magazines

Yahoo announced a product today called "Livestand," an app for tablet and mobile devices that will start as a personalized browsing tool for Yahoo-owned content and, in the future, possibly external content as well. Powering it is technology that Yahoo envisions as a way for both publishers and advertisers to easily reach tablet and smartphone users.

At launch, Livestand will feature content from Yahoo Sports, Yahoo News, Flickr, celebrity gossip site OMG, and the Yahoo Contributor Network (fueled by media from Associated Content, the freelance clearinghouse that Yahoo acquired last year). The content will be customized based on … Read more

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch and his News Corp. kicked off The Daily today, a publication built for the iPad and--Murdoch hopes--the next generation of readers.

For a yearly subscription fee of $39.99, The Daily will deliver to iPad owners up to 100 pages of news and information each day, News Corp. Chairman Murdoch and his lieutenants told the gathering of media and supporters at New York's Guggenheim museum. The Daily is available immediately at Thedaily.com and News Corp. will offer the first two weeks free, thanks to Verizon, which is picking up the tab.

The publication will … Read more

News Corp. has chosen Groundhog Day for its launch of The Daily, a digital publication designed for tablet devices--and it's chosen New York, not the previously rumored San Francisco, for the February 2 event.

News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch will be making the announcement at the event at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and Apple Vice President of Internet Services Eddy Cue will join him. This is in contrast to News Corp.'s initial plans to hold the event at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in late January.

A source close to the matter had informed CNET … Read more

Think of it as an old-fashion circulation war in the digital age, substituting tablets for tabloids.

Google is trying to raise support from newspaper and magazine publishers for its own digital newsstand for Android-powered devices, according to a Wall Street Journal report, a venture that would ramp up its competition with similar efforts backed by Apple and Amazon.com. The digital newsstand would reportedly feature apps from publishers that would allow versions of their content to appear on devices running Google's mobile operating system, according to the report, which cited anonymous sources.

However, media executives said the details and … Read more

Ultimate AV Magazine's Scott Wilkinson has an eye for style. He regularly posts some of the most beautiful shots of high-end audio exotica I've seen, so I decided to share a few of them here.

Leave it to the Italians to come up with a radically different approach to speaker design. Behold the Book of Music's Teti Extreme; its twisted curves look great and improve sound quality. With the standard finish each speaker carries a hefty price tag of $9,920; or if you're really willing to splurge, go for the special "liquid-rubber" paint … Read more

I thought it would be fun to contrast and compare the tubes vs. solid-state debate with the analog vs. digital standoff. I'd readily concede that solid-state/transistor components are, watt for watt, cheaper, more reliable, cooler running, smaller and lighter in weight. But if solid-state is so terrific why haven't tubes become extinct in the half century since transistors came onto the scene? Maybe, just maybe, because tubes sound better?

Ultimate AV Magazine recently conducted a poll, "Do You Prefer Tube-Based or Solid-State Audio Gear?," and the results demonstrated a nearly two-to-one preference for transistors over … Read more

Computer hardware is hot among holiday buyers this season, according to data out yesterday from ComScore.

As online buyers scoop up iPads, e-readers, laptops, and other portable devices, computer hardware is ringing in the holidays as the product category showing the most growth for the season so far, a 25 percent increase compared with last year.

Lower prices on flat-panel TVs is spurring growth in consumer electronics, helping that category grow 22 percent among online buyers over the same period last year, says ComScore. Books and magazines are also proving to be a popular gift item, up 21 percent from … Read more

China will soon overtake Japan as the world's second heaviest spender on research and development, according to a report from the Battelle Memorial Institute.

A nonprofit group that conducts scientific research, Battelle published its findings today as part of an article in its R&D Magazine. The article and its full supplementary report (PDF) looked at global R&D spending in general and across six specific segments--Information Technology, Electronics, Life Sciences, Aerospace/Defense/Security, Energy, and Advanced Materials.

Next year, China is expected to spend $153.7 billion on R&D, a big jump from $141.… Read more

Magazines and newspapers are migrating to iOS devices (most notably the iPad) at a steady clip, but there's one problem: publishers don't have a way to sell subscriptions--not yet, anyway.

That may change with the arrival of iOS 4.3, which is rumored to be arriving (or at least announced) as early as this Thursday, December 9.

As CNET's Joe Aimonetti reported last month, this build was already in the works when Apple rolled out iOS 4.2. And despite the latter's brief delay, it appears iOS 4.3 may still arrive on schedule (at least … Read more