Has coffee-table apps become a unique form of evergreen publishing?
TEARN media has been experimenting with various themes for mobile publishing. This post explores our automated features that results in evergreen magazines and books.
Coffee-table Apps Revisited
Legacy book and magazine publishers typically identify a subject; collect data, photos, and illustrations; and write about that subject. Most of that content is now available online.
Search bots at Google, Bing, and Yahoo scour the web for any new content. The best content is presented via search results – and used by the Keys platform.
The Keys Mobile Platform organizes the best of search results into subjects that we call apps; and extends with learning activities to aid memorization.
- Slide shows and video galleries link to the best content on the web.
- Spin, match, and guess provide games for memorization exercises.
- The innovative pictionary with search bots game was the original seed behind our platform.
Evergreen Publishing
Our staff identifies subjects that are potentially interesting to mobile users worldwide. We select a thematic approach to present each subject as a Keys app. It’s our unique form of story telling. The result has been a large collection of apps covering a wide range of subjects.
Each app is evergreen.
- If we select subjects carefully, the app can be timeless and always relevant. This includes historic sports lists, scientific glossaries, and virtual tours by subject.
- Using search bots, the content self updates – reflecting the best of the web and auto-adjusting the app to changes due to society’s evolutionary habits or scientific advancements. Minor editorial adjustments per year should keep these apps focused on the central themes of the selected subject.
- Our approach is objective – not reflecting political, personal, or editorial bias. Each app is simply the result from the best of the web.
- We have pushed the state of the web with apps where little information is currently available – and where we forecast growth in content from the global community. This includes apps for regional areas of countries like India or China. As these local communities become more active on the web, our apps focused on those regions will improve automatically.
- More recently, we’ve experimented with predictive magazines. With subjects like the emerging war among tablet manufacturers, our app is able to automatically track the hundreds of announcements for new products that is expected to occur in 2011. We did the same for hybrid cars.
- Mobile technology will improve with faster devices, networks, and servers. This improves the user experience for mobile users.
Evergreen publishing also implies the battle for a greener enviroment. That’s a good social goal.
Will these Keys apps self improve with age? Only time will tell the results.
PS: Total downloads now exceed 1,350,000. Thank you.
