Wired Magazine – iPad Edition Review and Implications for Printing Industry by Brian Reagan

By Brian Regan

Wired magazine released it’s newest addition designed specifically for the iPad. It is basically an app that is purchased on the Apple App Store. With a price tag of $4.99, it is roughly the same cost as Wired's printed counterpart. The application took 20 minutes to download and once loaded it ran very smoothly.

The overall experience was good for me. It met my expectation in the sense of how it blended the magazine experience and the abilities of the iPad. While I think this is the first attempt of a soon to be explosion of this type of content, it did capture many of the basic elements such as embedded videos, audio and use of the rotation abilities of the device.

I believe the opportunity for printers will be to add this type of application development to their product offerings, thus allowing them to handle each type of distribution channel. It will require outsourcing the application development or adding a new type of skilled employee. What is still a bit blurry and something I will blog about next is what automation companies like Adobe will bring to bear to allow an easier way to make these applications. Print to PDF or Print to APP...?

Embedded videos are done somewhat smoothly in the application. It worked only when I had available Internet access. A plus to companies developing videos and/or TV ads is that those assets can now be deployed into this type of product. Depending on the size of the video I think it would have been better have the video play within the same page and not take me to its own page.

Another example of an advertisement using text, images and video.

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Brian Regan Author's page Brian Regan, President of Semper International, was born with ink in his veins, running everything in his family’s small printing company from prepress to finishing. Brian helped finance his degree from the Musicians Institute in Los Angeles and his struggling music career by running a printing press, ultimately becoming a pressroom supervisor. In 1996, he joined PressTemps (Then PrintStaff now Semper International, the leading placement firm for temporary, temp-to-hire and direct hire help in the graphic arts and printing industry), overseeing West Coast operations. Brian moved to Boston as Chief Operating Officer managing the recruitment process, overseeing hiring and training, skills testing, and conducting statistical analyses to measure success. He also helps manage the company’s sister company, Printworkers.com, the industry’s leading job board. Brian has been a speaker and contributor on the subject of staffing challenges facing the graphic arts industry. Parlaying his interest and intuitive learning skills developed from video games, he is also a member of the Video Game Association, actively consulting firms in the business merits of using the Virtual Worlds for business and training as well as other Social Media tools such as Twitter and FaceBook.