Zinio means to make a big impression by the iPad’s opening weekend. The company has been selling magazines (single-copy and subscriptions) for 10 years online and on computers, admittedly “before the market’s time” according to CEO Jeanniey Mullen. But fast-forward from the time of Windows XP to the Apple touchstone that boots up on a quarter-million laps this weekend, and you can see the numbers rising for publishers and their readers.

Zinio will offer 2,000 issues for purchase (and another 400 back issues) through its free app, something the company designed as soon as Apple released the iPad’s software development kit. The company knew that a digital reader with full motion and interactive hooks would be a lure to readers who expect more from a publication than just words and static pictures. As of Thursday the company wasn’t sure if it would make the initial April 3 iPad app rollout lineup that Apple controls, but the CEO was certain that Zinio was going to deliver business magazines like Smart Money (from the Wall Street Journal) MacWorld, Kiplinger’s, US News & World Report — even Oprah, Yoga Journal and Esquire. All will enjoy the full-screen experience of the new Apple tablet, she said.

The Zinio catalog has been available for reading on iPhone as well as the Mac and PCs, but the Mac version runs on Adobe’s Air platform. Zinio has been working on removing such technology that doesn’t run on the iPad, substituting HTML5 and XML.

“We started to look for opportunities to optimize our iPhone app for the iPad, and have been feverishly de-Flashing our [magazine] files and our reader,” Mullen said. “We’ve been rebuilding our infrastructure to support the non-Flash environment.”

Small business owners won’t see many focused titles that have been optimized for the iPad’s features this weekend other than MacWorld. But Car and Driver, Dwell, National Geographic, Sporting News Daily, Spin and Zinio’s own Viv magazine are coming online first with video features and slide shows that take a reader beyond a magazine’s traditional graphics and text. It’s going to add a new dimension to showing off a publication’s article during a presentation. Publishers will have the chance to create animated, interactive graphics that might bridge the gap towards a need for skills in Keynote, Apple’s presentation app. Read the rest of this entry »

Most small businesses and creative enterprises know they need a database. But the learning curve may seem steep for anything but Excel, but Filemaker has a solution that leaves that spreadsheet in the dust: Bento. The latest release of this compact and muscular tool links iPhoto libraries to the $49 database.

Bento arrived in the Filemaker stable when the company realized that its flagship product might not fit for small customers. We’ve used Filemaker for our publishing company since 1995, but Filemaker 10 is more database than some people need. Bento takes care of that complexity without sacrificing essentials and the Mac’s trademark ease of use.

Bento 3 connects database entries with iPhoto’s libraries. If your business is image-based in any way — photography, video, even inventory items you’ve tracked with visuals — this will be a fresh asset in tracking business.

What’s new is summarized on the Bento Web site, but a Grid View is one of the more useful image-based improvements. You will need to be up to date on your OS X version — it doesn’t work with anything older than Leopard 10.5.7 or Snow Leopard 10.6.1. Read the rest of this entry »

Rumors of his demise got flipped off when Steve Jobs took the stage today at a media event to introduce a new $149 iPod that will challenge the video Flip cameras.

The iPod Nano could become a key business tool for creative pros and writers on the road. The device comes with a voice recording app, a built-in mic and a video camera. “We want to get in on this [Flip] market,” Jobs said after a standing ovation and more than 45 minutes of other product rollouts.

Jobs thanked the Apple community for its well wishes during his battle with liver disease that culminated in a transplant. “I’ve got the liver of a mid-20s person who died in a car crash,” he said in opening remarks at the event, “and was generous enough to donate their organs. I wouldn’t be here without such generosity.” After urging the audience to become organ donors, Jobs said “I’m vertical, I’m back at Apple, and I’m loving every day of it.”

Mobile devices led the pack of announcements, although no new iPhone models made a debut. Apple put its new 3GS units into the market in June. Jobs said that 30 million of the phones have been sold since Apple introduced the game-changer about two years ago. But a near-cousin to the iPhone, the iPod Touch, got a nudge in Apple’s targeting that makes the Touch look like Apple’s answer to netbooks from PC makers. The Touch, however, received little in the way of improvements except a new $199 price point and more storage in larger models.

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David Pogue is amazing. The New York Times columnist (his Circuits writing is a fun must-read) has another life as an O’Reilly “Missing Manuals” author. His new Missing Manual on Digital Photography illuminates the sometimes-murky world of taking pictures with digital cameras. Even more important, Pogue sharpens the focus on what to do with the photos once you’re taken them.

Business users can overlook the power of pictures. The Web has become a high-value marketplace with social networks and blogs. Every one of these sites — Facebook, Linked In, Twitter, even free blogs on Blogger — is a marketing tool. And these messages from businesses stand out when they have a graphic element.

You could start with your own picture, and Pogue’s book begins with taking photos. He’s got a clear and illustrated 13-page Taking the Shot section right up front that answers questions of how to frame and shoot. This is all subjective, of course, but adding things like The Rule Guideline of Thirds shows flexibility. And Pogue has his own artistic sensibility, since he was a Broadway musical conductor in a prior career.

The book also covers 10 Decisions to make on camera options, like flash, manual mode, how much exposure. I’ve been taking photos for more than 25 years as a journalist, and Pogue’s advice refreshed me. Every enterprise has access to easier photography tools today. The basics are in this book, but it adds so much more in details, too. Read the rest of this entry »