We’d been waiting for it for a while, and last week finally marked the release of the first iPad edition of Wired UK. I was especially interested in seeing what the team behind the UK spinoff would come up with in terms of layout and format — just how different or similar to the US edition — using the same Adobe digital tools.

The biggest change is that the magazine has decided to embrace the portrait layout exclusively, using the landscape mode to access any multimedia features (videos, slideshows, etc.)

There are certain exceptions, like the issue’s cover, as well as all of the ads found inside, and that does in fact make sense. Even when in landscape mode, you can flip through the pages and go from media section to media section, and so you still encounter the ads. When you hit articles that don’t have any extra content, you get the message pictured above.

Continuing with a look at some of the changes, you get a much more creative masthead — I really like the use of arrows to indicate the proper “chain of command” — and a “Contributors” page that not only looks good, but is interactive in a way that is fun and works quite well with the color mix used (you touch on a contributor’s photo to have the appropriate text appear in the colored segments).

But the real genius of the magazine is that idea of using the landscape mode to show off the media content, which means that all photos and videos appear in all their full-screen glory (there’s one video that was smaller, that I can remember), instead of as a tiny box which is part of the article layout. What is especially a joy to experience are the 360 degrees images, which are just stunning in full-screen, and something that only an iPad edition of a magazine could offer — twirling around the sets of Aardman Animations’ latest film is so much more satisfying and revealing than a series of photos could ever be.

But even the basic photo slideshows are great to take in, and not only can you flip through the images of the slideshow, but when you are in landscape mode, you’ll also flip through all of the multimedia content associated with an article. Going back to portrait mode brings you back to the article, and more precisely, to the part of the article (the “screen”) that is linked to the media content.

It can get a bit out of hand though, like in the case of the audio clip that accompanies the article below (which happens to be the cover feature of the US edition this month). Having to turn to landscape mode just to then tap a small button to activate a sound file isn’t necessary (in the US iPad edition, the button of the clip is simply included in the article).

This also brings up a problem I’ve had with sound clips in general with Wired, both US and UK — the fact that you can’t continue to navigate while the clip plays. For example, I don’t really want to stare at a “screen” while listening to a music clip, I’d rather like to move on to the next article.

The other thing that I was really interested to find out with the UK edition was just how different the content would be from the US edition — this becomes especially important with the iPad app, since it gives Wired UK a worldwide audience, which means they really need to offer something different than the “mother” edition. From what I saw in this issue, I’d say that the vast majority is new content, enough to justify the purchase — I think only 4-5 articles from the US edition were used.

For those articles that did come from the US edition, it was interesting to see how they were presented differently. Some just had simple layout changes, while others, like the piece below, not only appear with a completely different look, but the context for most of the content is different (like the inclusion of a column by Clive Thompson inside the main feature).

I was also happy to finally get to read Warren‘s regular column in the form that it should be read in — in magazine form, and not on the web. The topic was also certainly apropos for being included in the first iPad edition of the magazine (“Blogging isn’t dying, it’s just that people are bored with and looking for the next thing”).

I briefly mentioned earlier that ads appear in both portrait and landscape modes, but it also needs to be said that not only does there appear to be more ads than in the US edition — I would find myself having to flip through 2-3 ads between articles — but there are also more “Wired Promotion” pieces (i.e. advertorials). I know that in recent years I would see a lot of these in the print edition of Wired US, but so far the iPad edition hasn’t had too many (I believe just one). Here, we get a few of them, like the one below, which to me is just wasted space as I never read them.

And the ads for the most part don’t do much with the medium, but I did quite like the one you see below for The Times‘ iPad app, which plays a visual trick on the two iPad modes.

In many of my past reviews I’ve often stated how I prefer “screen” flips over scrolling, and Wired UK pretty much sticks with what we’re used to seeing in the US edition, making an exception in two pieces. I can see why they would go that way in their “Big Ideas for 2011″ feature, using a blog format similar to the front section of the iPad edition of Esquire — you can tap the sections in the sidebar to move to a new group of “ideas” — but I really don’t like that they have artificially put a space jump in the opening text of each section (as seen below) so that that “opening” screen looks nice and not cut.

They do the same in the article below, which has a fun interface — you touch on each subway stop to read what it’s about — but again they put an artificial space in the text, which just looks odd when you move or scroll the page up.

There are also strange bugs that they need to iron out — and let’s be clear, they do clearly explain in the intro that this is a test issue, and that they hope to get feedback and improve things for the upcoming issues that will start coming out in 2011. One thing I noticed was that when you have your iPad synced with your computer and you access the “File Sharing” section of iTunes, you can see the files that make up the issue — I’m sure this was not intended.

Also, since the release of the issue last week, they’ve been making updates to it, but that I can’t experience because they appear as separate issues (v.1.2, v1.3) inside the app that I need to buy. Surely this is a mistake.

Is it worth buying? I’d say yes, especially if you love the US edition. The price is the same ($4), and they have already announced that they are looking into offering subscription offers. They also promise that upcoming editions will include ways to share pages with others, which is a feature I’d love to see in the US edition as well. Give me the ability to interact with the text (copy/paste, notes, etc.) and I’ll be a pretty happy reader.

I leave you with the opening graphic to the app, which I think is much nicer than any of the ones that have appeared in the US edition.

The dangers of automating layouts and content, as exemplified this morning by this front page in the “World” section of the New York Times app for iPad.

Vogue UK for iPad has just been released, and as much as I’d like to get it so I can review here, I’m just not willing to pay the $7 asking price. Here then is a video that teases the issue that was “ninety four years in the making,” and I’m sure we can expect some impressions from Jeremy over at MagCulture soon enough.

And speaking of Jeremy, do take a look at his recent post covering this past week’s big title releases on iPad (New York Magazine, Wired UK, and Eureka). I’m late on my reviews of Wired UK and Eureka, but will try to have something up over the weekend (and I do pretty much agree with Jeremy’s views).

Let me also mention that I’m very open to getting some review copies of iPad magazines (download codes) to cover here — it’s getting expensive for me to properly review everything I’d like to cover.

Just the other week I was saying how much I’ve been enjoying various aspects of New York Magazine this year, and now we get the release of the official iPad edition. This would normally make me very happy, except for the fact that what we got is almost unforgiveable.

Let’s start with the good though. Interestingly enough, the app has launched with an in-app store that offers quite a few issues for sale already, going back to the June 14 issue (New York Magazine is published weekly). The app also offers you a free issue to try out, although strangely enough it’s hidden in the middle of the entire run they have for sale.

So what’s wrong? First of all, the app isn’t much more than a glorified PDF reader, albeit a slick one. Everything does look quite good, and they have nice light grey tabs on the side (pictured above) that indicate where to touch to flip pages (something I much prefer over swiping). And everything looks great and high-res, but at a cost — an entire issue is 100+ MB, and even after I had it downloaded, it would often take a second or more to load a page.

But worst of all, they’re actually charging $5 per issue, which is just unbelievable. Even Newsweek charged less for its PDF-like offering, and at least they have it so that you can read the pages without zooming in — every page here needs to be zoomed in and moved around to read, which is not a great reading experience.

The app does include a few extras, like a nifty interface to the magazine’s various blogs (above), although touching a link simply brings up the web page in-app.

I did experience a few issues beyond slow loading pages as well, including a few crashes while maneuvering through the app, a “contents” tab that just wouldn’t load any content (it did eventually, a few tries later), and a mysteriously disappearing cover page for the free issue I downloaded (above).

This is not at all what I want when it comes to iPad editions of magazines — both in terms of format and pricing — and I do hope that they will re-examine things and start offering a better reading experience (i.e. something that is formatted for iPad) in the near future.

If you’re a fan of The Guardian Eyewitness app or event the “Photo” section of the NYT app, then you’ll probably find a lot to like from the new LIFE app for iPad. Available as a free download, it’s basically an interface to LIFE magazine’s amazing photo archives.

There are a few different ways to explore the collections, starting from an “Explorer” page that lets you dig in geographically, and then a few themed sections.

It’s not perfect though, and the biggest annoyance is the ad for LIFE services (pictured above) that pops up every few photos — it’s especially annoying because when it comes it actually moves the regular interface elements away, which makes for a jarring transition. There’s also a slight load time for every single photo you view, so it seems that they should have paid a bit more attention at keeping file sizes manageable.

But hey, it’s a free app, and there’s more to like here than to not like, so well worth a download.

Remember how I was all excited the other day about the news that the iPad edition of Newsweek was now offering in-app subscriptions at very attractive prices? I mentioned I’d give an issue a try (which I bought at the regular price of $3), and it’s definitely something I regret doing.

Newsweek for iPad isn’t much more than a glorified PDF reader, so don’t expect anything more than what you get with Zinio editions of magazines, and maybe even less so. Sure, the pages are all formatted so that everything is readable without having to zoom in (which is the only interaction you are allowed), but that’s it.

I even found plenty of horrible low-res images (pictured above), and I can’t stand that any page that features full-bleed photos have a thin white frame around them.

The one thing the Newsweek app does have going for it is that it offers a section with breaking news — an NYT-esque formatting of news that appears on its website — and there’s a page full of photo galleries. But as far as the magazine itself, I expect more from an iPad edition.

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.

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?

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).