Hearst Digital debuts awesome ESQUIRE magazine for iPad!

Until now digital adaptations by popular magazines haven’t been all that exciting.  This month’s debut of ESQUIRE for iPad is truly an awesome editorial and technological achievement, however, and it offers a thrilling glimpse at where magazine publishing is headed. 

Developed by Hearst Digital and ScrollMotion, Esquire's iPad app makes each page a rich and dynamic experience. Take the October cover featuring actor Javier Bardem. He strolls right up to your screen and personally welcomes you to the issue as Esquire's masthead and interactive story call-outs fuse into rightful position. 

This video demo shows how the magazine goes very digital while still retaining its hallmark editorial design and quality. For example, photography in the fall style section can be rotated 360 degrees and viewed from various angles. The automotive review opens with a stunning still shot of an Audi roadster that turns cinematic when the driver revs up, roars away and then screeches back to give us a frontal view. Cool!  An article about the World Trade Center’s reconstruction is presented in layers of interactive text, high-resolution images and animation.

Josh Koppel, one of the co-founders of ScrollMotion, whose clients include Hearst, Random House, Houghton Mifflin, Simon and Schuster, and The Jim Henson Company, believes digital publishing should not be about putting a PDF version on an iPad; rather, he says digitization should be an additive process that makes each page a powerful multimedia platform.

No doubt magazines have much to gain by publishing digital editions. Consider that Esquire’s iPad app is sold at full price ($4.99) on a per-issue basis - no discounted subscriptions. (The iPhone edition costs $2.99 per issue.) As long as audiences keep coming back (how could they not given fantastic content?) it makes sense advertisers will be lining up, too. 

Will multi-channel marketing converge on Google TV?

Google TV, Apple TV and Roku make it possible to converge web-based content on the family television - a development that is sure to change the way people consume media – and commercial messages. Until now multi-channel marketing campaigns reached audiences via dispersed touch points. Converging multiple media channels on a single TV screen will be a whole lot better by making commercial content more dynamic and interactive. 

It'll take some time before Google TV and the like are mainstream. But it’s not too soon for marketers to start thinking about creative and strategic possibilities. Chances are television studios are already looking at ways to make transmedia programming appealing to advertisers. 

New $100 tablet will prime consumers for transmedia

Archos announced a new tablet device that will sell for under $100. In August's Wired, a great story about tablets and the transmedia experience.