publishing

LimeWire AI Studio helps creators cash in on their content

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LimeWire rebranded as an AI-powered content-sharing platform and community. Check out the merch store.
LimeWire rebranded as an AI-powered content-sharing platform and community. Check out the merch store.
Photo: LimeWire

LimeWire, the popular file-sharing software that launched in 2000, recently rebranded itself as an AI-powered content-publishing and community platform.

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With the launch of LimeWire AI Studio, the company aims to give content creators ownership through the power of artificial intelligence and blockchain technologies.

Today in Apple history: World’s first iPad newspaper starts to crumble

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The Daily iPad newspaper was a great, but ultimately failed, experiment.
The Daily was a great, but ultimately failed, experiment.
Photo: The Daily

July 31: Today in Apple history: The Daily, the world's first iPad newspaper, starts to crumble July 31, 2012: The Daily, the world’s first iPad-only newspaper, lays off almost a third of its staff, signaling the demise of a bold publishing experiment.

The deep cuts — The Daily fires 50 of its 170 employees — affect mainly sports and editorial page staffers, although some production and design employees get the ax, too. The ominous move comes as News Corp places the iPad app “on watch” due to disappointing readership numbers.

How to publish an ebook on Apple Books with Pages

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How to turn a Pages document into a stunning ebook.
Turn your Pages document into a stunning ebook.
Image: Graham Bower/Cult of Mac

Creating a killer app isn’t the only way to make an honest buck in the Apple ecosystem. You can publish an ebook quickly and easily on Apple Books.

It’s a straightforward way to sell your ideas, and doesn’t require any coding. In fact, the only software you need is probably installed on your Mac already: Pages. You still need to do the heavy lifting when it comes to the writing. But publishing an ebook using Pages takes very little effort. And the ebooks you create support a surprising amount of functionality.

This guide will show you how to publish an ebook to Apple Books using Pages.

You could write Hollywood’s next blockbuster on your iPhone

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Wattpad: The social reading and writing app that’s transforming the entertainment industry
Wattpad: The app that's transforming the entertainment industry
Photo: Graham Bower/Cult of Mac

Ever dreamed of penning a Hollywood blockbuster? Turns out there’s an app for that: social reading and writing app Wattpad.

With more than 70 million monthly users (and growing fast), Wattpad is a low-key App Store hit. The app is like Instagram, but for sharing stories instead of photos. It’s a great way to find fantastic new stories — and it’s flipping the script on how Hollywood makes movies.

Cupertino taps NBCUniversal to sell Apple News ads

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Apple News
Apple News is about to get magazines too.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Apple’s News app is getting some much-needed help at selling ads.

Instead of continuing to sell advertising on its own, Apple has reportedly inked an exclusive deal with NBCUniversal that will allow the company to sell ads for the News app.

Glide into one of the best iPad publishing tools around

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This is one brilliant way to publishing on the iPad. Photo: Glide
This is one brilliant way to publish on the iPad. Photo: Glide

Glide helped Jim Dalrymple reboot The Loop into a gorgeous digital magazine way back in October 2013; we’re excited to see how much progress the Glide publishing app, invented by Chris Harris, has made during the time between then and now.

We’re not the only ones, either: With 15 days left to go on its Kickstarter campaign, iPad publishing app Glide has already garnered $12,000 over its goal.

“I’ve been following Glide since the release of ‘The Loop’ app, and I’m so excited to see it finally approaching release,” says Kickstarter commenter Nick R. “I didn’t know much about ‘The Loop’ at the time, but was blown away by the functionality of the app itself. Amazing to see how far its come in 2 years. Glad they took their time and did things right. —- Good job Glide team.”

Flowboard’s Painless Publishing Coming Soon To The Mac, With PDF Export [Exclusive]

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flowboard-for-mac-preview
Photo: Flowboard

 

We’ve gone on and on about the merits of Flowboard, a web-based platform that lets users easily create  media-rich stories or presentations and publish them onto its servers. Until now, the service has only been available as an iOS app — but that’s about to change, as a Flowboard authoring app hits the Mac this spring.

Flowboard App Will Be The Most Important Free App You Download This Month [Daily Feebie]

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That statement up there in the headline, that Flowboard will be “the most important free app you download this month” — that’s kind of a bold thing to say.

But it’s not hyperbole; Flowboard’s publishing tools are super-easy to use, letting you easily create electronic portfolios and presentations — heck, even magazines and eBooks — and the finished products, published on Flowboard’s site, are just as easy to share and view.

And if you rarely download anything, well, this may be the most important free app you download all year.

R.I.P. The Daily, The World’s First iPad-Only Newspaper

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As of next month, The Daily will be no more.
As of next month, The Daily will be no more.

News Corp. has announced that it will cease publication of The Daily on December 15, less than two years after the iPad-only newspaper made its debut. The company has said that “technology and other assets from The Daily, including some staff,” will be folded into its New York Post tabloid.

TED’s New Ebook App Illustrates Apple iBookstore’s Shortcomings

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TED's new ebook series and ebook app highlights the concern that ebook purchases can lock readers into a specific platform.
TED's new ebook series and ebook app highlights the concern that ebook purchases lock readers into specific platforms.

The TED organization, which sponsors a range of conferences and talks on cutting edge topics recently launched an ebook series known as TED Books. Like the non-profit’s other initiatives, TED Books are “designed to spread great ideas.” Sticking to that ideal, the organization is making the ebooks, which will be released every two weeks, available across a range of ebook platforms including the new TED Books app for iOS devices.

The move highlights one of the challenges about ebooks – the choice of merchant and platform. That’s a particular concern when it comes to Apple’s iBookstore because purchases can only be read on an iOS device.

Sync Your Lightroom Collections With Your iPad, Automatically [How-To]

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I love having my photos on my iPad, but I hate using iPhoto to get them there. To be honest, I just hate iPhoto, along with its more complicated and even more sluggish cousin, Aperture. I use Lightroom, and up until last week I was exporting photos from there into iPhoto just to sync them. Not only was this a headache, but it was a waste of space.

Now, you can tell iTunes to sync any folder of photos to the iPad, but with a little bit of effort things can be made much more elegant. By setting up Lightroom correctly, we can have any changes to our photos mirrored to the iPad at the touch of a button, and the whole process is near-automatic.

WIRED’s iPad App Goes Behind The Scenes On How The Iconic Magazine Came To Be

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wired1.1
Check out Wired's iPad app to see how their first issue was made

 

Over the past two decades, WIRED has been looked at as one of the premier technology publications in the world. They’ve been churning out amazing tech content before some of our readers were born, yet they’re still going strong. The iconic inaugural issue of WIRED debuted in January 1993, but WIRED announced today that they are reissuing it on the iPad as a free download, filled with annotations and perspectives on how the magazine came about.

Hearst Exec: iPad Leads Digital Magazine Sales, Users Don’t Want Interactive Content

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Hearst see digital publications as the future but without interactive features
Hearst see digital publications as the future but without interactive features

Hearst, the publishing conglomerate that includes several of the world’s largest magazine brands, sees a bright future of iPad and tablet editions. Duncan Edwards, CEO of Hearst Magazines International, delivered some surprising statements as to what that future will look like at this week’s World e-Reading Congress in London.

The most surprising statement was that Hearst doesn’t plan to include interactive content in its digital publications despite work done in the company’s little known App Lab and the belief that users will pay more for a digital edition. Edwards also described mix of devices used by Hearst digital subscribers. That mix is headed up by the iPad but with Barnes & Noble’s Nook platform right behind it.

Economist CEO: Apple’s 30% Subscription Cut Is Fine But Flipboard’s A “Head-On Competitor”

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Despite a presence in Flipboard, The Economist's CEO sees the app as competition
Despite a presence in Flipboard, The Economist's CEO sees the app as competition

Apple’s Newsstand feature wasn’t without controversy as the company rolled it out. Issues around Apple’s control of subscriptions as well as the company’s 30% cut of content sales were hotly debated last year. However, with Newsstand a hit, publishers (and Apple) are reaping $70,000 a day from it.

And, if publishing execs everywhere agree with The Economist’s CEO Andrew Rashbass, that controversy is dead and buried – and it’s other iOS digital distribution models that pose a threat to publishers.

Publishers Can Now Offer Promo Codes And Submit Screenshots For The iBookstore

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Screen Shot 2012-02-15 at 10.28.11 PM

Apple has announced some changes to the iBookstore today in an iTunes Connect letter to content publishers. Like the App Store, promo codes for iBooks can now be offered to iTunes users. Screenshots can also now be submitted for iBooks titles. This change follows the release of iBooks Author and Apple’s entrance into the digital textbook industry.

Why Apple’s iBooks Author Will Pave The Way For A Writing Renaissance

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What do Dr. Seuss, William Faulkner, J.K. Rowling, George Orwell, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Stephen King have in common? All six were repeatedly rejected when trying to publish their first famous novel. With the announcement of iBooks 2 and iBooks Author, Apple isn’t just giving the education system a much needed boost: they’re attempting to resurrect the dying art of the written word by taking absolute power out of the hands of publishers and putting it in the hands of aspiring writers. We’re on the cusp of a renaissance.

Apple Planning Media Event In New York This Month [Updated]

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It could be several years before India gets its first Apple store.
It could be several years before India gets its first Apple store.

Apple is planning a media event in New York this month, according to AllThingsD. While we shouldn’t expect to see the iPad 3 or a new Apple TV, AllThingsD’s usually-reliable sources have indicated the event will be “important,” but not “large-scale.”

Apple’s iCloud exec, Eddy Cue, is expected to show at the event in late Janurary. The last time Cue took the stage in New York was to help launch the iPad-only magazine by News Corp called The Daily.

EU: Apple Is At The Head Of An E-Book ‘Cartel’!

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Photo by Nine is the Magic Number - http://flic.kr/p/af6ZBL
Photo by Nine is the Magic Number - http://flic.kr/p/af6ZBL

Did Apple conspire with major publishers to increase e-book prices? The European Commission has launched an antitrust probe of Apple and five publishers amid claims the industry was “terrified” by Amazon’s $9.99 e-book push. At the heart is Apple’s iBookstore and the tech giant’s “agency model” that a California lawsuit charges inflated book prices.

Apple Launches App Store Subscriptions

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Apple has just announced the launch of App Store Subscriptions, a service “for all publishers of content-based apps”.

It’s the same system used for News Corp’s much-hyped The Daily.

The deal is simple: Apple takes 30% of all subs bought through the App Store. Publishers are allowed to sell subs via other channels if they wish, and keep all the money.

Or in a comment attributed to Steve Jobs in the official press release:

“Our philosophy is simple—when Apple brings a new subscriber to the app, Apple earns a 30 percent share; when the publisher brings an existing or new subscriber to the app, the publisher keeps 100 percent and Apple earns nothing.”

iWork.com Public Beta Gains Presentation and Publishing Enhancements

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iworkbeta1.png

Apple has released an announcement, via e-mail, that enhancements to iWork.com Apple’s public beta online service for iWork ’09 users have been released.

This announcement came out of the blue regarding a service that has definitely been off the radar for a long time and in beta for longer than I can remember. It’s future isn’t clear considering the pace at which Apple is deploying features on it. Perhaps that will change this year with the rumored release of iWork ’11.