Remember when Readability went freemium, adding a subscription fee from which it could pay magazines whose content got ad-stripped? (This caused it to run afoul of Apple’s in-app payments policy, though it resubmitted and got that straightened out.) It turned out that Readability’s ambitions did not match up to readers’ expectations, with only a few thousand people willing to kick in $5 per month for the service, so in November the company slid back toward free by adding some premium features back to free accounts. Now it turns out apparently even that was not worthwhile, and the...

This past week, the Kindle iOS app received an update. We did mention it when it happened, but I think a couple of the features in that update are important enough to go into in detail. First of all, the software can now read PDF files. I tried it out with a TV manual downloaded from the website of manufacturer I support in my day job, and it worked pretty well, including drop-down access to the table of contents. Of course, there are many other ways to read PDFs on iOS by now, including GoodReader, iBooks, Stanza, and Safari...

A recent survey by the Association of Magazine Publishers has turned up some interesting results. It surveyed 1,009 adult readers of e-magazines on their use habits and features they would like to see. Of those surveyed, 90% said they read as much or more magazine content as before they had a tablet. 76% of them said they preferred newsstand-style subscription centers, like Zinio or Apple’s Newsstand, and 55% said they like to be able to read back issues. But the intriguing part has to do with in-app purchase features. 70% of those surveyed wanted to be able...

A number of stories on the page-reformatting/save-for-later-reading app front broke today. First of all, Arc90’s Readability, which earlier this year implemented a subscription model with Read It Later-like article-saving functionality for those who paid for it (and axed its old bookmarklet which worked better), has announced it is moving a few steps back toward a freer model with a free iOS app. It turns out that only 2,000 to 10,000 people so far have thought the ability to save articles for later in Readability was worth paying $5 a month for (imagine that!), and Readability’s founders hope that...

Our sister blog Gadgetell has a brief piece on the new version of the Nook for Android app, which notably adds the Nook Newsstand and personalized recommendations to the app for any Android device running version 2.1 or later—including smartphones. And speaking of Newsstand apps, ReadWriteWeb looks at the Kindle Fire Newsstand’s app as one of Amazon’s secret weapons in the war against the iPad. Offering over 400 full-color publications,  and including a free three-month trial of various Condé Nast magazines for those who subscribe before March 1, 2012, the app will compete with Apple’s own Newsstand. The Apple...

Marco Ament, the developer of Instapaper, discusses a critical problem with iOS 5 that will affect any application that stores its own content—including e-book readers. It has to do with iOS 5’s iCloud backup system. Apple wants to reduce the amount of data that has to go out over wifi, and is asking developers not to store such data in Documents folders within the app itself that would get automatically backed up. Instead: Data that can be downloaded again or regenerated should be stored in the <Application_Home>/Library/Caches directory. Examples of files you should put in the...

CNet has an interesting, fairly long interview with Josh Quittner, who was formerly the director of Time Inc.’s digital magazine strategy as well as Time.com’s editorial chief before quitting to take a job as editorial director for Flipboard. Quittner is a veteran tech journalist and editor, which makes it all the more fascinating he would take a position at such a young startup. Quittner explains that he was drawn to Flipboard by the changes that are taking place in the context of magazines. Flipboard represents a chance to break out of the traditional one-size-fits-all template magazines have used...

I actually saw this on the nightly news last night when visiting my parents: a video making the rounds on YouTube featuring a 1-year-old who plays with an iPad, then gets confused and disappointed when paper magazines don’t respond the same way to being tapped or slid on. “For my 1-year-old daughter, a magazine is an iPad that does not work,” says the video’s poster. “It will remain so for her whole life. Steve Jobs has coded a part of her OS.” On the other hand, he could be reading too much into it. One of the...

As Hurricane Irene approaches the upper east coast, property damage is of course a key concern—but Hurricane Irene is also, at least temporarily, knocking down some virtual walls—paywalls. Laura Hazard Owen reports on PaidContent that the New York Times and Newsday.com are both making hurricane coverage available to all readers for free. E-magazine service Zinio is also offering free issues of several electronic magazines to travelers stranded by the hurricane. Of course, the usefulness of these free services depends on people being able to keep their connectivity during the storm. USA Today has a guide suggesting ways for...

I’ve already mentioned the deals Flipboard has been cutting with magazines to carry their content, but the people behind the iPad social media reading app seem not to be content to rest on their laurels. Flipboard Chairman and CEO Mike McCue has said the company hopes to enter into agreements to carry movies and episodes of TV shows via its platform. McCue plans to get started on this project by the end of the year. McCue also plans to create an iPhone/iPod Touch version within a few weeks. (I have scant hope it will work on my old 1st-generation...

From the Los Angeles Times: Does Vogue magazine have a digital archive in the works -- one would stretch all the way back to its original 1892 issue? Rumors say that's exactly what the long-lived fashion magazine is up to. The blog Fashionista reads the tea leaves: Vogue editor Anna Wintour attending the Webbys in June, accepting her magazine's "People's Voice" award by saying, "Sometimes, geeks can be chic." (Webby Award winners must give five-word speeches). Vogue publisher Susan Plagemann telling AdWeek that the magazine will be rolling out a new Web property in December. She declined to specify what that might be. A "reliable...

AOL has just launched a new iPad app, Editions, which serves up a custom daily "magazine" of content from both its own sites and others (but mostly its own). Like Zite, Flipboard, Pulse, Taptu, Hitpad and a slew of other apps, you can customize the type of content you see, although if you don't like the default suggestions you'll have to connect your social network accounts to it to generate new topics. Editions seems to fall somewhere between Flipboard and The Daily, borrowing a lot of the visual style of the former but packaging itself as a once-a-day digital publication...