Here we are, last day of September, and that means that the next PauseTalk (Vol. 45) is just around the corner. Come join us this coming Monday (October 4) at Cafe Pause, at the usual start time of 20:00 (with the cafe reserved from 19:30). Here’s the Facebook event page, if you like such things.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, last month’s edition had a lower turnout, but we ended up getting some great photos courtesy of Michael Holmes — see the Facebook gallery here. The close-up wide angle shots are pretty fun (below, me looking like a freak).

I was going to go with a title like “Is Wired on iPad Dead,” which is of course not the case, but I am wondering why the October issue of Wired on iPad hasn’t been released yet. So far, every issue has come out around the 26-27th of the month, but I’m still waiting. Did Dadich get too busy with the New Yorker launch?

The big news in the digital magazine world this week is of course the release of Conde Nast’s The New Yorker app. It was designed by the same team behind the Wired magazine app — creative director Scott Dadich is in fact now in charge of bringing all of the publisher’s stable of titles to iPad.

The first thing I’ll suggest is that you take a look at Jeremy’s great write-up over at MagCulture — he also posts the terrific video intro produced for the launch, directed by Roman Coppola and starring Jason Schwartzman.

In terms of my experience with the magazine so far (I’m not yet done going through it), it started out badly with a crash as I tried to play a video from the front cover that is supposed to show that cover being drawn. No matter how many times I exited and re-entered the app, it would just show the video screen, and I couldn’t get back to anything else. After deleting the app and re-installing it, and then re-downloading the issue, I was able to start reading the magazine, but that video still refuses to play for me.

As Jeremy mentions in his review, what you get here is very similar to the interface used in the Wired app (menu functions are all the same), and the biggest change lies in the page design, which is much more simple — in keeping with the source material — with text that is less formatted as well (columns of text run down until they’re done, not necessarily at the bottom of the page).

It also uses free scrolling more than in Wired, where you only see it in the table of contents and credits page at the end. As I’ve said before, I’d really prefer if they just kept to the page scrolling, which I rather like — maybe in part because it feels more magazine-y to me.

It was interesting to see a bit of live content appear in the magazine. Pictured above, you see that “This Just In” section is made up of tweets with updated event information. Even Wired hasn’t included any live content yet.

Looking at the ads, The New Yorker app introduces another first for the Conde Nast interface, and that’s the inclusion of ads within an article, as you scroll down — so far the Wired app has kept ads to themselves, in-between articles.

I also had to share the ad pictured above, for a Russian magazine I’ve never heard of, with a title I have no idea how to pronounce, but that I now want to read. What a great tagline!

My biggest gripe right now is the pricing, which is $5. I’m sure they decided to charge more than they do for Wired ($4) because they don’t expect to get the same sales numbers, but I think a lot of people are going to be turned off by the price, especially for a weekly, and especially with so much of the content being city-centric (it did make me want to make a move to New York though, I’ll give them that).

Let me end this with one of the comic strips (above) found inside. The joke for me and my wife is that our dog has escaped from his cage so many times that we’ve given him the nickname Houdini, and so you can imagine how much of a chuckle I got when I saw that strip.

I’m a bit confused by what Other Edition is doing with their digital line-up of magazines. According to their website, you can pay 7 euros to have access to all of their titles — and they are doing quite a few, including Interview, IdN, and V — but so far, if you look at Interview, all of the issues have been available as free downloads for iPad on the iTunes App Store. Is this just for a limited time?

It could be that sponsors are funding these free editions.Take the latest issue of Interview for example. Not only is “The Calvin Klein Issue” part of the official name of the app, but the brand also gets a HUGE feature inside — and when I say huge, I mean it takes up half if not more of the issue — and it’s apparently limited to the iPad edition of the magazine. There’s no real reason to complain though, since you do get — what I assume is — the entirety of the regular issue for free, and there’s nothing forcing you to deal with the CK stuff.

Looking at the magazine formatting, it’s hit and miss. It does have the indexing and thumbnail views we expect, but also adds sharing (by email, Facebook, and Twitter), and a way to rate articles, although I’m not quite sure what this affects as it doesn’t seem to be public.

Also, this is not a quasi-PDF Zinio-like transfer, and all text is sized to be readable, and images take up their own page (and are beautifully rendered). If the size is right, one thing I think it gets wrong with text is that it is always presented in a dense two-column layout (see above) — I understand the look they were going for, but I could do with a bit more breathing room.

Interactive bits appear in the form of the occasional pulsating dot that, after touched, reveals some extra text (above) or larger images (below). There are also a few videos, like a behind-the-scenes look a photo shoot with Blake Lively (the cover interview).

I do find it annoying that not only have they implemented a useless “page turning” animation when you read through (an automated version of the page turn effect you can do in iBooks), but that they also limit you to a swipe to change pages. I much prefer just tapping the side of a page to move to the next one, and there’s no reason that couldn’t have been done here since a single tap on any page has no effect (you need to double-tap to accept menu options).

Although it’s certainly a step above the Zinio stuff — pinch-and-zoom reading is not going to be acceptable for long I think — I’d be curious to see some of the “other” Other Edition digital conversations, to see how different or similar they are to what we get with Interview. I’m also not clear on how subscribing directly with them can give me access to iPad versions of these magazines — as far as I know, the iTunes App Store doesn’t support this yet.

Can someone please explain to me what the hell DC Comics is thinking when it comes to the promotion of its Vertigo imprint? Vertigo is the home for creator-owned mature series over at DC, and its currently on a roll with a good number of great regular series (DMZ, iZombie, Northlanders, Sweet Tooth), as well as a growing line-up of one-shot graphic novels. These are the kinds of books that people who don’t usually read comics would probably like, and yet Vertigo’s website makes absolutely no sense for non-comics readers. The only pages found on the site are for individual issues, which is fine for a graphic novel, but not for a series. Last week I read through the current run of The Unwritten (#1-17), and wanting to recommend it to people, I had to link to the Wikipedia page because there was no decent page to link to on the Vertigo page, that would explain properly what the series was about.

Something needs to be done in order to give new readers — anyone who’s heard of a series and wants to know more about it — a place to do that. And even though I’m not a particular fan of all the publisher-specific iPad apps out there (all spinoffs of the Comixology app), the one that would make the most sense is a Vertigo-branded one, for people who have absolutely no interest in the super-hero fare that DC Comics mostly publishes. Sure, you can buy the Vertigo books through the DC app, but the mainstream audience that you could get reading these book are not going to find them there.

Pictured, the cover to The Unwritten #17, illustrated by Yuko Shimizu, who has done all the covers for the series. That particular issue is rather amazing, presented in the form of an actual choose-your-own-adventure story (but I do recommend reading everything that comes before it first).

Some more interesting musings by Warren Ellis in regards to digital comics, this time using the success of his free-to-read online web comic FREAKANGELS as an example. Now combine this with iPad delivery, and you have a strong case for comic creators making the move to digital-mostly, with maybe the additions of printed collections for those who still prefer their books that way.

In a later post, we also learn that new issues of the Walking Dead comic series — the one that will debut next month on TV as a Frank Darabont-produced series on AMC — are now available for sale on iPad (through the Image Comics and Comixology apps) the same day they show up in shops. This is something I’ve found to be a big problem with digital comic sales — so far you can’t buy the latest issues of a series, which doesn’t make much sense if you want to reach your core comic reading audience. The one downer is that the digital issue is now priced same as in print, $3, versus the $2 they were charging for previous digital issues.

Oliver from Information Architects has been teasing his company’s writing app for iPad for a while now, but the wait is over, and you can head straight to the iTunes App Store now and download it. It’s called Writer, and I had the great pleasure of pitching in on the beta testing phase, and can assure you that it’s a terrific writing app. Those of you who already follow Oliver’s writings about typography on the iPad (on the iA blog and on Twitter) know that he’s quite passionate on the subject, and that concern is in full evidence in Writer. And if you’re still not convinced, then Oliver lays it all out on the table for you.

If you haven’t watched it yet, do take the time to take a look at the conceptual video IDEO has put together, presenting three possible experiences that digital books on a tablet could offer. It’s pretty interesting stuff, and although most comments seem to be excited about the first example (“Nelson”) — which is sort of what some of the magazines apps have been offering, but on steroids — but I quite liked what I saw with the third example (“Alice”), which suggests new ways of presenting a narrative, pumping up the interactive angle to a level that almost resembles a game. I know that Tim Kring, the creator of the Heroes TV series, is exploring similar types of narrative — what he calls “transmedia” — with his Conspiracy for Good project.

Yes, another one bites the dust, with Dazed & Confused Japan as the latest Japanese culture magazine casualty. Even though the official site doesn’t have any announcement, Néojaponisme recently tweeted the news, linking to the following post which indicates that #84 is the final issue. The Japanese edition was first launched back in 2002, and so has had an 8-year run.

If you’ll allow me to go analog for a moment, I need to say how much I love the way they displayed all of the participating zines at the launch party (or “reading room”) for the terrific-looking Fanzines book. It’s incredibly simple, using clips, and my first thought was that I should have done something similar during last month’s SNOW Magazine Cafe. The one problem this poses is that I did want everything in the show to be readable by everyone, but it’s something I need to keep in mind for a future exhibition, especially if I can get extra copies (one to hang, one on table/shelf for people to grab and read).

As you can probably tell from the amount of times I mention it, despite its flaws, I do quite like the iPad edition of Wired, and so I’ve been rather happy to learn that Wired UK will also be introducing an iPad edition — it kicks off with the December issue, with a release on November 4. It’s still not clear to me how much of the content in the UK edition is original (and how much comes from the US edition), but I believe it’s fairly different, and so it looks like we’ll soon have access to two issues of the magazine every month.

I also can’t wait to see what the editors and designers of the UK edition will end up doing in terms of presentation. The FAQ they recently put out mentions that they are using the same Adobe-produced tools that the US edition uses, so should we expect pretty much the same thing, or are we going to get some new ideas on what a magazines on the iPad can look like. I’m of course hoping for the latter.

At the end of my post on the first issue of Longshot, I was complaining about how I was having trouble finding some good things to read on the MagCloud iPad app, and it’s only now I find out that both issues of Michael Bojkowski‘s excellent self-published LineRead magazine — through his Press Publish imprint — are available as free downloads. If you prefer the print copies, you can of course purchase those as well, they’re even on sale right now (issue one and two).

Michael has also been teasing issue three of late, so looks like we might be getting that in the not too distant future.

I rather like Nick Bilton‘s tech coverage for The New York Times — he runs the Bits blog — and this week he has a new book out called I Live in the Future & Here’s How It Works. I quite want to read the book, but the reason I bring it up here is that Bilton has also released a free iPhone/iPad app to help with the promotion.

While it’s not particularly pretty, it’s a neat way of letting people explore the book before buying, as well as getting them engaged. The app includes long-ish excerpts of every chapter, including links of interest at the end, ways of sharing that content online (through email, Facebook, and Twitter), and at least one video that I found (an intro by Bilton).

There are also sections that let you access Bilton’s own blog, as well as his Twitter feed — nothing I’d like to use on a permanent basis, but nice in that it gives you one place to not only explore the book, but learn more about the author and what he’s all about.

It’s a nice start, and something I’m betting we’re going to see more of, with maybe even more engaging content (interactive elements, community features).

So far things have been relatively quiet on the magazine front when it comes to major releases on the iPad, and we’ve been mostly limited to Dentsu’s MAGASTORE, which is basically a Japanese version of Zinio, with the same functionality (but none of the “enchanced” media functionality that is popping up more and more in Zinio releases). Although Vogue Hommes Japan may not be the first stand-alone Japanese app magazine to hit the iTunes Store, it’s one of the most notable. So what do we end up getting?

Again, this is another examples of something that comes closer to a PDF-like Zinio reader than anything on the Wired/Popular Science end of the spectrum. Some notable differences are that touchable areas are immediately “highlighted” by a glowing colored box (see above), which blinks for a few seconds after loading the page. These links either lead to another page in the magazine, or open a slide show showing photo or video ads.

Other than that, it’s pretty much a page-per-page copy of the original print edition, that you zoom in to read. The app works on iPad and iPhone, with a similar interface on both. It should be noted that turning to a new page often takes a second or two for loading.

The one thing that I did quite like is that on the store page for each issue (Vol. 4 and 5 are currently available) there are two buttons: One to buy (issues are $4) and one labeled tachiyomi. That preview button brings you to a good size preview, about 15-20 pages or so, and it’s something I’d really like to see more magazine apps use. Sure, more and more of these apps are including a free issue to sample, and other apps have preview buttons that give you a detailed table of contents (like Time), but the preview functionality in the Vogue app goes as far as letting you see the first page of any article that you link to (from the real table of contents for instance).

Conde Nast Publications Japan has also launched Vogue Nippon, using the exact same app structure.

Most people think of me — and with reason — as someone who is tied to the art and design world, and so often don’t really understand why I tweet so much about gaming-related topics, or why I hang out with so many people who work in the gaming industry. It’s no secret that gaming is in fact one of my absolute obsessions, one that has been a part of my life since the very early days of the medium (from the Atari 2600, Intellivision, and Vic-20 of the 70-80s to the very latest consoles, with a lot of coins spent in arcade cabinets throughout). More recently (in 2008), I covered the industry for close to a year as a contributing editor on Wired‘s Game|Life blog, and I also co-authored a book with Kotaku‘s Brian Ashcraft on the world of Japanese game centers called, appropriately enough, Arcade Mania. There’s also my little “Game” site, which admittedly I don’t update as much as I’d like to, but is still a good place to check out games that I’ve really enjoyed.

Throughout this time, I’ve made a lot of good friends on both sides of the industry (on the development/publishing side, as well as on the press side), and these friendships have continued despite my “moving on” (i.e. again, working more in the arts/design side of things, and my involvement with PechaKucha). One of my favorite regular outings are almost weekly lunches I have with CheapyD (the founder of mega gaming deals site Cheap Ass Gamer) and the crew from game localization company 8-4 (John Ricciardi, Mark MacDonald, Hiroko Minamoto et al.), which often includes some of their visiting friends (a lot of EGM/1UP alums). I should also mention that 8-4 are getting ready to launch a new podcast called 8-4 PLAY (it should be up later tonight) for the 1UP network, and I will probably be popping up as a guest occasionally.

But this brings me to what I really wanted to talk about in this post, and that’s this year’s edition of the Tokyo Game Show. As many of you know, I missed last year’s edition because of my spine injury, and so was quite looking forward to it this year, not just for the games, but also to see all of the people who come to Tokyo for the show. This was also the first time in quite a few years that I didn’t have to work during the show (I did get an offer to cover it, but I just had time to go on one day), which made for a much more relaxed and enjoyable experience, with lots of great parties (CheapyD and Weekend Confirmed‘s Garnett Lee’s birthday bash on Saturday, 8-4′s big pre-TGS party on Tuesday, and then last night with Microsoft’s press party, followed by the always amazing industry drink-up at Ootaru in Nakameguro, pictured above and below).

As for the show, I’ll start by saying that it does feel like there were more interesting game announcements than last year (which was pretty lackluster in terms of news), but walking around the show floor you couldn’t help but feel that there were less booths and less people (even if I was there on a business day, which is closed off to the public). I was getting the same reaction from a lot of people, and so this is definitely not just coming from me.

I didn’t play that many games — I’m usually happy just walking around and seeing what’s on offer — but did at least get to try a few. As I’m a rather big fan of racing games, I was quite happy to try out both MotorStorm 3 (or MotorStorm: Apocalypse, as it’s known in the West) and Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, and had an absolute blast playing both. One of the games I’ve been looking forward to the most this fall is Fable 3 (I have terrific memories of playing Fable 2), and playing the demo just confirmed what I already expected (i.e. it’s going to be right up my alley).

But the game that really surprised me was El Shaddai — and yes, this game is indeed named after one of the Judaic names used for the “God Almighty.” The visuals are a joy throughout — very stylish and unique, in the same way that games like Ico and Shadow of the Colossus pushed the boundaries of what an action/adventure game can look like — but especially stand out during the 2D side-scrolling sections, with stunning backgrounds that use color and shadow to great effect. This game has suddenly become one of my most anticipated titles for the coming year.