Author: Blancer

The web has put traditional journalism into a tailspin, and newspapers of all sizes are scrambling to find a way to monetize their content. The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and more have created paywalls that require readers to pay to read all of their content each month, either online or in apps on various mobile platforms. Increasingly, though, publishers are turning to mobile apps as the only way to sell digital copies of their articles, cutting the web out of the equation.

Is this the future of digital media? Will we have to purchase specific devices to read the content we want? Or is there hope yet for monetized content on the internet?

Restricting Journalism to Apps

This past week, Fortune Magazine has created a stir by locking their latest issue’s featured story, an insider piece on Apple and Steve Job’s management style, behind a paywall. Rather than letting readers pay to read the story online, Fortune initially only made the article available to print and iPad subscribers. Later this week, they released the piece as a Kindle Single, bringing it to many more readers. The article included interesting original reporting, and is definitely worth paying for, but to only offer the article on certain devices seems incredibly short-sighted.

But it’s not just Fortune. Time Magazine and more are restricting their digital content to their iPad app, bringing it behind a paywall and away from the web. More troubling, Time is only offering their full featured articles on the iPad and in print. If you already own an Android device, Kindle or Nook eReader, or a traditional computer, you simply can’t read the articles that aren’t given away for free on their site.

Sorry, web: you're not allowed here

Most iPad owners would agree that tablets are great for reading, and find Kindle, iBooks, and Instapaper to be some of their most used apps. However, the transformation of magazines to the tablet interface hasn’t gone over so well. Most of the magazine apps are beautiful, but are essentially made of images of the articles rather than the actual text and images that make up the article. You can’t change font size, copy text, or even share an article with others. It’s got the same limitations paper magazines have, only this time, you’re paying $5 to read it on a $500 device.

iPad magazines offer a rich experience, but few sharing opportunities

Kindle is for More Than Books

The Kindle has emerged as an unlikely savior for books, and has created a rapidly growing market for eBooks on all platforms. Whether you own a Mac, Blackberry, Android Tablet, Windows PC, or any iOS device, you can purchase and read Kindle books anytime you like. The Kindle device offers one of the best digital reading experiences, but it’s their ecosystem of apps that really makes Kindle the strongest force in eBooks. The Kindle store offers most popular books, as well as an assortment of newspaper and magazine subscriptions. This has made Amazon one of the best hopes for digital media that can be read on any device.

Kindle books aren’t perfect, though. They’re still locked with DRM, which restricts the books to your account and gives you limited sharing options. Then, magazine and newspaper subscriptions only are available on the Kindle itself, so the other Kindle apps can only be used to read Kindle eBooks. Also, the rich images and text formatting we’ve come to expect from high quality books and magazines is stripped out in Kindle editions, and any included images are often blurry. Kindle offers a great reading experience, just so it doesn’t include much more than the text itself.

Amazon Shorts offer an interesting opportunity for monetizing long-form journalism

One interesting new development is the Kindle Shorts, which are shorter pieces for the Kindle for $1-$3 each. Many longer-form articles from magazines, including the recent Fortune piece mentioned above, are now available as Kindle Shorts. This is an interesting way to monetize articles that are almost more like a chapter from a book. Plus, with the Kindle Popular Highlights feature, you can share thoughts from an article and still make the article somewhat social. In addition to the existing Kindle newspaper and magazine subscriptions, this is yet another way Amazon can help boost traditional media and bring it into the new world of digital media while still remaining economically feasible.

The Kindle ecosystem is also coming to the web, making your browser once again the ultimate app. While you currently have to use your browser to discover, purchase, and manage your Kindle books, you can only read them on a Kindle device or app. That’s currently already changing, as Amazon has built the new Kindle for the Web that lets you read book previews in a Kindle-like interface in your browser. Amazon is planning to turn this into a full Kindle experience soon so you can read any of your books or Kindle Shorts right in any browser.

Kindle for the Web can

Another possible savior of long-form journalism could be the popular reading apps, including Instapaper and Readability. These apps are loved by people who enjoy reading, but want a better experience than the standard cluttered interface that most news sites use. Readability currently sends a portion of your subscription to the authors of articles you’ve added to your reading list, while Instapaper includes curated lists of the best long form online writing. Services like this could be a way to monetize content while letting readers choose what they want to read and pay for.

Instapaper's Editor Picks list

Chrome Web Store: Apps for Every Platform

The Chrome Web Store offers yet another way to monetize media online from a curated digital store. Many news publishers have created web apps for the Chrome Store that work very similar to their iPad apps. It’s refreshing to see a beautiful and interactive browser interface that includes everything you’d expect from a top-notch tablet interface.

Most news apps are free right now on the Chrome store, but some, such as the New York Times, charge a subscription similar to their iPad app. Chrome’s upcoming in-app payments are likely to be implemented by many publishers to enable instant article purchases and subscriptions. The good thing is, you can still at least read your content in the browser, and are not forced to buy an iPad just to read from a certain magazine. Plus, most browser apps include many more options to share content, even when it’s behind a paywall.

The New York Times Chrome Web App

Conclusion

From Apple to Amazon, the biggest names in tech are all vying to be the gateway for all media. Publishers are quickly embracing the app ecosystems, since they offer an easy way to monetize content, while Amazon continues building an increasingly powerful one-stop eReading solution. Both systems lose much of the advantages that the internet has brought to media. The web let content be shared and seen by millions who otherwise never would have seen it. Even paper books and newspapers were often read by others who hadn’t directly purchased them.

Content has to be paid for, and everything in the world cannot be sponsored entirely by ads. However, as more of our media goes digital, it seems a pity to lock it into proprietary formats that you own less than ever before. After all, is speech truly free if it’s locked behind paywalls and DRM?

In this Quick Look, we’re highlighting Timetrack. The developer describes Timetrack as an online application developed for service providers who want to optimize the time spent on their timesheets and billing process. Timetrack keeps things simple within an intuitive environment. Timetrack is easily tailored according to your activity. All tables being editable, any update of information is done instantaneously. With Timetrack filling in your timesheets has become fun!

Read on for more information and screenshots!

Screenshots

Timetrack Timesheet

Timetrack Report

About the App

Here are the top five features you can expect to see in the latest version:

1. Drag&drop timesheet and editable grids
2. Invoice creation in a few clicks
3. Advanced reports
4. Synchronization with iPhone, iPad, iCal
5. Role based access management

Requirements: Web Browser and Internet connection
Price: Starting at $16/month
Developer: Webismymind

There’s millions of things each of us need to keep up with, but usually we actually only end up keeping up with the very most important things we’re supposed to remember. Sure, we usually remember the most important phone numbers, passwords, and ID numbers, but beyond that, it can be very difficult to remember everything.

Evernote bills itself as a digital extension for your brain. You can store all of your notes, images, and more in it, then quickly search and find anything you need. You’ll never have to forget anything, ever again. While Evernote is widely popular on smartphones, it has recently been updated with a beautiful web app that makes your important info accessible from anywhere. Keep reading to see the great features that have been added to one of the world’s most popular note apps.

Evernote: One of the Most Cross-Platform Apps

Evernote started out as a notebook app for Windows PCs, but the launch of the iPhone and increasing popularity of smartphones over the past few years has really made Evernote an indispensable app for users around the globe. You can snap a picture of anything, clip a portion of a website, or jot down a note, and then find it later from any of your devices. The underlying system is built on a web app that keeps everything in sync, but most people use it through the beautiful desktop and mobile apps that have made it popular.

The Evernote Apps offer a rich interface for your notes

The Evernote web app used to include far fewer features than its desktop and mobile counterparts, and didn’t include the nicest web app interface, either. That’s all changed now with the brand new Evernote web app. The Evernote team has given the web app a full new interface, dozens of new features, and more. Finally, you could use Evernote just from your browser, and miss out on little.

The brand new Evernote web app

Beautiful Notes, Online and Offline

The new Evernote web app brings the desktop interface to the web. You can view thumbnails of your notes, or sort them into a clean list. The list view gives you a number of ways to find the notes you’re looking for, as you can sort the columns by their title, date created, or date edited. Or, use the revamped search box, which gives you automatic prompts to help you find the words you’re looking for. Your notes aren’t very useful if you can’t find them, but you won’t have to worry about that with the new web app.

The notes list view in the Evernote web app

The Evernote web editor works almost just like the Windows and Mac note editor. You can format your text, choose from several traditional fonts, add outlines and to-dos, and more. This lets you edit anything in your existing notes, or create new notes online with the same options you could have used offline. You can even edit a note’s metadata, including tags, links, and location info. Best of all, the Evernote web app auto-saves your work, so you won’t have to worry about losing anything you’re entering.

Once you’re finished editing, you can save your notes privately into any of your notebooks. Or, you can make your notes public, and share them with your friends via email, Facebook, or with a unique link. This is a great way to quickly publish a simple page with rich text, links, tags, images, and up to 25Mb of file attachments.

Format notes richly right in your browser

The Evernote desktop and mobile apps have always let you add pictures, audio recordings, PDF documents, and more to notes, which makes it easy to keep all of your data organized. Whenever you search your notebooks, you can quickly find files that include those words, including text in images. The web app didn’t originally let you add files, but the recent updates have added an upload button. What’s more, you can even drag and drop files from your computer to your notes in Chrome and Safari!

Drag and drop files to upload them from Chrome and Safari

Even Better With Chrome

In addition to the web app and desktop apps, Evernote can integrate great with most popular browsers. You’ll have to install Evernote for Windows or Mac, respectively, to add it to Internet Explorer or Safari, but you can use Evernote in Chrome without installing any desktop version. The Chrome Evernote Web Clipper offers the best integration of any Evernote addon, and lets you clip content from websites and search your notes right from the extension. It’ll work on Chrome on any platform, including the upcoming Chromebooks, and can make it even easier to use Evernote to store all of the stuff you need to remember online.

Find notes and clip web content from the Chrome Web Clipper

Conclusion

I’ve used Evernote off and on for the past several years, and have used it extensively to archive interesting items I come across online. However, I usually prefer to type my notes from college and meetings in plain text, and have increasingly used the Simplenote web app to store my notes. Many rich note apps such as Evernote seem to run increasingly slow on the desktop as you add more data, while plain text is always quick and easy to view and search. The new Evernote web app, though, has brought the best of both worlds. It’s speedy, and yet still works great with any formatting (or the lack thereof) that you want to include.

If you’ve given Evernote a try, and couldn’t find the web app usable enough for your needs, it might be time to give it another shot. It’s an impressive way to keep up with everything you need to remember. With the new web app, it’s an equally nice app on any platform, too!