a significant role here.Is ad pepper taking advantage of real-time bidding environments? Do you see this as a game changer?It is and we do. We are the first network in Europe that has developed its own customized real-time bidder and through that we will be able to bid on all available inventory in a much more efficient way. In theory everyone will be able to bid on the same inventory and with full transparency, we believe the following trends will get more traction: prices will drop, publishers will not be able to differentiate their inventory by their own brand, edited content will become more and more relevant and companies that can identify such inventory will be the big beneficiaries.Have you been happy with the results of your SiteScreen ASP brand protection platform product? Why go to market with this product?It is a cool tool, as we say. Whenever we look at the campaign analytics after we have switched on our brand protection tool (which can classify down to any visible URL) we are amazed at the results -- the unexpected performance of unknown sites and the questionable quality of so called premium sites. All brand advertisers would like to know where their campaigns are really running and how they are actually performing. The more inventory is bought on exchanges and social media platforms, the more important it becomes to have brand protection technology enabled on any campaign.Any challenges in being a public company? Do you miss your private company/start-up days?It is a lot of work and expensive plus the level of transparency we are required to provide is definitely not a competitive advantage.  As a public company our valuations are also calculated in a different way than many other players in the industry. We see many private companies that have not proven anything yet believe they should be valued like Google and Facebook. That said, we also see many of them disappearing faster than they arrived. Fortunately we were able to hold on to many positive elements of the culture from our early days, so corporate governance regulations are not running the business; we still use our brains.If you were a big media, web publisher today, any key strategies that you would put in place that may be overlooked today?From a very high level perspective, we are always looking for technologies that have the power to change existing business models and markets by applying digital processes or automation to established manual processes or non-digital concepts. As we are not inventors but more scouts, we keep the one's we find for ourselves .Do you see China as the next big global market for digital?  If so, will ad pepper be there?No one can ignore China these days; the axe of our world shifts eastwards. That said, it is a risky and expensive market that still needs a lot of development. We are already running many campaigns in China and have existing publisher and advertising relationships there, however, we are still holding back with setting up an office there as we know no western company of our size that did this and made any money. We've seen quite the opposite in fact.Follow Ad Pepper Media (@adpepper) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

New Online Advertising Managed Service Makes Both Audience and Content Environment Count

By Jennifer Zaino

Online advertising network ad pepper media has introduced a managed service based on its Semantic Behavioral and Retargeting platform. The idea is to leverage its proprietary page-level semantic analysis, which hails from Crystal Semantics (which it acquired back in 2006) in combination with its behavioral/retargeting capabilities, in order to bring some balance between the camps who believe in environment vs. audience segmentation.“It’s a combination where we let the technologies ultimately dictate what is the most important factor to success vs. set up a presupposition that one will out-power or outweigh the other,” says Jonathan Slavin, President, North America of ad pepper media.The fact, ad pepper contends, is that there really is no one right answer of which approach works best. Advertisers, for example, can target audience segments based on anonymous data that indicates characteristics, behavior or preferences, such as those leading to a “luxury auto enthusiast” grouping that an automotive company would be interested in.But, Slavin notes, “we say that the environment where you reencounter that user may have an effect on whether they act or not. So, through [semantic page] classification we step back and say, when we reencounter users in American football-related content, they don’t convert as well as when we do in luxury lifestyle content or investment research content. So you start to get the idea of potentially where you should be bidding on an impression both by audience and by content. That’s where the value starts to come in.”This should lead to a more comprehensive view of the content and audience segments that worked both during and after a campaign, reducing waste and missed opportunities in current and future marketing efforts, ad pepper says. “You can look at it horizontally and say how does this segmentation fit against this specific page of content, does it yield x result or not,” Slavin says. “And after a certain period of time and enough inventory has passed, you can essentially grab trends, understand that certain pockets of inventory aren’t working even though the segmented audience is right, or maybe part of the segmentation is off.” With the actionable and quantifiable data coming in, agencies can “ershape a media plan in midstride instead of post-mortem, after it’s run it’s course,” he notes.Crystal Semantics’ SenseEngine technology serves the important role of breaking down content at the page level with very deep and granular understanding, and is critical to ad pepper’s new program. Ad pepper took the step to combine semantics with behavior and retargeting data “to help facilitate and create a better fundamental understanding of a marketplace and ecosystem that is so convoluted now,” Slavin says.ad pepper’s relationship with Crystal means it has and still will work side by side to really with the semantic tech vendor to highly polish its insights and ability to leverage the technology. But last year the decision also was made for Crystal Semantics to license its semantic advertising technology to ad agencies, publishers, ad networks, ad exchanges and demand-side platforms, rather than being available only to ad pepper media.“It’s been a proven model over the past six years and we’ve run billions of ad impressions through the system and been able to enhance the performance and accuracy of campaigns,” Ian Saunders, co-founder and managing director at Crystal Semantics. He says to expect some announcements soon that relate to inserting Crystal Semantics into many different points of the new advertising ecosystem.“If we focus just on advertisers, that’s an aspect only addressing half the market,” Saunders says. “The publisher base also has a lot to gain.” Semantic technology helps publishers get a granular understanding of the spectrum of themes in their content, which makes it easier to monetize all of it – not just what typically sells for a premium, like financial content. “If they have more detailed, granular assessment of the full scope of content, they find that there are disparate pockets off high-value content spread in other verticals,” he explains.For instance, financial content may well yield high level of CPM (cost per thousand views) and travel lower CPM, but maybe some of those travel pieces also discuss foreign currency and travel exchanges.If that’s understood, “there is the possibility to group them into the finance category and yield greater CPM for that piece of content. It’s a fairly lucrative commerical opportunity and semantics give that sort of leverage to bring about a higher yield.”

Review: Latest and greatest iPhone, iPad e-books for kids

By Rick BroidaLike most parents, I'm concerned that my kids get too much "screen time," what with the TV, computer, Wii, iPod/iPad, and so on. But if that time is spent reading, or at least flipping the pages of a book, I don't mind it one bit.That's why I continue to be a relentless fan of children's e-books, which are increasingly abundant for iOS devices. Indeed, in the last couple of weeks alone, nearly a dozen new and noteworthy titles have arrived in the App Store. Here are the ones I think make for worthwhile screen time."Horton Hears a Who" and "The Cat in the Hat Comes Back": Two of my favorite Dr. Seuss titles just arrived in Oceanhouse Media's ever-growing catalog. Both on sale for $2.99, and in fact all the Seuss apps have been discounted from 25-75 percent off (this week only) in honor of Dr. Seuss' birthday."Jeremy Fisher: Buddy Edition": "The Tale of Jeremy Fisher" comes from Beatrix Potter, who, of course, is best known for "Peter Rabbit." I won't say this story has the same appeal, but it does offer an interesting gimmick: Buddy Reading, which leverages Game Center to allow a parent or other relative to read the story on one device while the child listens on another. Setup is a one-time hassle, but this could be great for the parent who travels a lot. The app costs $1.99; you'll need to buy it twice, once for each device.

"The Magic School Bus: Oceans": I've often found the "Magic School Bus" books a bit tricky to read aloud to kids, if only because of the heavy use of comic book-style word balloons. The app version ($7.99) solves that handily by highlighting each word as it's read aloud--and using different voices for each character. It also has photos, videos, a learning game, and interactive science lessons. Alas, it's for iPad only."The Penelope Rose": This decidedly girl-centric title ($6.99), also for iPad only, has a gimmick of its own: 3D artwork that doesn't require special glasses. Instead, you just tilt the iPad back and forth, which creates a very cool illusion of 3D. Beyond that, it's a beautifully illustrated fairytale about, well, fairies. And roses."Violet and the Mystery Next Door": Given the title, you might mistake this for another girls-only story, but there's appeal here for boys as well. The fourth book in the Violet series ($3.99) features choose-your-own-adventure elements and a big helping of interactive features.Have you found any other children's e-books worth recommending? If so, turn the page (so to speak) and name them in the comments.In the meantime, be sure to check out my previous e-book posts: 5 amazing iPad e-books for kids, 5 more amazing e-books for kids, and 5 fabulous holiday e-books for kids.

Charles Stack, "My Daddy Killed the Bookstore"

Charles Stack, Sideways

Peter Rabbit: Buddy Edition Uses Game Center for Tech-Savvy Storytelling

By Jennifer Beam

Score: 8/10    Price: $1.99   

Peter Rabbit: Buddy Edition is the classic Beatrix Potter tale brought to life and made all the more interesting with the implementation of Sideways’ Buddy Reading System. The Buddy Reading System uses Game Center to connect two devices for audio communication. What this means for parents and their children is that you can read the storybook with your child even when you aren’t there.Using Game Center for a storybook app, Peter Rabbit: Buddy Edition certainly opens up appealing possibilities for traveling parents. It requires initial setup, directions for which are plainly provided in the app. They may appear a bit complex initially, but tech-savvy parents can figure it out. After that, in order to read with your child, you set up the book by selecting the Buddy Reading option from the menu and following prompts. (Young children will require assistance from someone on their end.) Once the Game Center invite is sent and accepted, you can then read the story and control the page turning from your end while your child looks and listens on theirs.As a stand alone storybook app, Peter Rabbit: Buddy Edition is a lovely rendition of the classic tale. I don’t particularly favor the recorded narrator for her lack of interjection and enthusiasm at a children’s story, but she does an OK job. In addition to the option to connect through Game Center or hear the narrated version, kids can read the story on their own. The iPad version also includes a coloring book option, but this extra is absent on the iPhone version.All in all, Peter Rabbit: Buddy Edition is a good storybook app and the Buddy Reading System makes good use of Game Center technology. It is definitely an app best suited for iPad rather than iPhone users, but if you are a parent that travels frequently or is away at bed time and have at least two devices to support it, Peter Rabbit: Buddy Edition is worth checking out.Image Gallery: Peter Rabbit: Buddy Edition

Digital Book World: Examining the State of the E-Book

By Calvin ReidOn the same day that the president delivered his state of the union speech, Digital Book World offered its own look at the state of the e-book, be it enhanced, amplified or what have you. The afternoon session, Delivering Enhanced e-books, offered a look at a variety of successful multimedia-driven e-book products including presentations by Hachette (Ansel Adams app), Penguin (Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth) and S&S (Nixonland).But the panel Beyond the e-Book offered a line up of digital publishers—“digital producers” seems to have emerged as the new nomenclature —who laid out their vision of where the enhanced e-book is going. Publisher/producers from Aptara, Zinio, Vook and Sideways outlined the market as well as their experience using trial and error to develop multimedia authoring tools that make the production of multimedia products easier and more efficient. Apatara’s Sriram Panchanath outlined a future of enhanced e-books created under HTML5 and ePub3—evolving standards for multimedia on the web and the ePub standard—that will include interactive advertising, e-books that can adapt to readers tastes and needs, subsidized content and more, all integrated with social media functionality. “Dedicated e-readers will evolve into tablets,” said Panchanath, “offering tailed content. Every e-book app can serve as a bookstore and backlists will be repurposed for new kinds digital products. Publishers that adapt will only grow stronger.”And all the digital producers were showing off new authoring tools that they say will speed up the ebook/app development process, make production cheaper and more efficient and attract a new generation of publisher/producers to e-book development. Vook producer Matt Cavnar discussed the rapid growth of Vook—from 4 to 26 employees in a year, producing 120 titles—and hyped MotherVook, an enhanced platform for multimedia content creation that Vook hopes to extend to its publishing partners. Sideways founder Charles Stack showed off M3, his own multimedia authoring platform, as well as highlighting a new e-book feature he calls “buddy reading.” The feature allows a user with an iPhone to synch to another iPhone in another location (say a child at home) using the iPhone’s new Game Center and can then read aloud and turn pages simultaneously in a remotely shared e-book. “When people worry about the sales of print titles dropping, remember,” said Stack, “Right now it’s undefined, but the publishing space we’re entering is a lot bigger than the one we’re coming from.”

Tablet Shipments To Quadruple In 2011

By Dianna DilworthShipments of tablet devices will more than quadruple in 2011, according to a new study from publishing software company Sideways.In a white paper released this week called, “Evolving Beyond Print: Taking Advantage of the New Tablet Communication Channel,” Sideways looked at tablet adoption trends among consumers. The study found that tablet users tend to be young, highly educated, high-income earners and that the majority of tablet owners spend 2-5 hours per day on the device.Eliza Wing, president and co-founder of Sideways had this statement: “It’s now clear that tablet use is only going to escalate and the device is in fact an essential communications channel. Publishers and marketers can successfully engage their audiences with it while gaining valuable intelligence on them. Tablet app strategies should be integral components of any marketing program.”

10 iPhone Apps for Music Lovers

10 iPhone Apps for Music LoversBy Jeana Lee TahnkWhen you think back to the special moments in your life, it’s likely that there's a song attached to each one: Your first dance at your wedding, the lullaby you played every night when you were putting your newborn to bed, the song that was playing in the car when you broke up with your first love. Any time you hear that song, you are whisked right back to the emotions you felt at that particular time, and its connection has been imprinted in your memory. That’s the power of music.The technology available to us to make music an integral part of our lives is staggering, and luckily, it just keeps getting better. Whether you like to rock out on your iPod or you are still sporting a portable CD player (do those still exist?), music and its ability to transform moods is one thing that connects us all.Everyone knows about Pandora, Last.fm and Spotify, but the following 10 apps, which have mostly flown under the radar, deserve props for making it easier for us to enjoy the music we love.1. Audiogalaxy Mobile

Are you one of those music hoarders who have thousands upon thousands of MP3 files on your iPhone, so much so that your library is starting to affect your storage capacity to the point where you can't add new apps? If this sounds familiar and you are constantly picking and choosing which tunes to store and play on your iPhone, then Audiogalaxy may be the answer for you.This app gives you cloud-based access to your entire music library without the need for syncing your phone or worrying about space. After downloading the Audiogalaxy helper program and syncing your music library to your account, you are all set to stream your music to your iPhone. Audiogalaxy also enables you to access your music from any computer and a large number of other handheld devices.Cost: Free2. sir SampletonAt first glance, this app appears to be a simple keyboard that you’d let your kid play around with as you wait in line at the grocery store. But on closer inspection, sir Sampleton is actually a sophisticated and feature-rich app that lets you do everything from recording or changing sounds to mixing beats, adding vibrato, and even saving recordings. It’s a fun way for both novices and more seasoned beat masters to get their groove on.Cost: $2.993. ooTunes RadioIf you want to mix up your radio station listening experience and you crave a huge variety of genres and styles, including talk radio, ooTunes Radio is a great app for limitless listening pleasure. Compiling audio from more than 30,000 streams in 150 countries, ooTunes Radio lets you create the exact playlist you want and gives you the chance to listen to radio shows from around the world. The neat Radio Roolette feature offers a playlist of available music and enables you to listen to a sampling of music from hundreds of stations without having to manually pick them yourself. If you hear a song you like, the app also lets you purchase directly from iTunes for instant download, as well.Cost: $4.994. Ear wormsThere’s nothing more annoying than getting a bad song stuck in your head. If you’re cruel and want to impart that annoyance onto someone else, use Earworms to send an audio clip to someone in the hopes that it’ll stick. This fun app features 20 songs; all you have to do is pick which one you want and email it. You know you’ve accomplished the task when you hear your friend walking around singing, “Oh, Mickey, you’re so fine, you’re so fine you blow my mind, hey Mickey, hey Mickey.”Cost: $0.995. SoundHoundHave you ever heard a catchy tune on the radio, sang it all day long, but had no idea what it was called or who sang it? You try to sing it for your friend to see if she knows it, but sadly, you're greeted with a blank stare. Luckily, with SoundHound on your iPhone, there is no more guessing. This fun app can actually recognize a user humming or singing a tune and will pull up all the relevant matches it finds. And it really works — SoundHound was even able to recognize and identify a hum from my friend, who we’ll just say, has less than perfect pitch.A free, lite version is available as well with unlimited music IDs, but the paid version features ad-free content and new features such as Wikipedia-based information on artists and bands.Cost: $4.996. TuneWikiHave you ever thought you knew the lyrics to a song and realized you were way off base? It happens frequently, but with TuneWiki, you can memorize the lyrics to your favorite songs and ensure that you have it right from the get-go. TuneWiki is both a radio player and lyrics decoder and provides a wide array of music streams to choose from. You can either listen and get lyrics through TuneWiki’s radio options or use your own iTunes library. You can even search for songs if you know just a line or two of the lyrics.Cost: Free7. Concert VaultConcert Vault is a great app for music lovers who would prefer to listen to live music recordings. It really is a veritable cache of recorded treasures from past decades, including artists like Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead, Queen and more. The app, and up to 10 hours of streaming, is free for every user, but if you’re a live concertaholic and 10 hours isn’t enough, you can upgrade your membership for $48/year and get benefits such as unlimited access to recordings, upgraded bitrate streaming and discounts on merchandise.Cost: Free8. Local ConcertsLocal Concerts is a handy resource that keeps track of upcoming concerts and live shows in your area. You can search by date or venue and also have direct access from the app to where you can purchase tickets and get directions. Local Concerts also scans your iTunes library and alerts you to upcoming concerts of artists you have in your music inventory for a more personalized experience.Cost: Free9. Top 100s by YearTop 100s by Year is a great app that provides a huge database of the 100 most popular songs from each year from 1947 to today. You can search by year, see the full year’s listing and listen to the songs (the app automatically has each year's songs in shuffle mode). It also allows you to buy any song on its lists directly from iTunes and/or see its accompanying music video onYouTube. This is a great reference app for pulling together playlists or just waxing nostalgic on songs that were hits when you were in eighth grade.Cost: Free (currently on sale from $1.99)10. AdaptunesIf you run with your iPhone, drive with it or listen to any kind of music on the go, you know what a pain it can be to constantly adjust the volume to adapt to your listening environment. Adaptunes takes care of this conundrum by automatically adjusting your volume based on speed and motion-based sensors. There are also different activities you can choose from that provide different modes of sound adaptation, such as driving, mountain biking, jogging, skiing, exercising, etc. Further, you can create playlists within Adaptunes for on-the-spot volume adjustment.Cost: $0.99

Rivera: Talking with Eliza Wing of Sideways

Q&A by Jeff RiveraDigital technology has brought about a whole new world for book publishing and magazine publishers. Some say it is a world of trouble, others say a world of opportunity. One company that is at the forefront of what they feel is an untapped market is Sideways. I had the opportunity to talk to Eliza Wing, co-founder and President of Sideways and hear her viewpoint on the coming changes in the industry in the near future.There's so much competition right for apps. How are you different than what companies like Vook are doing?We are first and foremost a technology company. Our passion happens to be books and magazines which is why we have focused on the great disruption that is occurring right now within the publishing industry. We have developed a platform that allows publishers to take advantage of the Apple devices but also Android, particularly the NookColor. We are not focused on developing our own reader, instead we concentrate on helping publishers take full advantage of all the capabilities that tablets offer. That means that we will extend epub but we won't develop a pure epub product -- there's just too much functionality (including design/layout) being left by the wayside in the way that epub is being displayed by the tablets.Is the market oversaturated with apps and book/magazine related projects?Yes and no. Yes, because there are many players who have decided that they "need" to have an app solution and instead of thinking through just what they ought to be presenting to consumers, they are mostly repurposing their print products. That said, we are all experiencing massive and rapid change; I think people need to publish, refine, publish. So following that logic, there can never be enough product out there -- because we are all learning together. If you don't begin to alter your work-flow and how you are thinking about "book" and "magazine" -- then you WILL be left behind. Remember the music industry, the newspaper business. Both suffered and are suffering from the immense digital disruption because they didn't acknowledge the depth of the change. At a certain point, it's too late to play catch-up.What are some of the projects you're most proud of?I'm proud of our iPad-only magazine, Sideways (particularly the October issue) which we created in order to help build the platform that we are now utilizing to help our clients. Our David Busch Canon T2i Guide is a good example of how we are able to take a book and re-flow it based on its hierarchy. We hope to encourage publishers to begin to think about all of their assets and how they relate within a hierarchy. Stop thinking about pages, think tags, interrelationships between content forms. And another project, which is our Buddy Edition of Peter Rabbit which is being released shortly will introduce a very important new twist in tablet reading. We also produced a holiday coloring book app for Unicef pro bono because we believe in their mission. I'm proud of that because it exemplifies our company's personality.What are you doing to make potential consumers aware of you? What is working? What hasn't worked?Our focus is less on sales of our own apps and more on forming strong relationships with content creators.For those looking to enter the market right now, what advice do you have?If you don't feel comfortable with rapid change don't get into it. If you aren't patient with people trying to suss out what all this means in terms of their future and how it impacts traditional publishing don't bother trying to get involved in the business. Just because you understand the technology and perhaps have the resources to help publishers don't assume that they don't understand their audience and product very very well.If you want to build apps and make a million off of the next Angry Three Birds? By all means give it a whirl, just remember that it is quite hard to rise above the fray and if your app doesn't catch on quickly, it will probably not get much attention.

See how Scott's Northeast Ohio favorites of 2010 compare to yours

By Scott SuttellI just finished writing our 2010 year in review for the Jan. 3 print edition, so I'm in a looking-back kind of mood. With that in mind, I thought I'd break from the usual format and offer a list of some of my favorite things of the year. (Plus, I'm not actually here today and didn't feel like writing from home, so I needed to do something that could be written in advance.)

• Favorite Northeast Ohio business story: The deal reached in April to keep the Hugo Boss plant open in Brooklyn. It was a rare win (one that's not short-lived, I hope) for American manufacturing after the company had planned to take the operations overseas.
• Favorite Northeast Ohio business person: He probably wouldn't want the attention, but Gerald Blouch deserves a ton of credit for keeping Invacare Corp.running smoothly after taking over as interim CEO when A. Malachi Mixon suffered a stroke last spring. He gets the permanent gig Jan. 1. Mr. Mixon continues as chairman of the board.
• Favorite new restaurant: I'll be parochial here and make a choice that's three blocks from my house — the inventive gastropub Deagan's Kitchen & Bar in Lakewood. I love the renovation of the beautiful old space, and I'm a sucker for both the chicken and waffles and the cheap (but fancy and really good) tacos on Tuesday nights.
• Favorite Twitter feed by a Northeast Ohio resident: Not sure how Dominic Litten, leader of interactive marketing at Point to Point Inc., does it, but he finds something interesting every day that distracts me at work. Maybe I'm just jealous of the 3,300+ followers; I was glad to get to 300 this year. Then again, if your title is “leader of interactive marketing,” you should be good at this stuff. But keep those tweets coming, Mr. Litten.
• Favorite new holiday tradition: Cleveland Indians Snow Days. Loved the tubing hill from the bleachers and the skating mile, even if I'm shaky on skates. Hope the team can find a way to make money on it while lowering that top ticket price, as $25 is a little steep. There's still time to try it, as the event ends Jan. 2. The bleachers will never look the same to me, though.
• Favorite book: “The Imperfectionists” by Tom Rachman. It's a series of connected short stories about a dying English-language newspaper — sorry, you might find that redundant — in Europe. Mr. Rachman mixed dark humor, tragedy and fresh insight into the state of the newspaper business.
• Favorite movie: OK if I cheat here and name three?It's dull to name “The Social Network” because everyone liked it, but the script is too good to ignore (as long as you're not stuck on historical accuracy.) “127 Hours” was thrilling, then scary, and then exhilarating. James Franco was incredible, and the final shot of the real Aron Ralston on a couch, with only one arm but his life complete alongside his wife and baby boy, really got me. Finally, I hope “Winter's Bone,” about a young woman in the Ozark Mountains who must find her drug-dealing father (if he's not already dead), finds a robust audience now that it's on DVD. It's thrilling, though the subject matter is what some people might call “depressing.” I hate that criticism. A good movie is never depressing. Junk like “Little Fockers” is depressing.
• Favorite Cleveland startup: I'm pulling for Sideways, a tech company that's developing a publishing platform to leverage the multiuser, multimedia, multitouch capabilities of the iPad and other mobile devices. CEO Charles Stack was able to convince Eliza Wing, the longtime head of Cleveland.com, to join as president and chief operating officer. As an iPad user since August, I continue to be amazed by the device and look forward to what the folks at Sideways do to enhance the experience.
• Favorite rant: I'm not necessarily endorsing his politics, but I enjoy the often-cranky humor of U.S. Rep. Steve LaTourette, a Republican from Lake County.Last spring, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said the government “is going to give bicycling — and walking, too — the same importance as automobiles in transportation planning and the selection of projects for federal money.” He went so far as to note in his government blog, “This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized.”At a recent House hearing, Rep. LaTourette said “jokingly to a Transportation Department official that one explanation for the new policy is that the secretary's thinking has been clouded by drugs,” according to the Associated Press"Is that a typo?" Rep. LaTourette asked. "If it's not a typo, is there still mandatory drug testing at the department?"He added, “So is it his thought that perhaps we're going to have, like, rickshaws carrying cargo from state to state, or people with backpacks?"
• People who died: Not a “favorite” category, per se, but I didn't have room for the “People who will be missed” section in the year in review, so I wanted to close with three names here. (This is not, by any means, a comprehensive list.)John Bukovnik Jr., the CEO of software developer Easy2 Technologies, died last July after collapsing at the company's downtown headquarters. He and Paul Schutt founded Easy2 in 2000, and today the company employs more than 30 people.Harvey Pekar, the comic book writer and well-known Cleveland curmudgeon, was a great loss in literary circles.Less well-known, but also beloved by those who knew him, was Greg Stiles of Heights Guitars; you can find a fine story about him here, written by Dan Shingler, our manufacturing reporter.

Peter Rabbit App Launches For iPad, iPhone

By Dianna DilworthSoftware company Sideways has published a new app version of Beatrix Potter’s classic children’s book Peter Rabbit for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.Using Apple’s new Game Center technology, the Peter Rabbit: Buddy Edition app lets two people in different locations read the story and interact with it together from remote locations. This is a great way for parents who are away on a business trip to tuck their children in back at home.Charles Stack, CEO and co-founder of Sideways had this statement: “Nothing can take the place of a parent reading a bedtime story to a child. Now with the Buddy Reading technology, it’s possible for traveling parents to keep that intimate, precious connection to their children at home, no matter the distance.”Like other kids book apps, the Sideways Peter Rabbit app has a “Read To Me” option, and includes interactive animations, games and sound effects.The above video demonstrates how the app works. The app is available in the App Store for $1.99.

The Week in Apps: December 23, 2010

This week we take a look at new apps from publishers. There's a varied range, from originals to spin-offs of classic children's books, and subjects cover science, cheese, and more.Title: The Little Engine That CouldPublisher: Penguin Young Readers Group/Smashing IdeasAvailable: December 22Price: $6.99Background: Penguin’s classic version of The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper, published since 1930, has sold more than 10 million copies in the English language.Interactive features: Sound effects; moveable objects; can be set to either “follow along” or “read-aloud” mode.Title: The Monster at the End of This Book

Publisher: Callaway Digital Arts/Sesame StreetAvailable: December 22Price: $0.99Background: First published in 1971 and celebrating its 40th anniversary in print in 2011, The Monster at the End of This Book, written by Jon Stone and illustrated by Mike Smollin, has sold more than three million copies, making it the bestselling trade book in Sesame Street’s history.Interactive features: Animation responds to a child’s touch; narration by Grover; word highlighting.Title: The Real Life Adventures of Mabel & Lulu

Publisher: Apphaus Design Inc.Available: December 22Price: iPad: $2.99; iPhone: $0.99Background: The app is an original children’s interactive digital picture book series featuring dogs Mabel and Lulu.Interactive features: Touch-based animations; “Read to Me” or “Read to Myself” options; original music.Title: Ultimate Dinopedia: The Most Complete Dinosaur Reference EverPublisher: National Geographic Kids/ScrollMotion

Available: December 22Price: $5.99Background: Based on National Geographic's award-winning children's book of the same name, which came out in October and was named an Outstanding Science Trade Book for Students K-12 by the National Science Teachers Association and the Children's Book Council.Interactive features: Pronunciations for more than 700 dinosaurs; videos; interactive family tree lets users jump to their favorite family of dinosaurs.Title: Peter Rabbit: Buddy Edition

Publisher: SidewaysAvailable: December 21Price: $1.99Background: Beatrix Potter’s The Tales of Peter Rabbit was first released in a trade edition in 1902. It has been translated into 36 languages and has sold 45 million copies.Interactive features: Sideways’ patent-pending Buddy Reading technology lets two people to remotely read aloud together; some pictures initiate sounds when touched and others can be moved (e.g., kids can help bunnies fill their baskets with berries); and an interactive coloring book includes line drawings from Potter’s first version of the book.Title: Cheese Plate

Publisher: ChronicleAvailable: December 20Price: $4.99Background: The app is based on two Chronicle books: The Cheese Course and Cheese and Wine, both by Janet FletcherInteractive features: More than 150 identification photos; search for cheeses by country, type of milk, country of origin; instructions on buying, tasting, handling, and storing; social mediaout-messaging with thumbnail photos to e-mail, Facebook, Twitter.Title: Ready, Set, Spot!Publisher: Carus PublishingAvailable: December 17

Price: $2.99Background: Carus, owner of the Cricket Magazine Group and Cobblestone Publishing, did not base the app on a specific book.Interactive features: Kids ages 3 and up learn to recognize the pattern in a group of pictures and build a three-card set before time runs out. There is an animated, step-by-step tutorial and three difficulty levels.Title: Vocabulary CentralPublisher: PearsonAvailable: December 9Price: $2.99 in individualized editions for grades 6-12Background: Pearson publishes education materials for preK through college. It is in the process of rolling out apps for the K-12 age range on grammar, literacy, science, and humanities.Interactive features: Each flashcard gives the word’s explanation, a model sentence, synonyms and antonyms, word families, and background information, all with accompanying audio. Students can earn points through the quiz mode. Videos with scrolling lyrics provide musical and contextual clues to help students learn vocabulary words.Title: PopOut! The Night Before ChristmasPublisher: Loud Crow Interactive Inc.Available: December 2Price: $4.99 (introductory price: $1.99)Background: Clement C. Moore’s Christmas classic has been published countless times; among the versions available are a picture book illustratedby Mary Engelbreit (HarperCollins), a Golden Book, and a paper-cut edition from Candlewick.Interactive features: Touch and drag objects to make them “spring” to life or tilt to make them slide; “Read to Me” feature highlights words; hear individual words spoken with the tap of a finger; 50 pages of text and illustrations with page turning interactions; a piano version of “O Christmas Tree” plays in the background.Titles: A Christmas Carol and ‘Twas the Night Before ChristmasPublisher: Helium CreativeAvailable: Christmas Carol: November; Night Before Christmas: December 11Price: Christmas Carol: $4.99 now; $8.99 after January 2; Night Before Christmas: $3.99Background: Little, Brown just released author and artist Chuck Fischer’s pop-up version of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.Interactive features: Full-page animations, interactive illustrations, some pages with sound effects, and professional voice-over. Actor Victor Garber narrates ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.Title: Spaghetti DayPublisher: Picpocketbooks.comAvailable: iPad: November 11; iPod: November 6Price: iPad: $3.99; iPod: $1.99Background: Scholastic published Wednesday Is Spaghetti Day by Maryann Cocca-Leffler in 1990 and it sold more than 250,000 copies. It is now out of print but Cocca-Leffler, who regained the rights in 2009, hired a developer to create the app.Interactive features: “Read to Me” audio with music; when a child touches the cat it meows; words light up as they are being read.Title: Teddy’s DayPublisher: Minedition/AurynAvailable: NovemberPrice: Free now; $3.99 starting January 3Background: What Does My Teddy Bear Do All Day?, written by Bruno Hachler and illustrated by Birte Muller, came out in 2004 from Minedition.Interactive features: A color drawing tablet, a mini puzzle, and a splatter paint page where children can uncover secret images.

Last minute gift ideas (and deals!) that give back this holiday season

By Christie GartonWith less than one week to go until Christmas, here are some last minute gift ideas (and deals) that give back in some really cool and unexpected ways!Charity AuctionStill looking for that perfect gift for that special someone? How about a set visit to Glee? Or maybe a walk-on role in HBO's Boardwalk Empire? With charitybuzz's "Gifts that Give Twice" auction both of these items -- and many others -- are available to bid on with all proceeds going to a specific charity. Interested? You can find these items at charitybuzz.com.Greeting CardsStill haven't sent out your holiday greeting cards? You're not alone! For a fun, do-good twist, consider these greeting card options that give back:-- UNICEF just launched a holiday coloring book iPad app, which allows kids to color as many as nine greetings on the iPad and then email them to friends and family. It's a great way to support and share the UNICEF message, and it's free! The U.S. Fund for UNICEF Holiday Coloring Book iPad App is available on iTunes at http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-u-s-fund-for-unicef-holiday/id409133581?mt=8.-- Or how about a post card greeting? Just in time for the holiday season, the postcard is making a comeback! En Masse Mail is a new website that allows people to send greetings with REAL postcards and give to a charity at the same time. Whether it's a holiday "hi" or "thanks," a photo from a trip to Mumbai, or to advocate for a cause - the sender can choose from a gallery of images or upload their own, for .99¢ each. Head to http://enmassemail.com/postcards.php and choose a postcard that you find most compelling or create your own. Each virtual stamp is dedicated to a charity which receives 10% of the stamp's proceeds. Participating charities include the American Cancer Society, the Michael J. Fox Foundation, Grassroot Soccer, Safe Horizon, Achilles International, Groove With Me, etc.Gift Cards-- The gift of health: Just in time for the holidays, American Express has created the Children's Health Fund Gift Card, a gift that gives twice: once to the recipient and once to charity. For every card sold, American Express will donate the $3.95 purchase fee to Children's Health Fund, a leading pediatric provider of mobile-based health care for homeless and low-income children and their families. The cards come in denominations of $25, $50, $100 and $200. The Children's Health Fund Gift Card from American Express will be available for purchase online by clicking here.-- The top four Charity Gift Card providers, TisBest.org, CharityGiftCertificates.org, JustGive.org and NetworkForGood.org issued the "Just 51 Bucks Challenge," asking Americans to give a gift of charity instead of "stuff" this holiday season. By investing $51 – which is 10% of what the average U.S. consumer will spend this year - in Charity Gift Cards rather than conventional holiday gifts of stuff, Americans can close the charity budget gap. Click on any of the links above to find the right gift card -- and charity -- for you!Shopping for a CauseThese opportunities listed below are great holiday gift options for the person that has everything....-- Seven Hopes United, an online Fair Trade retailer, offers unique fair trade gifts from around the world just in time for the holidays. All Seven Hopes United products are Fair Trade Certified, which means the products are made in fair trade cooperatives that contribute to social development, provide economic stability and secure the rights of marginalized producers and workers - especially in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. Plus a portion of the proceeds from each product sold is invested back into artisan communities. For more information, visitwww.sevenhopesunited.com.--This holiday season, the International Rescue Committee is offering gifts that will warm the hearts of friends and family at the same time as they make a difference in the lives of refugees forced to flee from war or disaster. At the IRC store, gift givers can purchase critical items for refugees in honor of their loved ones; the IRC will send recipients a beautiful personalized card in the giftgiver's name.Giving IRC gifts means capturing the true spirit of the season:

• A $24 first aid kit can provide a community health worker with the tools to treat basic ailments in a community affected by crisis. It's the perfect gift to dedicate in honor of a son or daughter in medical or nursing school.
• A $52 prenatal care gift can provide essential care for an expectant mother living in a war-torn area. What mother wouldn't be touched at having this gift given in her name?
• A farming kit, including seeds and tools, to help a family grow food, is $60, and makes a great gift for the friend with a green thumb.
• Summer school for a newly arrived refugee child in the U.S. is $100 and perfect to dedicate in honor of a teacher or student.
• Carpentry toolkits that cost $182 can help refugees rebuild devastated homes and communities - and would make a thoughtful gift for the tinkerer, crafter or handyman.

-- ChildFund International has an annual gift catalog featuring items that have been specifically requested by ChildFund International workers in developing countries around the world to help meet existing needs. Givers help impoverished families while also honoring a friend or family member with a purchase in their name. This year's hottest gifts? In addition to female goats for families in the Caribbean and throughout Africa ($37-105), the most popular gifts from the catalog include blankets for children in Mozambique ($12 apiece) and fruit trees for families in Mozambique (six for $20). Gifts start at $6 for head scarf for girls in Afghanistan and run to $2,143 for a water reservoir for communities in Honduras. Visit ChildFund's gift catalog for more details.-- For families looking for gadgets and gear, there's a different idea, a better idea, on the market - one that comes with hope and happiness for people in need, says Heifer International, a non-profit organization whose goal is to help end world hunger and poverty through self-reliance & sustainability. Through their "Most Important Gift Catalog in the World," holiday shoppers can send a variety of animals -- cows, goats, llamas, even water buffalo - that, unlike traditional gifts, promise a better, sustainable and self-reliant future. For instance, the gift of one Heifer goat will provide up to two gallons of milk per day for a family and will be a great resource for cheese, butter, yogurt and fertilizer. For more details, visit their gift catalog online at www.heifer.org.-- Given that the holiday season is the perfect time to give hope, The American Cancer Society encourages folks to honor friends and family with a gift in their name by making a donation to help support their work.-- For the last-minute holiday shoppers who are searching for ways to help others, Operation Smile's Holiday Giving Catalog and Holiday Greeting Cards offer the opportunity to donate to a good cause while giving thoughtful gifts. Life-changing gifts starting at just $25 are available, and the collection includes special feeding bottles, antibiotics and pain medication, as well as the gift of a surgery. Through these gifts, supporters can help the thousands of children suffering from clefts around the world. Visit www.operationsmile.org/holiday for more information.Facebook Deals-- Southwest Airlines: This holiday season, Southwest Airlines is offering the Make-A-Wish Foundation $1 in travel each time a customer uses Facebook Deals to check in at any of Southwest Airlines' 69 airports. Facebook users simply need to use their smart phone to check in using Facebook Places and share their location upon arrival at any airport Southwest serves and claim the deal. Once they've checked in on Facebook Places and claimed the deal, Southwest Airlines will automatically donate $1 in travel to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, up to $300,000. For more details on how you can participate in this offer, visit: www.southwest.com/fbplaces.-- Hard Rock Cafe (U.S.): Donating $1 to WhyHunger to fight childhood hunger and poverty worldwide. Through Dec. 31 (or up to $100,000).-- Starbucks: Donating $1 per check-in to Conservation International to help protect 5,000 acres of forest. Up to $75,000.-- 24 Hour Fitness: Donating $1 to KaBOOM! for every person who checks in using Facebook Places. Up to $50,000.-- The North Face: Donating $1 to the National Park Foundation for every individual who checks in at one of America's nearly 400 national parks or visits a North Face retail location. Up to $150,000.-- Head to Facebook for a complete round-up of their "holiday check in deals".

Sideways' Buddy Reading allows parents to read books to children remotely using their iPhones and the iPad

By Douglas HebraicHere is an ingenious and fun use of Apple's new mobile devices, as well as software solutions, combined with some original additions from the Cleveland based software company Sideways LLC. The Sideways' Buddy Edition allows two people to read aloud together using their iPad and either an iPhone or iPod touch. The first app featuring this has just been released: the Peter Rabbit: Buddy Edition of the Beatrix Potter classic.This $1.99 app is for iOS devices, but to take full advantage of all the app offers you need two separate devices -- one iPhone or iPod touch, and an iPad. Once the app is downloaded and installed (it only weighs in at a modest 93.7 MB), children can read the book themselves or have it read to them by the app itself. There is also a "Learn to Read" function that allows children to touch objects in the books and see and hear the words.The app also features a built-in coloring book with line drawings from Beatrix Potter’s first version of the book -- which thankfully comes with an eraser for people like me!But the main event is a demonstration of what Sideways is calling 'Buddy Reading'. The process to set up Budding Reading is a bit complicated, but is clearly explained in the app.Buddy Reading takes advantage of Apple's new Game Center, which was introduced to the iPad through the iOS 4 update. The first thing that must occur is that the user has to register with Game Center if they have not done so already. Both devices used -- the iPhone and iPad, for instance -- must have separate accounts because both users will be accessing Game Center at the same time.One person then invites the other to become friends through their accounts. One person then opens up the Peter Rabbit: Buddy Edition app; they tap "Read the Book", then "Buddy Reading". The first person chooses the second person to read with, waits for that person to accept, then they hit "Play Now". A security code is then required on both ends.I told you it was a bit complicated. But Sideways advises walking through the process together the first time before trying to do this remotely. The key is that it works.“Nothing can take the place of a parent reading a bedtime story to a child. Now with the Buddy Reading technology, it’s possible for traveling parents to keep that intimate, precious connection to their children at home, no matter the distance,” Charles Stack, CEO and co-founder of Sideways is quoted as stating in a release. “The new generation of multi-media devices offers great ways of telling classic stories. We’ve taken the century-old delight experienced when reading Peter Rabbit and respectfully extended it using new technology, which can be efficiently applied to books new and old.”At two bucks this app is obviously a bargain. But this app is really a demonstration of the Sideways' own publishing solutions. The company is courting authors to use their "Anigraphic Engine" to create interactive books. The company's website lists some of the technology they can offer.I've written about Sideways on a number of occasions involving their own tablet-only magazine, also called Sideways. Back in June CEO Stack said that the company was working to see what Apple's new tablet could be when it grows up (my words)."We're really interested in experimenting with the form, what this medium wants to be when it grows up," Stack said in June. "The iPad medium wants to be something, like when sculptures talk about letting the sculpture out of the wood. It's the same kind of model, we're trying to figure out what this hardware platform is really good at, or best at."Both the company and the tablet has already come a long way. It will be fun to see this technology continue to be pushed and developed.Here is the company's own promotional video for their new book app:

5Qs With Myvideorights COO Ron Schneier

5Qs with Myvideorights COO Ron SchneierBy John Gaffney

With all the video content flying around the Internet, it’s hard to think in terms of restrictions and rights. Some companies are, including one that just launched in mid-November. Myvideorights (MVR), manages and monetizing professionally produced video online, and will be led in the U.S. by cable television veteran Ron Schneier. Schneier was Executive Vice President at A&E Television and for the 17 years he was with the organization, he was instrumental in building four successful networks – A&E, The History Channel, The Biography Channel and History International.Formed in London in 2007, MVR manages the digital rights of video content online, protecting against unauthorized use and monetizing through advertising.  MVR currently drives more than 125 million views per month across its high-profile catalog with clients including The Football Association, Tiger Aspect (“Mr. Bean”), BBC Worldwide, Ministry of Sound, Comic Relief and Hat Trick Productions (“Father Ted”).  We caught up with Schneier as the company launched.Why are digital video rights important? Seems like content providers and networks have all the content they need.MVR employs the latest digital finger-printing technologies, to address the growing problems of unauthorized distribution of professionally produced content.  We have seen many instances where content owners are losing thousands of dollars in advertising revenue due to their lack of understanding of how to effectively manage both the distribution and monetization of their content. We also work with our content owners to maximize online viewership through SEO and branded channels across several platforms including: YouTube, Daily Motion, Metacafe and Facebook.  The proof of our business model is that we now have a catalog of over 70,000 videos and achieve more than 125 million views per month.How has your business developed in the UK? Are rights more strictly enforced?MVR began in the UK in 2007 and is now representing some of Britain’s top entertainment and media companies.  Our content partners include: Tiger Aspect (“Mr. Bean”), BBC Worldwide (BBC Motion Gallery), The Football Association, Ministry of Sound, and Hat Trick Productions (“Father Ted”). The UK and the U.S. face the same problems in managing unauthorized use of professionally produced content.Who is your target customer? Small providers? Niches? Big content players?We have three target customers 1) content owners, 2) advertisers and 3) publishers.  Among content owners we target owners of high-quality television programming, film, sports, music and short form entertainment which includes both niche and major players.  With advertisers we target clients who will benefit by being associated with professionally produced content within safe and controlled online environments. For publishers and online platforms we deliver high-quality content to help them attract and build their audience.How will you market MVR to the US market?There is a huge opportunity in this market as both viewers and advertisers become more actively involved with online video.  Growth rates will accelerate as the PC and television become one from the viewer's perspective of watching video.  We see a multi-billion dollar market for content owners who are able to quickly enter the online market and learn how to optimize both viewership and ad revenues.We have seen an extremely positive response to our service here in the U.S. as we provide an immediate increase in revenues for our content clients.  For the advertiser, one of the unique facts about our content is the high click-through rate.  We are averaging 3.5% CTR which is significantly higher than industry averages of less than one percent.  And we have seen CTR often go as high as 6 percent to 8 percent, which clearly demonstrates the effectiveness of our ad delivery.  The highly engaged viewer combined with quality programming and an advertiser friendly environment is an attractive offering to advertisers.Where would you like the company to be in a year? We would like to be known among our clients as a first-rate and innovative digital media company that delivers on our promises by distributing and monetizing quality online programming.

Oprah: Will the Queen of Talk Be Cable's Last Word?

Despite the hype, Oprah Winfrey's new cable network has risks aplentyBy Ronald Grover and Andy FixmerSlapping Oprah Winfrey's name on something usually makes that thing a success. As it prepares to flip the switch on the Oprah Winfrey Network cable channel on Jan. 1, Discovery Communications (DISCA) is betting that streak will hold. "This channel will have her name on it," says Christina Norman, the former MTV president who is now OWN's chief executive officer. She says the channel could be profitable within three years. "It's something that [Oprah] doesn't want to be anything but great."Still, the network, which Oprah's holding company Harpo will own jointly with Discovery, is not a sure bet. Some cable and satellite operators are resisting Discovery's demands for fees triple what they are paying for Discovery Health, the channel being converted to OWN. Advertisers coaxed aboard with a personal call from Oprah will want to see healthy ratings. "No one has ever created a whole channel with original programming [like this] from scratch," says Ron Schneier, chief operating officer of online advertising service MyVideoRights and a former executive at A&E Channel. "It has its share of risks."Viewers won't see Oprah 24/7. The 56-year-old host to 7.2 million TV viewers can't have a daily talk show on the cable channel until September, after her syndicated program ends its 25-year run. For now, she's committed to appear on OWN only 70 hours a year, and will be seen on specials and a reality show chronicling her program's final season.Instead, Oprah has become her network's programmer-in-chief. To close a deal for a talk show by Rosie O'Donnell, Winfrey hopped on a jet with Norman and former Viacom CEO Tom Freston, her consultant on the channel, for a sit-down at the comedian's New York-area home. She convinced Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson to do a six-part series of documentaries by e-mail. "You don't say no very easily to Oprah," says Freston.Discovery, which has agreed to loan OWN $189 million, is pressing cable and satellite TV systems to pay three times the 7 cents per subscriber it was getting monthly for Discovery Health. DirecTV (DTV) has so far refused, waiting for its existing deal with Discovery to expire in more than two years, says a person with knowledge of the talks. Norman says some operators are indeed waiting out their existing Health channel contracts, but may end up paying more if they wait: "I say, sign on now," she says. "I'm betting on OWN."Former BBC Worldwide America President Garth Ancier, a former programming chief at NBC and Fox, says: "It's always tough to translate a single show to a channel. The key will be in finding talent and ideas that complement Oprah's tone." Ancier is confident Oprah will. So are advertisers, who are counting on the channel's "Live Your Best Life" slogan and its inspirational programming to win viewers, says Catherine Warburton, executive vice-president at the Universal McCann ad agency.OWN will generate $101.7 million in ad revenues its first year, up from the $18 million that Discovery Health collected last year, estimates Derek Baine, an analyst with cable research firm SNL Kagan. He forecasts that Oprah and Discovery will spend more than $162.3 million next year on programming, a fivefold increase from Discovery Health's spending. At the outset, the channel will air a mix of new shows and reruns of The Best of Dr. Phil, advice programs from the likes of Dr. Mehmet Oz and Suze Orman, movies, and Mystery Diagnosis, a Discovery Health leftover.Oprah's channel has already produced plenty of drama. OWN's president and two programming executives have departed, and the network is starting a year behind schedule. In August, Discovery nearly doubled its original $100 million investment—and persuaded Winfrey to double the 35 hours she had committed to being on-air. "We were just starting and really didn't know all the things we wanted to do," says Peter Liguori, Discovery's chief operating officer. Winfrey and executives at Harpo declined comment for this story.Discovery has high hopes. "We think OWN has a very substantial opportunity," CEO David Zaslav told analysts on Dec. 7. The channel has been telling advertisers to expect an audience size similar to Discovery's TLC, ranked sixth among women aged 25 to 54—the same demographic OWN targets. OWN also is asking for the same lofty ad rates, says Brad Adgate, director of research at Horizon Media. General Motors, Procter & Gamble (GM), and retailer Kohl's (KSS) have signed on.Still, star power doesn't guarantee success: Martha Stewart had a weak showing on Crown Media Holdings' (CRWN) Hallmark Channel this year, and her daily block of programming was pared to five hours from eight. OWN also faces competition from A&E Television Networks' Lifetime and NBC Universal's Bravo, two of the top cable outlets among Oprah's demographic. Says Bill Abbott, president and CEO of Hallmark Channels, "It will take time for the audience to find her." OWN's backers are counting on the power of the Oprah brand. Says Discovery's Liguori: "Martha is a personality. Oprah is a way of life."The bottom line: With the launch of the Oprah Winfrey Network on Jan. 1, the TV host is betting big she can persuade millions of fans to follow her to cable.

MyVideoRights Launches in U.S.

By Troy DreierU.K. company bundles online distribution, advertising, and content protection services.A success in the U.K., MyVideoRights is now taking on the United States. As the name suggest, the company manages the digital rights for online video content and protects against unauthorized use, but it also goes beyond that. The company manages content and drives revenue and viewership by placing ad-supported content on video sharing and social media sites such as YouTube, Facebook, Metacafe, and DailyMotion.In planning the U.S. expansion, MyVideoRights looked at the U.S. market and found that professionally produced videos without advertising represents a $5.8 billion dollar market. The company aims to make it easy for producers to tap that market by bundling distribution, advertising, and digital rights."We are excited to enter the market to help manage and monetize the digital assets of U.S. content owners," says Ron Schneier, chief operating officer of MyVideoRights North America. "We bring a simple, turnkey solution that immediately generates incremental revenue for rights holders of quality video. For advertisers, we solve a key challenge of buying ad space within online video. We provide quality content, within a safe and transparent environment."MyVideoRights was formed in London in 2007. It currently drives more than 125 million views per month for clients that include The Football Association, Tiger Aspect, BBC Worldwide, Comic Relief, and Hat Trick Productions. 

iPad Multimedia eBook App: David Busch’s Canon EOS Rebel T2i Companion App

iPad Multimedia eBook App: David Busch’s Canon EOS Rebel T2i Companion AppBy Todd Ogasawara

Cengage and Sideways provided me an evaluation copy of the $14.99 iPad app.David Busch’s Canon EOS Rebel T2i/550D Companion AppThis is one of several multimedia ebook apps that have been making their way to the iPad over the past couple of months. I’ve become extremely interested in this app category that attempts to move beyond the “replica” ebook familiar to Kindle users. This book focuses on providing a multimedia overview of the use of the popular Canon T2i DLSR camera. I started comparing it to the $9.99 Lights, Camera, Capture! iPad Multimedia eBook App multimedia iPad ebook app I reviewed a few weeks ago.One of the big differences aside from price is that Busch’s app does not require Internet connectivity to access its media. This is a big plus if you are using it to learn detailed use of the T2i camera in locations without 3G or WiFi access.I appreciated the interactive nature of the app that lets you, for example, tap buttons colored red on a 3D rotating view of the T2i camera to learn how each button functions or the interactive T2i menu options. However, I was disappointed that there weren’t more photographic examples of how choosing various options or settings affected how a picture might look. I was also disappointed that only three video demo files are included. It is especially disappointing since Busch’s video demos have a much higher resolution and clarity than the “Lights, Camera, Capture!” ebook app.The content itself is instructive and useful. It appealed to me personally because I’ve been considering buying a T2i. However, my recommendation to the publisher is that this app’s “natural price” (the price at which I believe people would feel comfortable buying it) is between $6.99 and $9.99._________________________________________________________________________

Industry Moves: Resonate Networks; MyVideoRights; OWN; XGraph; 3Crowd

By Amanda Natividad– Resonate Networks: The online ad tech startup has hired former Demand Media exec George Stewart as its chief revenue officer, TechCrunch reports. Stewart was previously EVP of media sales at Demand and earlier, SVP of ad sales at Next New Networks. Resonate Networks raised a $5 million second roundthis past June.– MyVideoRights: UK-based MyVideoRights has opened its U.S. office in New York and tapped Ron Schneier to lead it as COO. A longtime A&E Television Network executive, Schneier most recently served as a mobile/internet consultant for startups and created a new business unit at VNU/Nielsen called Nielsen Ventures.– Oprah Winfrey Network: Two execs join OWN from Discovery Communications’ ad sales division: Darren Olive joins as VP of digital media ad sales and Jill Buzas is director of ad sales in the midwest region. Olive will be based in New York while Buzas will lead the Chicago office.– XGraph: Fox and Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) veteran Mark Papia has been appointed chief revenue officer, a new position at XGraph. Most recently, he was SVP of sales for Fox Audience Network and SVP of performance marketing for Fox Interactive Media.– 3Crowd: Former Digg chairman Jay Adelson is joining the 3Crowd board of directors, a company he has been involved with since its earliest days.