Knewton teams up with Macmillan to bring adaptive learning beyond K-12 and higher ed
photo: Thinkstock
Knewton, a New York-based adaptive learning startup, has partnered with education publisher Macmillan. Read more »
Chegg cozies up to Coursera to tap into MOOC movement
photo: mtkang
Chegg, a company best known as a textbook rental site, is partnering with Coursera to distribute its content to students enrolled in massive open online courses. Read more at paidContent »
In case you missed it: here are the transcripts from paidContent Live 2013
photo: Albert Chau
Want to know what happened last week at paidContent Live 2013? Here are links to transcripts of the sessions from New York. Read more at paidContent »
In lawsuit with publishers, open textbook startup Boundless hits back
Facing a lawsuit from publishers Pearson, Cengage and Macmillan Higher Education, open textbook startup Boundless has requested a trial by jury after judge denied its motion to dismiss. Read more at paidContent »
Inkling makes its Google-friendly digital publishing tools free to everyone
photo: Inkling
Starting Tuesday, Inkling is making its free digital publishing platform, Habitat, available to everyone. The company is also introducing an enterprise product, with publishers including Pearson and Wolters-Kluwer as launch clients. Read more at paidContent »
Kno wants to help publishers turn static files into interactive content
Digital textbook startup Kno has released Advance, a new platform that it says can help publishers turn flat files into interactive ebooks “in minutes.” Read more at paidContent »
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How consumer media will change in 2013
Many of the biggest stories in the connected consumer space occurred mostly offstage in 2012, from Apple’s new media services to policymakers in Washington. Overall, the past 12 months have laid important groundwork for significant advances in the connected consumer space. The year 2013 should be eventful. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
BenchPrep shifts to subscription model for interactive online courses
BenchPrep, a Chicago-based startup that offers interactive online courses for test preparation, is moving to a subscription-based business model, which could help it better access institutional customers, such as universities, community colleges and public libraries. Read more »
HTML5 is a newspaper’s best friend – even if it has a mobile app
photo: Boston Globe
Apparently The Boston Globe didn’t get the memo that it’s an app-only world when it comes to mobile. The Globe says at paidContent 2012 its website is doing very well in mobile — more than 30 percent of visitors come through a phone or tablet browser. Read more at paidContent »
Cupcakes! Food Network builds an interactive cookbook
Food Network’s digital strategy has always been fairly straightforward: to supplement its cable TV content and promote its on-air talent. Consequently its Website, its social media efforts and its mobile apps are all linked to its programming. But this week Food Network deviated from that strategy. Read more at paidContent »
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E-books, innovation and antitrust
What’s happening in the e-book market is not fundamentally different from what happened in the music industry. The retail price of recorded music has plunged thanks to digital technology and the record labels lost market power. At the same time, innovation has flourished at the retail ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
iPad users don’t mind paying for news
iPad users are forking over plenty of money to read their favorite digital publications on Apple’s iPad. In the U.S., the top 100 grossing publications in Apple’s Newsstand in February made more than $70,000 per day, according to Distimo. Pretty good for a five-month old product. Read more »
Apple education event live blog
We’re here at Apple’s education event at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. The company is expected to launch a set of tools that allow self-publishing of textbooks and possible partnering with textbook makers to push a digital learning initiative. The event and our live […] Read more »
Amazon launches new touch-friendly Kindle Store for iPad
Amazon has now broken out its touch-friendly shopping experience for the iPad from its Kindle Cloud Reader product, in an effort to make it easier for everyone to buy books from the Kindle Store, and quickly read those purchases in Amazon’s native iPad Kindle app. Read more »
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Connected world: the consumer technology revolution
Connectivity changes everything. That’s the credo driving just about every corner of our day-to-day lives. As human beings, we are now connected to one another through not just our social networks but also our cars, the books we read, the albums we download and even our own health and wellness habits (to name just a few areas). With that in mind, GigaOM Pro has singled out certain areas in the technology industry where we see this shift to constant connectivity taking place most drastically. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The paywall debate: monetizing news in the digital era
Free, digital content has shattered long-established ways of making money in the newspaper publishing industry, and publishers must now find new ways to subsidize content-creation costs directly. That includes everything from more-flexible paywalls to borrowing the business models of industries like online gaming and music. Read more »
Adobe publishing tools will support Newsstand in iOS 5
Adobe announced early Wednesday that it would be bringing full support for Apple’s Newsstand feature in iOS 5. Newsstand is a centralized location through which users can find new digital magazines to subscribe to, as well as browse and manage their existing collection of subscriptions. Read more »
Video: Hands-on with Inkling 2.0, the iPad textbook
This week Inkling debuted the 2.0 version of its software, which makes interactive and digital versions of college textbooks for the iPad. So GigaOM headed over to Inkling’s San Francisco headquarters to get an in-person demo from founder and CEO Matt MacInnis. Read more »
Kindle, Nook now offering periodicals on iOS; where will you buy?
Kindle now supports viewing of over 100 of its newspaper and magazine titles, and Nook for iPad will soon offer access to over 175 digital periodicals. This adds yet another vector through which iOS users can access magazine and newspaper content. So which will you use? Read more »
Zinio magazines on Android phones: Will you read them?
Zinio now supports Google Android handsets, bringing content from 1,000 digital magazine publishers to smartphones and small tablets running Android versions 2.2 and 2.3. A first look at the new software shows a positive experience, but it may be better suited to devices with larger screens. Read more »
Pottermore: Future of publishing or Club Penguin for Potter fans?
Last week, Harry Potter author JK Rowling announced Poettermore, an ambitious new online property that will be the exclusive retailer for Potter e-books, Pottermore will no doubt do a mean business as an e-book storefront — and ruffle the feathers of traditional publishers in the process. Read more »
Kindle to make $1 out of every $10 Amazon brings in
Amazon’s success with its Kindle business is hitting an inflection point as it nears 10 percent of the company’s revenues, according to an analyst report. The success of the Kindle business is at a point where it can affect the overall growth the company. Read more »
Comics Should Jump on the iOS Subscription Bandwagon
Magazine apps appear to be enjoying quite the bump thanks to the introduction of in-app subscriptions to select titles. Wired, for example, is the fifth top grossing app on the iPad App Store right now. Comic book publishers need to get in on the action. Read more »
Playboy Bypasses the App Store: A Model for Other Digital Magazines?
Playboy finally arrived fully uncensored on the iPad, but it couldn’t go through the App Store to get there. Instead, it’s a web app, sidestepping Apple’s rules and requirements. Sounds like a sweet deal, but is it a model that will be attractive to other magazines? Read more »
Why Apple’s Pushy Publishing Plan is Paying Off
Apple is catching a few fish with vinegar, if the slow but steady stream of magazine publishers who’ve opted to accept the company’s new in-app subscription rules is any indication. Monday Bloomberg’s Businessweek joined the growing coalition of those willing to accept Apple’s prickly terms. Read more »
Forget Netflix. E-book Publishers Need a Hulu
For all its growth, the e-book market has been stillborn in one major way: methods in which to monetize. But recent news that a Spanish company called 24Symbols went into beta on a an e-book service shows that digital publishing could finally be evolving. Read more »
