It’s about time! Newsweek has just updated its iPad app to introduce subscriptions, which means that we’re finally seeing some interesting pricing on iPad magazines. Newsweek was already offering cheaper prices than the competition at $3 per issue (the Time Inc. weeklies are all $5 an issue), but with the two new available subscription options things are getting VERY cheap. Right now you can get a 12-week subscription for $10, so 80 cents an issue, or a 24-week subscription for $15, at about 60 cents an issue.

The only thing for me is that I’d much rather read Time at this price, but I’ll probably buy at least one issue of Newsweek to sample it. I do hope that subscription options start popping up more though — over to you Condé Nast and Time Inc.

A word of warning if you were planning on checking out Tokyo Designers Week at the Meiji Jingu Gaien grounds today (Saturday, October 30) — the event is closed because of the thread of a typhoon.

I haven’t mentioned it in a while, but I do still contribute a monthly design column to The Japan Times newspaper. It’s called “On Design” and it is composed of five products I pick/recommend, and it is always published on the last Thursday of the month, which means that this month’s edition was in today’s paper (and it’s online here). This month I start out with a bit on Tokyo Design Week, and then I recommend Kyouei Design‘s Cube Letter Set, &design‘s Bird Alarm Clock, Shin Azumi‘s AP Stool, and the.‘s Speak-er.

This is something I posted over at SNOW Magazine a couple of weeks back, and forgot to mention here, even though I think it’s important to note in the context of all the digital publishing talk I cover here. It’s a new piece of software called ComiPo, a “manga sequencer,” and the idea is that it gives anyone — even if you have no drawing abilities — the means to create comics and manga. If you look at the video in the article, you’ll see exactly what I mean (and check Patrick’s original post for more details).

So we’ve known for a while that Adobe would be releasing the tools they created for use in the Wired and New Yorker iPad apps, and now we finally have a few more details on what to expect. First thing, it’s going to be pricey. There are going to be two editions, Professional and Enterprise, and the latter is “expected” to be $700 per month, and add to that a per-issue fee.

Definitely not the kind of news I wanted to hear, hoping that they were going to be offering tools that would make sense for indie publishers. Let’s first wait and see what the pricing on the Professional edition will be though.

You can read the full press release here for more details on what the suite will have to offer. (via @magculture)

The November 2010 issue of Wired is out on iPad, and once you get past the giant breasts on the cover, the first think you notice — or that you may not have noticed unless you accessed the app — is that new issues are now just added in-app, and you can set notifications to tell you when a new issue comes out. It’s about time.

You’ll also notice that it’s another big issues in terms of MB size — I say this because last month was a bit slimmer, but now we’re back in the 400-500MB range.

And if you’re wondering why there are two cover images in this post, that’s just the portrait/landscape variations you get depending on how you hold your device. Which one’s your favorite?

A funny thing about my love this year for New York Magazine. I’ve seen some terrific covers thanks to blogs like NAS CAPAS and Fuck Yeah, Magazines, I’ve read some great profiles that were hosted on its website (which I then read through Instapaper), and I’ve even seen the occasional interior spread. One thing I have not done is actually have a physical copy in my hands to read/browse through. Funny that.

Just a note to remind everyone that the next PauseTalk will not be happening this coming Monday (November 1) as it normally would, so as not to conflict with all of the Tokyo Design Week festivities. Instead, it’s being pushed back a week, to Monday, November 8.

After my post the other day about the new NYT app, someone suggested I check out the one for The Times of London, since there’s a 30-day free trial — The Times app has been a very well known early proponent of not offering its content in app form (or web form) for free.

The first thing I encountered on the very first page was confusion caused by a non-linked item. It’s the page pictured above, and if you touch any of the news items you will go directly to the full article inside the issue, but for some reason that great big photo of Keith Richards, and even the headline below, doesn’t lead to anything. Yes, there is plenty of Richards-related content inside, but why not link to it? I spent some time trying to touch, double touch, and swipe away, as I couldn’t believe it was just a static item.

It’s nothing important, but I did like the way the large Times logo on the front page transitions into a smaller version as you swipe the page (I tried to capture the animation, and you can sort of see it in the image above, as it gets smaller). It’s just a nice little touch.

I did have a problem with the tight justified columns though — as you can see below, it makes for very ugly lines of text. I know we’re used to seeing this in a proper newspaper, but it doesn’t really work when you view it on a screen surface.

The biggest difference between The Times app and what the NYT app does is in terms of the way you work your way through the issue. While the NYT app simply adds new articles in each section, and they are then presented in summary form in a grid that usually includes between 5-9 pieces, here you not only download that day’s paper, you also have to swipe through every page, every section one after the other.

Sure, you can jump to different sections by accessing an index (pictured below), but since you are often just limited to a header and photo, it’s hard to tell if you really want to dig in. I do like scanning through a lot of news articles, and so the NYT format suits me best — there’s no way I’d want to have to flip through every article of the NYT. The fact that pretty much every single article in The Times leads with a large half-page (or more) photo does make it less painful, but still.

The other thing is that, with all the fuss that surrounded the launch of the app and the promise that it’s specifically formatted for iPad, I was expecting less of a template design and more creativity in layouts. But no, the vast majority of an issue follows the same look (you’ve seen pretty much all available layouts in the images included in this post). The only exception I found was for a feature at the end of the issue I downloaded that covered “Autumn Walks.” Pictured below, it does look rather nice, and I wish they would do more layouts like this.

Also part of the feature, they had great descriptions of routes to follow, and it’s only by flipping to landscape mode that you could see a beautiful photo from that walk (as seen below).

But in the end, if I don’t stick with The Times it’s not because of what I mentioned above or even the subscription price, but rather that it’s just too UK-centric for me in terms of its coverage.

I may have had some complaints about the new NYT app for iPad, but one thing I do love is the new photo section, which apes the video section of the previous app. It’s similar to what you get on the excellent Guardian Eyewitness app, but here you get a ton of new great photos on a daily basis — the Guardian app only adds one photo daily. It’s a joy to flip through the photo selections — sometimes part of a “Pictures of the Day” collection, sometimes themed for an article — and you can go full screen with them if you view in landscape mode (I prefer keeping it in portrait because I like to read the captions).

Sometimes, a photo really does tell the whole story, like the example above. The caption reads: “Members of the European Parliament attended a debate on the working conditions of women in Strasbourg, France.”

And the video section from the old app is back, with no changes, and that’s fine by me. My favorite recurring segments are A.O. Scott’s weekly “Critics’ Picks,” in which he reviews a classic film, and the occasional “Screen Test” segment, in which an actor talks directly to the camera about various topics, in this case (above) the lovely Margareth Made who talks about taking on the role of Sophia Lauren in a recent biopic.

I will say that the app still crashes on me at least once every time I use it, and more often then not it’s when I’m in the photo section.

A while back you probably noticed me tweeting and raving about Adidas’ miCoach app, which I’d started using for running (replacing Runkeeper). I was recently brought in to consult with the team behind rival program Nike+ about all things technology and Tokyo (and gaming too), and one of the things I promised before leaving was that I would try their Nike+ GPS app — hey, this coming from a guy who walked in wearing a pair of Adidas sneakers, and professed how much he loved the miCoach app.

Nike+ GPS is the follow-up to Nike’s previous running program, which required an extra tracking unit that you placed in your sneakers. The new app works more like miCoach in that it sticks to using the GPS capabilities of your iPhone (although you can buy an extra tracking unit to use with miCoach, to get better readings). Also, unlike the free miCoach, Nike+ GPS is $2.

So I bought it last night and went for a run, and so far I’m pretty happy with how it works. One of the things I really liked about miCoach is how it actually coaches you, telling you what “zone” to run in. The Nike app doesn’t do that, which I don’t mind at all. I’d started feeling like following the miCoach program was actually slowing my progression down. With Nike, it’s more about giving yourself goals, and also following group goals. As I said, I’ve only gone for one run so far, but I’m finding the website pretty slick, and prefer how it displays your runs on Google Maps.

I think I’m going to at least try it for a couple of weeks, to give it a good shake and see how I feel about it, and then decide if I want to stick with it, or go back to miCoach, or even Runkeeper.

The sort of big news today in the digital publishing world — although not entirely surprising — is that Wired creative director Scott Dadich has left the magazine to focus entirely on his other gig, that of leading parent company Condé Nast’s digital publishing development.

But the most interesting thing to come out of the announcement (via MagCulture) is that we find out how well Wired has been selling on iPad after that initial blockbuster release — to recap, on its first month it sold 100,000 copies, which is well over the magazine’s average 76,000 in print. Since then, it has settled at around 30,000 copies per month, which is not bad at all.

I do hope we start getting digital circulation numbers for other magazines, because right now it’s hard to say what is working and what isn’t when you don’t really know the level of mainstream acceptance (i.e. sales) titles are getting.

As I’ve written before, one my most-used apps on my iPad is the New York Times’ Editor’s Choice, despite its flaws. One of the biggest annoyances has been that it would include articles that were nothing more than slideshows (like “The Week in Culture Pictures”), but without the photos — how did something like this happen, considering it’s supposed to be a selection of articles, and not an automatic update of everything from the website?

So a few days ago the app morphed into a more complete version of the newspaper, including all sections, articles, videos, and photos. This is great, and I’m happy to have access to everything now, but why are we still getting articles like the one pictured above? To be fair, the slideshow is in fact in the app, but you have to access it separately from the “Photos” section.

The new app’s release also comes with a warning that it will remain free only until early 2011 — whether this means that the app will be sold or that a subscription for content will be required is unclear.

In terms of interface, it’s still similar to what we had before, except that accessing sections is now done from a pop-up window, and some articles now lead with a photo that takes up the entire width of the page — there’s also a “Section” navigation box that pops up at the bottom when you touch the screen once within an article (see above). The’ve also taken a cue from the web, and when you read an article, it then appears in a lighter color on the section’s page, to indicate it was read.

The biggest annoyance though is that it has been crashing a lot for me, and this even after a restart of my iPad. And when it crashes, re-opening it brings you to the “Top News” section, so you have to navigate back to where you were. It also feels like there’s a bit of a delay when you swipe through pages (within sections).

Patrick Macias — editor-in-chief of Otaku USA magazine, among MANY other things — has been in town for the past couple weeks, and he dropped by my neck of the woods the other day for a bit of Ikebukuro flavor. I wanted to start with some tonkatsu spaghetti at Nobu but it was unfortunately closed, so we ended up getting tonkotsu ramen at Ippudo. That done, it was time for a few beers out on the street, and since Patrick requested a good place for people watching, we of course had to go and hang out at Ikebukuro West Gate Park.

If you’re not familiar with Ikebukuro — which you shouldn’t really be — in past decades it has had a reputation as one of the “rougher” parts of town, and although that has changed a lot in the past decade, the west side of the station remains the more, ahem, raw part of town. So hanging out at the park — a park with barely any trees mind you — we were treated to a lively show, including the Tron light cycle dude you can barely see in the video above, shot with my iPhone 4 (might be better to watch a larger version here).

As I was tweeting that night, the guy was amazing, making rounds around the park, occasionally stopping to “service” his blue-lit bike, walking around with quite the swagger. Also, he was wearing a full-body workman’s uniform, and his facial expressions as he rode close to us were priceless. Oh, an the lights, they automatically light up as he starts going, powered by motion. Here’s hoping he’s there again the next time I’m in the area.

I was interviewed the other day for a short program on the Tokyo radio station J-WAVE about some of the things I love about Tokyo. Since it will be edited I’m not sure what will come through, but I did get to mention my meal of choice, tonkatsu spaghetti (that you can get at Nobu, a cozy little pasta joint in Ikebukuro).

It will air this coming Thursday (October 21) from 15:35 to 15:45 Tokyo time, and you’ll be able to listen to it online from the J-WAVE website (or at 81.3 on the FM dial).

Update: The date has been changed, and it will instead air tomorrow (Monday, October 18), but at the same time (15:35-15:45). The show is called RENDEZVOUS, and the segment is called “Foreigner’s Perspectives on Tokyo.”