Project – iPad App of the Week

Project – iPad App of the Week

This is a regular feature of the blog looking at the various iPhone and iPad Apps available. Some of the apps will be useful for those involved in learning technologies, others will be useful in improving the way in which you work, whilst a few will be just plain fun! Some will be free, others will cost a little and one or two will be what some will think is quite expensive.

This week’s App is Project Magazine.

A revolutionary multimedia magazine built specially for your iPad – packed with international culture, entertainment, design, business and travel. And nuclear weapons. Oh, and Jeff Bridges.

Free and then £1.79 per issue

I have reviewed magazines in this series before and consider that though a PDF virtual copy of a magazine on the iPad isn’t really taking advantage of the potential of the iPad, there are some publishers though who are seeing that a magazine on the iPad can be more than a digital version of the paper edition.

With Project, Virgin Digital Publishing are even avoiding a paper edition and only publishing on the iPad. The magazine has might be expected video, audio and interactive diagrams.

There are (like WIRED) quite a few adverts.

The interface is not simple and there is quite a detailed help screen explaining how to navigate through the magazine.

For me this is one of the weaknesses of the iPad, unlike a Windows PC or a Mac running OS X, there isn’t a coherent user interface guide for iPad apps. So magazines like WIRED or Project use different navigation and buttons for moving around the magazine to different articles. Though Apple provides quite detailed  iOS Human Interface Guidelines app developers and publishers aren’t really recognising the user need for a consistent interface, especially with magazines. Comics on the other hand, most comic publishers are now using the GuidedView Technology from Comixology. This allows different comic publishers to use the same user interface for reading comics on the iPad. Hopefully something similar will emerge not just for magazines but also for e-books.

So what of the content of Project?

Well it reminded me of WIRED with a bit of Empire thrown in and a broadsheet weekend newspaper. There aren’t a huge number of articles, but is only £1.79.

I did enjoy reading it, and found some articles of interest.

The key will be though, will I buy the next issue?

Hmmm, not so sure.

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