Wired Magazine’s iPad Edition Goes Live, have a look :)

Wired’s first digital edition is now available for the iPad and soon for nearly all other tablets. I have post about it earlier and find it cool. Interesting thing is they mention this app is designed to deliver rich reading environment, using new digital publishing technology developed by Adobe. 🙂
In case you don’t know Apple Won’t allow flash on iphone!!.

Wired is finally, well, wired. Have a look.

vivek

Mag+ live with Popular Science+ digital magazines on Apple ipad

Just received an email from Bonnier, very exciting new Mag+ concept for digital magazines on Apple ipad. I posted about it in my previous post as it was in beta prototype and i like this concept very much. They have taken the first step building a Popular Science digital magazine for the iPad.

“Our design vision has been to avoid what our friends at BERG call “a wrist screen running clock software” – we wanted to build the watch. It should feel like you are touching the actual magazine, using your natural body language – not looking through the screen and layers of buttons.”

“Magazines are a luxury that readers can lose themselves in. We have built a digital magazine for a device you can curl up with on the coach. It allows readers to lean back, away from the browser, and just focus on the bold images and rich storytelling. We wanted to build a linear story with a beginning and end. Because we believe that reduced complexity increases your immersion. And that the sense of completion is important. ”

The Popular Science+ digital magazine features simple, fluid swiping motions let readers move horizontally through stories, while vertical scrolling allows them to read an article without interruption or distraction. In the app’s unique Look mode, users can tap the screen to make the words disappear, highlighting the magazine’s big, bold photos and illustrations. Another tap returns to Read mode.

The Bonnier Mag+ platform and the Popular Science+ magazine are based on 6 design principles:

  1. Silent mode: Magazines are a luxury that readers can lose themselves in. Mag + has fewer distractions than the Web. It allows readers to lean back, away from the browser, and just focus on the bold images and rich storytelling. Reduced complexity increases a reader’s immersion.
  2. Fluid motion: Magazines are easy to browse, and Mag+ replicates that with a story-to-story navigation that’s more like a panning camera than a flipping page. As we say, “Flow is the new flip.”
  3. Designed pages: Magazines are defined by their carefully conceived layouts that give readers an immediate understanding of the content and why it matters to them, a quality that got lost on magazine Web sites. Mag+ brings design back to digital publishing.
  4. Defined beginning and end: Unlike the Web, magazines have a defined storyline and flow from front to back. Mag + returns to the notion that something can be, and wants to be, completed. It’s the end of endlessness.
  5. Issue-based delivery: One of the great joys of magazines is that feeling of anticipation when a new one arrives. Mag+ maintains that by delivering full issues at once with all the same content as the print edition, and on the same schedule.
  6. Advertising as content: Relevant, attractive advertising is as much a part of the magazine experience as the editorial content, and Bonnier wants Mag+ advertising to include both pin-ups and applications readers can appreciate.

If you have ipad you can download it via itunes here.

vivek

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Digital Magazines concept: Bonnier Mag+ Prototype

Bonnier R&D Mag+ Prototype

Bonnier R&D’s Mag+ Prototype

Bonnier R&D’s Mag+ Prototype

Bonnier R&D’s Mag+ Prototype

Elegant button free mockup, you can see the above video, its a great insight into how we consume magazines.This conceptual video is a corporate collaborative research project initiated by Bonnier R&D into the experience of reading magazines on handheld digital devices. It illustrates one possible vision for digital magazines in the near future.

The concept aims to capture the essence of magazine reading, which people have been enjoying for decades: an engaging and unique reading experience in which high-quality writing and stunning imagery build up immersive stories.

The concept uses the power of digital media to create a rich and meaningful experience, while maintaining the relaxed and curated features of printed magazines. It has been designed for a world in which interactivity, abundant information and unlimited options could be perceived as intrusive and overwhelming.

I would like to hear from you, your experiences, what you like to see in upcoming digital reading experiences. Do you really think Apple ipad can be a game changer in industry! Do people really love reading magazines in handheld digital devices?

vivek

Spotify mobile music application: experience it!

Spotify mobile music application

Have a look to this popular Spotify music application which attracts me for various reasons like unified user experience on multiple mobile platforms and clean User Interface. See how easy it is to access your favorite music on Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, iphone and other mobile phones powered by TAT.

“Spotify offers you legal and free access to a huge library of music. All you need to do is create an account and download our streaming music player.” I also like this little spotify concept animation video which you can see above is simply amazing 🙂

Few important things to consider when you design an User Interface for mobile device

  • Scale your app across multiple platforms
  • Deliver an attractive unified user experience.
  • Efficiently handle different screen sizes and form factors
  • Fast and easy navigation

vivek

Transforming the magazine experience with Flash Player 10.1 and adobe air on tablet device

At Mobile World Congress, NVIDIA showcases Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR on Tegra-powered tablet device. See a slick new digital magazine experience based on WIRED magazine, powered by Adobe AIR. This prototype runs across different device types with Adobe AIR and illustrates the possibilities for magazine publishers to reach readers in new ways.

“In addition, with this digital magazine concept, advertisers have new possibilities for displaying ad content. Advertisers can develop rich-media magazine “inserts” to provide expanded information to customers directly within the magazine experience — without directing the reader’s attention away to a Web site. Publishers can also offer expanded ad formats that include animation and embedded video. Finally, as is the case with most digital advertising, this new magazine concept opens the possibility for more precise advertising performance metrics beyond the comparatively crude audience measurement/ad engagement techniques in use today.”

Interesting!, i love the new digital magazine experience on tablet the way they shown it, simple and intuitive 🙂

vivek

Outside: a new weather apps for mobile, executed beautiful user interface

iphone weather apps

iphone weather apps

Tons of weather app out there and if you like to get notice you definitely need to design with the fresh approach with beautiful User Interface.
Outside is just beautiful in terms of impeccable attention in visual design as well as interaction design. When i saw first time there video have one words, wow! I really love this 🙂

Their human-centric approach manifests itself mostly in the importance they place on user-defined notifications based on certain conditions. What’s so wonderful about this is that this is the kind of stuff that you really care about 90% of the time – weather changes that will affect your behavior. via everydayux

vivek

Inspiring: A Peek at the Future of Interactive Storytelling!

iphone interactive storytelling book

“I was completely blown away by this video the first time through. Such a simple, low-tech, solution produces such an amazingly rich, engaging experience that’s just bursting with possibility for further creativity.
While it’s just a concept at this point, you can see how it can make a new kind of storytelling available to the masses in a way that wouldn’t have seemed possible not that long ago.” via everydayux

“It’s the hybrid book which combined iPhone and an ordinary book.  You can enjoy interactive actions there, by touching the screen or tipping the book as you read it.”

“The keyword of Phone Book is “Analog on the Digital Technology”; it combines digital value of iPhone and analogue advantage of books. This new approach will be able to apply to leaflet / catalogue for business use, art book, picture book or educational tool. It’s also possible to utilize ordinary movies / pictures instead of iPhone application.”

You can find some more info here in Japanese.

vivek

actface Rhythm: Mobile interface design “experience it”

I’ve recently stumbled upon an interesting interface design by teamlab, the way they designed and looked into the natural dynamics of touch interface is amazing. I liked it personally very much such an amazingly rich, engaging experience that’s just bursting with possibility for further creativity. 🙂

“Actface” is a mobile device designed to create new contents using meta information of users behaviors.”

“Actface Rhythm is not a phone designed to produce music, but a phone that produces an internal rhythm, a moving image that is produced through the everyday use and the rhythm of pressing the keys. We regularly press keys to make a call, and to send a mail, and we considered this to be a natural rhythm. We designed actface Rhythm’s interface to produce an ink painting world that is created by the user, and as the phone is used the ink painting continues to develop and move with the rhythm you create.”

vivek

Video: Peek behind the curtain of Nokia’s design studio in London :)

“Over the past month we’ve been granted rare access, fascinating insight and candid chat related to a bunch of innovative design projects taking place at Nokia’s design studio in London. It’s certainly one of the Nokia hotspots for design innovation. From gesture and homescreen ingenuity to icon creation and the craft of “making communication more human” (as told to us recently by Axel Meyer, head of Nseries design at Nokia), our recent exposure to the design studio in London has painted an engrossing picture of what happens behind the curtain and how the people at Nokia holding the crayons go about bringing new devices and experiences to life.”

You can watch here a collection of recent videos featuring some of the passionate and creative folk at the Nokia design studio in London. Get a glimpse of how it all happens and some of the thinking behind a number of recent design projects.

Awesome and inspiring to see how they works 🙂

vivek

Nokia Braille Reader: SMS for the blind and visually impaired

Nokia Braille Reader gives SMS for the blind and visually impaired. It captures received SMS messages and brings them to the foreground for reading using Braille and tactile feedback.

The application has been developed in a joint project between Nokia, Tampere University and the Finnish Federation of the Visually Impaired.

Compatibility:
Nokia devices based on S60 5th Edition, including Nokia N97, 5800 XpressMusic and the newly released N97 mini, 5530, 5230 and X6.

It’s big challenge between new modern technologies and their impact on social life. HOW, WHERE AND FOR? What you think about it?
I am always quite passionate about thinking and like to work on design research to improve our day to day life.

vivek

Actface Rhythm: Mobile Interface design

Act face is a mobile device interface designed by “Teamlab” to create new contents using meta information of users behaviors.!
Some user behaviors like:

  • You become addicted to your mobile device, As its screen changes and as you use it more, it adapts to your situation.
  • You feel good touching your mobile device, Simply pressing the keys is fun in itself, And you keep wanting more. You start to enjoy the interaction with your mobile device, And it changes the purpose of using the phone, just touching the phone brings you enjoyment.
  • How many times will you open it. To see if any changes have occurred Will you ever be able to let go of your phone?…
  • You feel good touching your mobile phone, everyday use of your phone become a rhythm, a phone with a surface of rhythmic ink painting.

Concept:
Actface Rhythm is not a phone designed to produce music, but a phone that produces an internal rhythm, a moving image that is produced through the everyday use and the rhythm of pressing the keys. We regularly press keys to make a call, and to send a mail, and we considered this to be a natural rhythm. We designed actface Rhythm’s interface to produce an ink painting world that is created by the user, and as the phone is used the ink painting continues to develop and move with the rhythm you create.

“This is not just a new screen design, By adding a secondary purpose in using the phone, we have experimented in a new style of interaction between human and mobile devices.”

Very interesting concept !!

vivek