Designing Engaging and Enjoyable Long-Form Reading Experiences – guest article for Smashing Magazine

This article incorporates a lot of concepts that have been driving me crazy about digital content lately, some of which I’ve mentioned in this blog. Bad advertisements, disrespecting the reader, poorly chosen typography and lack of whitespace are just some of the concerns I cover here. If you’re spending time writing for the web, why not make sure it’s visible in a format that is inviting to the reader? Check out this article for ways to show your site or app’s visitors that you’re glad they’re there.

The Top 10 Ways to Create Digital Magazines – guest article for .net magazine

I wrote this post for .net magazine, one of my favourite magazines both in print and in digital, on some of the available methods and frameworks for creating digital magazines. I focused on systems which don’t export to just one platform as I don’t believe that’s a sustainable model for most publishers today. Instead I covered things like Laker Compendium (which we use for Idea magazine) and Treesaver that prioritize great web experiences over proprietary formats.

“Deep, Dark Secrets of Rupert Murdoch” – talk at Dublin’s #BeerMob event

At  the first (but hopefully not the last!) Dublin #BeerMob, we talked about topics of interest to those who are developing sites or apps for mobile. And there was beer. I talked about Rupert Murdoch of all people, and the secrets behind The Daily. I covered why this isn’t a sustainable method or one anyone should copy and what designers and developers should focus on instead for their users. Slides are below:

“Beware the Shiny” – talk at Refresh Dublin on March 15th

I spoke at Refresh Dublin this month on the topic of being cautious of trying to learn too many things all at once. Sounds like a strange topic from someone who lectures in web development! But I see a lot of students spin and spin, not building a foundation as they jump from one shiny framework to the next. We all want to learn new things and keep our skills competitive, but it’s important to do so in a sustainable manner. Below are my slides from the talk:

Guest podcast on the Small Business Show

I had the opportunity to speak with Conn and Kehlan this week on the Small Business Show podcast about current news items in the Irish world of SMEs.

http://www.focusmeireland.com/small-business-show-35-with-martha-rotter-of-idea-magazine

Guest podcast on the Technology.ie podcast with Stewart Curry

Stewart Curry and I chatted recently with Conn and Michele on the Technology.ie podcast, giving a behind-the-scenes view of Idea magazine and Woop.ie.

http://technology.ie/martha-rotter-and-stewart-curry-from-idea-magazine-tech-heroes-podcast-2/

Guest posts for Information Week during Mobile World Congress

Speaking of shiny things, I had the opportunity to attend Mobile World Congress and work with the Information Week team. Mobile World Congress is something I’ve wanted to attend for a long time, so it was great to get to help out such an excellent team. Below are some of the articles I contributed:

Samsung Galaxy Beam Turns Heads: MWC 2012

SecureVoice Encrypts Mobile VoIP Communications

Emporia Telecom: Mobile Phones for Elderly Users

9 Coolest Smartphones at Mobile World Congress

Coyote Systems Driver Info App Expands Across Europe

MWC 2012: Smartphone Apps, Gadgets for Cars

HTC One Smartphone Debut at MWC 2012

ON Voicefeed Aims to Modernize Mobile Voicemail

MWC 2012: Waterproof Your Smartphones, Tablets

Charity event 24theWeb creates websites for charities who can’t afford them in 24 hours.

StartupWeekend gets developers and designers together for a weekend to share ideas, build technology and launch start-ups.

Ireland’s 24 Hour Universal Design Challenge creates inclusive design solutions to produce usable environments, buildings and products.

And now in magazines as well, we’re seeing some really fascinating experiments in “what can we publish, given a finite amount of time?”

LONGSHOT

Longshot has now created two issues of its 48-hour magazine. The second issue, published in July 2011 was created between noon July 29th, 2011 and noon July 31st, 2011. Its theme was “Debt”, and you can read a web version here: http://two.longshotmag.com/ or order from MagCloud if you want a print copy.

The Atlantic has a great article about the methods and tools Longshot used to create their magazine so fast: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/07/the-almost-free-toolkit-we-use-to-make-longshot-magazine/242750/. In the article, Alexis Madrigal (who is both a founder of Longshot & a senior editor at The Atlantic) describes how they worked with thousands of people around the world who contributed content and managed things with free tools like Google Docs and Google Forms, raised money via Kickstarter, and posted updates to fans via Twitter, Tumblr and Google+.

Combining content from thousands of contributors, paring it down to the best of the best, editing and laying it out is no small feat. Doing it in a weekend is quite impressive. Unless you want to do it in a day…

24HOUR MAGAZINE

If 48 hours just seems a little too laid back for you, 24HourMagazine was conceptualized, produced and printed all in a single day with the motto, “1 day. 1 magazine. Start to finish. Scratch to print.”

Founders Tuffer Harris and Sam Mulkay, along with volunteers, created 24HourMagazine in a 24 hour period including topics on fashion, design, music, and lifestyle. The endeavour resulted in a 47-page magazine with no advertisements using a system called Issuu. During the short project, they allowed viewers to check in on progress via photo and video feeds as well as blog and Twitter updates.

Unfortunately it looks like the website is no longer active. However, Cool Hunting has some screen shots of what the completed magazine looked like, and it’s quite beautiful indeed: http://www.coolhunting.com/culture/24-hour-magazin.php.

16HOURS

“Okay,” you’re thinking. “Now this is just getting ridiculous.”  Fear not: 16HOURS is not what you might expect given the above magazines. 16 Hours, as the website states, “is the time difference between Calgary, Canada and Sydney, Australia”, which is where the two designing founders of the magazine live.

16HOURS currently has three issues available, and their website mentions that they’ll be open to accept Instagram submissions for their next issue starting February 16th. So it seems the next issue could be just around the corner. Follow them on Twitter to stay up-to-date.

Like Longshot, you can purchase 16HOURS print or digital editions on the MagCloud site. Issues include content from artists all over the world and based on the previews on the site and on MagCloud, they are beautifully designed.

WHAT’S THE POINT?

We often argue that we need more time, that we don’t have enough time, that our work would have been better if we had more time. But there is a need for deadlines, and restrictions have their place. Having unlimited resources, budget, and time may sound like a dream project, but with no goal post it can be tough to focus. Constraints force us to focus on the goal. The tougher the restrictions, the more creative we have to be.


Here’s an exercise to demonstrate the power of constraints:

1. Pick one task you need to do this week: a blog post, a chapter of a book, something you’re cooking, some photos you have to edit, something that requires more creativity or thought than “dropping off the recycling” or “buying groceries.” (On the other hand, if you needed to save time, you could try ordering groceries online instead and see how it works out for you!)
2. For whatever activity you choose, guesstimate how long it will take you. Give yourself half of that time to finish it. Impossible? See what happens. 
3. Pick another task & give yourself 25% of the time you think you need to finish it. I take no responsibility, however,  if you attempt to cook a chicken in 30 minutes and make yourself sick.

One way this sometimes works for me is that I just get it done. An article I think will take me 5–6 hours and I only have 2? It’s got to be more focused, so I spend more time up front outlining what I need to write. Whereas usually when I have more time, I go slowly, letting any semi-related thought into an early draft, only to be edited out later.

Another thing that happens is that I don’t get it all done. I sat down to edit all ten billion of my photos from India tonight, and I only made it through 3 days of the trip. Oh well. But still: I made it through three days & I can share those with friends & family, versus before when I was waiting until I happened to have a spare eight hours. A spare eight hours does not accidentally happen, at least not to me. So now, instead of endlessly postponing a task & feeling guilty about it, I have some amount of progress, however small. A dent is a dent.

SUMMARY

Websites can be designed & built in 24 hours. Design challenges to improve cities can be attacked in a weekend. A magazine can be produced in 48 hours or on opposite sides of the world. Whatever constraints are facing you are offering focus. Instead of assuming they’re hindering you, remember they’re there to help you progress.

I kept my list on tumblr here: http://thedailylesson.tumblr.com/.

It was both easier and harder than I thought it would be. Easier because when you pay attention, you’re picking up new things all day long. All it takes is writing down one of these things, and once you’re conscious of trying to find something, it comes pretty easily. Harder because it wasn’t part of my routine, and I would sometimes realize that, after a few weeks of having my head down working on something or a week away, I hadn’t updated in a while. Going back through email and Twitter and podcasts and Facebook to find something I had definitely learned that day was tedious, but I wanted to look back on the posts & know they were legit things I learned & not made up.

OBSERVATIONS

One thing I noticed after only three months was how much fun it was to look back already. Three months! Think about where you were in, for example, June 2009. In the absence of a life-changing event like a birth, death or marriage, it’s pretty hard to remember what was generally going on around that time. I have always kept hand-written journals but without them or my blogs or other online sources of events, pinpointing a point during that time other than “I was working at Microsoft in Ireland…I was probably giving some tech talks…?” is pretty tough, at least for me.

Some people would argue that *because* I have always kept journals I had relieved my brain of the need to recall great detail, sort of like the GTD philosophy. But I’ll leave that hypothesis alone for now.

What was most fascinating to me, however, is how vivid a memory I can get from a day with often just a line or two about what I learned. I look at April 5th & remember the tamale-making class I took with friends. Reading June 11th reminds me of my long conversation in a fishing shop when I bought my first rod probably since I was 14. November 3rd places me vividly in the place where I decided to go fulltime with Idea and Woopie and felt scared but more excited than I ever have about something I’ve worked on.

ANOTHER YEAR?

I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to do it again. While it’s not really time-consuming, my schedule is going to be much busier this year than last and I don’t want to half-ass it. However if you’re looking for a fun and different new year’s resolution, this is a good one.

Today there are a growing number of news outlets doing a fantastic job of both publishing data and creating interactions and visualizations to make sense of it. I wanted to showcase a handful of those sites so that people can understand why this type of journalism is important and how it works. And maybe even how to get involved if it’s of interest to you.

DATA SET PROVIDERS:

There is no shortage of people providing data sets today, the only thing to learn is how to narrow it down to the most useful one for you.

Fingal Open Data is doing a nice job in Ireland encouraging councils to open up their data. Their site http://data.fingal.ie/ provides data in CSV, XML and KML formats, and they’re currently running a competition for people to build useful apps given the available data.

Additionally in Ireland, sites like Gavin Sheridan’s The Story and John Handelaar’s Kildare Street are excellent resources for presenting data but also learning more about the types of data available in Ireland

I mentioned The Guardian’s Data Blog in a recent post about news developer blogs as a great example of community building. But clearly it is also one of the best sources in the UK for a wide range of freely available data sets. For each set of data they post, they offer a download of the data and recommend that if you do anything with it, you post it to their Flickr group. They often have additional visualizations and comparisons as well.

There are loads of additional resources for finding data, the trick is knowing how to search for the information you need. Sites like ScraperWiki (https://scraperwiki.com/), DataSift (http://datasift.com/), The World Bank (http://data.worldbank.org/),   BuzzData (http://buzzdata.com/) and more sites are growing and becoming available to the public for research and data mining.

NEWS APP EXAMPLES:

It’s no coincidence that a lot of my news app examples have shown up in prior blog posts – there are some organizations who are very seriously ahead of the pack in terms of understanding how news and technology work together. On one hand I am delighted to have bright minds like these folks paving the way! On the other hand, it makes me a little depressed when I realize that Ireland is nowhere near this level of thinking.

NPR’s StateImpact (http://stateimpact.npr.org/) is a collaboration among NPR and local public radio stations in eight pilot states to examine public policy issues in depth. They provide explanatory, data-driven stories focused on how people’s lives are affected by government decisions.

The New York Times definitely has a well-respected team of interactive news developers and infographic designers. However it’s not always very easy to find them on their site. The Multimedia page is the best resource I’ve found for taking a look at cool interactive apps and images they create, but Small labs Inc has also put together a nice collection here: http://www.smallmeans.com/new-york-times-infographics/

The Chicago Tribune has some of the busiest & best news app builders in the United States today and they are constantly kicking out new, interesting information in nice visual formats. Check out their site which has apps in many areas including community, schools, business, politics and more.

ProPublica creates not only fantastic interactive news applications like Dollars for Docs (which I referenced in my Quantified Self talk on skin problems), they also create excellent reusable tools like DocDiver that allow readers to work with the ProPublica reporters.

DATA JOURNALISM RESOURCES:

To learn more about data journalism, here are a few useful sites to check out and blogs to follow:

The Data Journalism Handbook: a work-in-progress coordinated by the European Journalism Centre & the Open Knowledge Foundation launched at the Mozilla Festival in London on November 5th 2011.

Data Journalism Blog: http://www.datajournalismblog.com/

Hacks/Hackers: http://hackshackers.com A grassroots journalism organization on a mission to create a network of journalists and technologists who rethink the future of news and information.

ProPublica’s Dan Nguyen’s Scraping for Journalism: A Guide for Collecting Data http://www.propublica.org/nerds/item/doc-dollars-guides-collecting-the-data – a great introduction to how to grab data that is in maybe less-than-optimal formats.

Also from Dan Nguyen, The Bastards Book of Ruby http://ruby.bastardsbook.com/ – an introduction to programming and its practical uses for journalists, researchers, scientists, analysts and anyone else who needs to make sense of data.

At the Society of News Design conference earlier this year, I went to some excellent talks by newsroom app developers who recommended that if you are thinking of going into this area, you need to know either Ruby on Rails or Django/Python, as those seem to be the dominant requested skills for news apps. I also liked this article recently on Poynter about using Backbone to create data news apps: http://www.poynter.org/how-tos/digital-strategies/147605/how-journalists-can-use-backbone-to-create-data-driven-projects/. You don’t need to know everything, just pick one and start creating projects.

And lastly, from the perfect timing department, here’s Matt Stiles, who is a data journalist from NPR, talking very recently about best practices in building news apps:

Data Best Practices from StateImpact on Vimeo.

So today we’re answering your calls & opening up for subscriptions!  Subscriptions will begin with our next issue in February. And we have two reasons why you should get your subscription sooner rather than later:

1) Prices for annual subscriptions will go up shortly before the next issue (February 15th) launches, so make sure you get your subscription now to lock in a fantastic deal.

2) We have a special Christmas gift this week: one lucky subscriber will win a gorgeous DODOcase from our friends at http://clickcase.ie! If you haven’t taken a look at the DODOcase, it is stunning, constructed from black Moroccan cloth and bamboo, and was even chosen by Barack Obama for the presidential iPad. You’ll be the envy of everyone for your superb taste and quality.

Anyone who purchases a subscription for themselves or a friend between now and 12:00am December 25th (for the really last-minute gift givers) is entered to win the DODOcase, and we’ll post it on our site and email the winner on Christmas day.

I was surprised by the number of people who have honestly asked me, “Can you just put up a donation thing so we can make sure this keeps going?” It seems so unbelievable that today, in the middle of a tough recession, while governments and corporations are terrified of piracy, that there are people who are actually looking for ways to not get things for free. But along those lines we’ve also seen a lot of great websites and services go out of business because they never had a business model. This excellent blog post from Maciej at Pinboard describes exactly that phenomenon: http://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/.

So while we have a lot of creative plans in store for Idea, we’re also focusing on making sure it’s a sustainable effort and sticks around for a while. We’re committed to making this work and appreciate the kind words and support from everyone who liked what they saw and read so far. I won’t promise the business model will be the same this time next year, but I do promise that the magazine will still be here and hopefully by then fully supporting itself.

Thanks again for your enthusiasm!

And hey, the next issue is already kicking off! For those of you thinking about a change of pace to a startup or other small, fast-paced project and trying to run the numbers to see if it might work, we think we can help.

Well, our Idea consisted of:

• 3 core team members
• Over 30 contributors
• 21 logos
• 24 interviews
• 20MB of production files
• 6 digital formats
• Over 150 images, icons, logos, illustrations and photos
• Upwards of 15 frameworks evaluated
• Hundreds of emails, Twitter DMs, text messages and phone call
• Less than 20 in-person meetings
• Some Macs, a couple of PCs, some iPhones, a few iPads and a Windows Phone 7
• A handful of messy, convoluted platforms & workflows

And I’m not going to try to think about the collective hours. There are only so many hours in a day, and we all have full-time jobs and families. It was definitely a labour of love.

Cover Issue 1

Launching Idea Magazine was tough. I’ve been dreaming of creating Idea for years. On one hand, I just wanted to kick it out the door. On the other hand, I would have killed for another couple of weeks to make more fixes, edits, changes, revisions. But at some point you have to ship.

In the last year, I’ve learned a lot about digital publishing and creating an environment that both accommodates and enhances reading experiences. I’ve learned there are a lot of religious wars about reading formats, but that there isn’t “The One Best Way.” Mostly, though, I’ve learned how difficult it is to build, reformat and distribute these publications. I’ve watched as people struggle with CMS after CMS, built to publish but not built FOR the people who are publishing.

This can be better.

WOOPIE!
Stewart Curry, the incredibly talented designer that I somehow convinced to work on Idea with me, saw these same problems. As we worked together on building the platform for Idea, we realized we were going to need a system and that the method we were using was unsustainable. We decided to take some time to build a platform not just for Idea, but for other publications who are struggling with similar issues of usability, functionality and sustainability. We’re calling it WOOPIE, for Write Only Once, Publish It Everywhere. I’m going to take a much-needed break between now and the new year, and when I come back I’ll be focusing on that.

Making Idea come to life after thinking about it and believing in it for the last few years is honestly a dream come true. Building a platform to enable other people create something like this for their own communities is an amazing opportunity, and I can’t wait to get started.

[Oh, and yes, Tuesday Newsday will resume next week.]

Then I’m met with a blank stare which reads, “Freakshow.”

However I spoke with a lot of people this weekend (many of them wearing tracking devices like fitbit & jawbone) who mentioned that when they talk about using RunKeeper or a Withings scale, the response is often “Wow cool, I want to do that too!”

So I’m obviously not a great spokesperson for the movement. However measuring and tracking data about myself is something I’ve been doing ever since I was a little kid, tracking what I spent my babysitting money on and my pet rabbit’s snack intake. I once made a chart extrapolating out all of the possible outfit combinations in my closet (this wasn’t as hard as it might sound, I wore a school uniform during the school year & a camp uniform during the summer, and my mom made the rest of my clothes — it was slim pickings). I was born a data nerd.

WHAT IS QUANTIFIED SELF?

I’ve already disqualified myself from answering that question, so I’m stealing the definition from the Quantified Self site: “Quantified Self is a collaboration of users and tool makers who share an interest in self knowledge through self-tracking. We exchange information about our personal projects, the tools we use, tips we’ve gleaned, lessons we’ve learned.”  There. Make sense?

I discovered QS through two of my heroes:  1) a researcher named Seth Roberts, who has been blogging for years about his attempts to improve his lifestyle through self-experimentation and 2) Nicholas Felton, creator of the annual Feltron Report, a collection of beautiful graphics illustrating achievements and quantified activities of Felton throughout the year. Both of these individuals inspired me to begin tracking data to find correlations and improve my life.

I GET THE IDEA, BUT WHAT’S WITH THE MEETUPS?

Quantified Self meetups happen all over the world (and just started in Dublin!). People use them to share what they’ve learned, ask questions and grow together. It’s a community movement of people who want to make their lives and the world around them better.

Show & Tell meetups allow people to discuss things they’re trying, problems they’ve had, get suggestions and then report back on their successes or issues.  The conference is an annual event for both users and those building apps and tools for self-trackers to meet and discuss the needs of the community.

QS EUROPE

You know you’re at a Quantified Self meetup when people show up in the morning with kinks in their hair where their Zeo band was. I can’t tell you how much I learned from the insightful and forward-thinking people at QS Europe. I am very glad I went. I learned about personal data visualization integration, building tools for others, objective versus subjective tracking, and lots in between. I met many inspiring people and returned to Dublin quite energized and enthusiastic (and with some ideas for my Christmas list this year like the jawbone bracelet tracker!).

CURING YOUR SKIN WOES WITH FOOD

The talk I gave was one of the hardest I’ve ever given because it was so personal. I’m very comfortable giving tech talks, discussing APIs and doing programming demonstrations, but I don’t usually talk about personal things.

One’s face is very personal. When I moved to Ireland in 2007, I began to have skin problems. It began gradually and I attributed it to the move, to stress, to late nights drinking with developers and clients, to travel, to whatever excuses I could think of. The stress was multiplied by the anxiety of being embarrassed about how my face looked, but also because my new job in Ireland involved me being on stage in front of large audiences constantly, often several times a week. A year later my skin was perpetually inflamed, red, full of sores and very painful. When one spot would go away, two more would spring up in its place. It was a tough time. I cried a lot.

Frustrated, I went to see my hometown dermatologist while I was home for holidays. He told me that a) this was completely normal and b) there was nothing I could do but go on antibiotics for a year (in addition to spending a fortune on creams and pills). I didn’t believe either of those things.

I was not interested in being on an antibiotic for a year, nor was I interested in Accutane (my best friend has had it multiple times and it hasn’t had long term results, plus it can be risky). What I was interested in was figuring out why this was happening and changing my life to make it stop. I refused to accept my dermatologist’s insistence that what you put in your body has no effect on how you look and feel.

I began systematically cutting things out of my diet to see how I reacted. First chicken and soy, based on a recommendation from a food allergist. Over the course of a year I cut out sugar, gluten, carbs, starches, caffeine, meat, fish until finally the magical month of December 2010 when I cut out dairy. My skin was my own again by New Year’s day this year.

It took a year to figure it out. It was completely worth it. There’s nothing wrong with Irish dairy, it just doesn’t work for me. I drink Americanos instead of lattes now, I don’t eat cereal; none of that is a huge deal. For what it’s worth, I can drink goat’s milk.

It was worth it but it was still tough. So I spoke at QS Europe about my journey in the hopes that it can help and inspire others who are embarrassed about their skin condition or scared of long stints of antibiotics or potentially risky treatments like Accutane. My slides, while not very exciting since it was a lot more storytelling than slide showing, are below. If you are going through something similar I encourage you to find a group of kind and helpful people like QS-ers, or use a community forum like http://curetogether.com/ to help get support and suggestions.

Quantified Self isn’t for everyone, but everyone should feel they have the power to change things in their body and their life for the better.

Idea Magazine wants to help.

Today we’re opening up a limited amount of job listings for our inaugural issue launching December 8th. We’re not interested in posting bulk ads with hidden company names. We’re not interested in posting vague descriptions of what someone might be doing. We’re not interested in posting ads for interns to work for free. We’re not interested in posting ads for companies hiring you so they can outsource your skills.

Here’s what we ARE interested in: we want to connect great people to great startups & tech companies. And we think the best way to do that is by being transparent and helping you find each other.

Our job listings cost only 35 Euros each and are featured in both the website and the magazine itself. This is a great deal as it delivers your ad to a very targeted audience of people interested and working in technology in Ireland and Northern Ireland.

We will be selective about which job listings we post so that a) they’re not overwhelming for the readers and b) your job has a chance to stand out.

You have the chance to make your position stand out – jobs will contain the below information so that the candidates contacting you will understand the requirements and be excited about joining your team.

To get your startup job posted in the first issue of Idea Magazine, launching December 8th, fill in the form here: http://readidea.wufoo.com/forms/idea-magazine-startup-job-ads 

Feedback on our job listings? Let us know! Email martha [at] readidea.com.

SAMPLE JOB LISTINGS:

Blue Pony Media

Graphic Designer, Advanced

Skills required:

Strong graphic design and logo design skills, Photoshop & Illustrator

What you’ll be working on:

You’ll be working with our publishing and media clients to help them design beautiful and appropriate designs and logos for their interactive applications. Understanding an organisation’s vision and helping them to realise that is a big part of this role.

Why our company rocks:

Blue Pony Media is an award-winning media agency, creating interactive applications which delight people everywhere. We are very picky about which customers we take on to make sure to make sure we are proud of the work we do. Blue Pony Media values talented designers and developers and our extremely low turnover rate is proof of that. We’re located in Wicklow, but for the right designer, we’re open to a remote work option.

Blue Pony Media is a mature company with 10–20 employees.

To apply or for more information see: http://omgponies.com/jobs

SuperCrazy Games

XNA Developer, Beginner/Intermediate

Skills required:

C#, XNA, Physics libraries such as Farseer would be a nice-to-have

What you’ll be working on:

You’ll be taking our concepts and turning them into interactive, playable mobile games. Building on top of our internally created animation foundation, you have the tools you need to iterate quickly and be creative. Our games run on PCs and Windows Phone 7 but we’re also building an environment to distribute our games through Xbox Live very soon.

Why our company rocks:

As a small but busy games studio, we’re turning the mobile games industry on its head. We’re agile and creative, so this is your chance to get in early and impact the future of mobile games by helping us create unique, viral concepts. We take fun very seriously, and our office is located in a developer hub in Galway so there’s plenty of excitement around. We believe in working flexible hours and doing anything we can (like bringing in lunch and providing you with the latest mobile devices) to help you focus on exciting projects.

SuperCrazy Games is a Startup company with 1–10 employees.

To apply or for more information see: http://wearesupercrazygames.com/jobs

Why would someone choose to listen to audio news instead of reading the same thing, especially when you can probably read faster than most speakers can deliver the same amount of information? Audio news apps are convenient, especially for the increasing number of long-haul commuters. Audio apps let you multi-task (which is arguably a good thing). Listening to a discussion on a topic may be more insightful than an article with one person’s point of view. Maybe our eyes get tired of looking at screens all day. And sometimes it’s nice to listen to well-spoken people with pleasant voices.

I fell in love with Audible a couple of years ago. They have a great selection of books and reasonably priced membership. But two things really sold me: 1) the convenience of being able to drop them onto my mp3 player and listen during commutes and travel and 2) the wonderful readers.  Reading a David Sedaris book is always entertaining. Listening to David Sedaris read you his book, while doing impressions of his sisters and his father, is like stand-up comedy. Malcolm Gladwell’s books become somehow more insightful when read by his calm and thoughtful voice.

So I have a thing for voices. Anyway, back to the apps and their popularity. Today we’ll be covering iPad audio news apps Stitcher, NPR, and RTÉ Radio News.

STITCHER

I learned about Stitcher a while back when I first found the TechCrunch Headlines podcast (which Stitcher produces).  Stitcher is an app for streaming podcasts, radio and news to mobile devices including iPhone, Android, iPad, BlackBerry and Palm. The app has a catalogue of various podcasts and channels both on demand and live which users can subscribe to for free.

Opening Stitcher shows a nice, simple layout with some of the top news stories, popular channels and new additions on the right and basic navigation on the left.  Clicking into a podcast or channel starts it playing immediately. 

For navigation, the user can choose between OnDemand or Live Stations. Once the user has found a podcast he likes, he can click the star icon to add it to the list of Favorites. Favorites stitches together playlists so users can simply click on Favorites and hear a stream of interesting content.

Individual episodes can also be bookmarked, to save or listen later. The Favorites list refreshes the podcasts every so often to make sure the episodes are the most recent ones.

Stitcher has done three things very, very well. First of all, they have tons of content. By region, by interest, by source, they have created a very good directory of much of the top audio content available. Next they created native apps for multiple platforms. So you can listen on many devices and get the same great experience. Lastly they have kept the interface very clean and simple. There aren’t any instruction pages here, no one needs them. The audio controls are always at the top, the navigation always on the left, and the playlist or podcast detail always on the right. Very easy-to-use.

NPR

NPR, or National Public Radio, is a familiar enough name to most radio fans. They have built a large audience for their popular shows like Radiolab, All Things Considered, Planet Money, On The Media and many more. NPR’s programming reaches a weekly audience of 26+ million listeners, so they’re clearly creating desirable and interesting content.

NPR has done a fantastic thing by creating their COPE (Create Once, Publish Everywhere) system which allows other people to build on top of them and access their content. This means that there are many different people and organizations pushing NPR’s content out for them, spreading the audio and podcasts to various devices and platforms.  They’re a very creative organization when it comes to their technology, and their iPad app, which was recently updated for iOS 5, is no exception.

When you launch the NPR iPad app, you have a lovely, easy-to-use interface showing you a selection of recordings and news with a radio player/navigation control section at the bottom. To move between the different channels, there is a sort-of Flud-like, horizontal scroll with thumbnails and short descriptions. For each item, you can choose to listen now or add it to your playlist.

If there are particular programs you regularly enjoy from NPR, you can find them by clicking on the “Programs” button at the bottom and search by title or topic. Clicking the heart icon adds it to your favorites on the left-hand column.

Clicking on an individual podcast starts it playing in the radio player at the bottom of the app. You can alternately add it to your playlist & queue up several podcasts. Some of the news stories have written content you can read and share, some only audio and no metadata. But the navigation controls are relatively easy to use to find the programs you want and listen live or on-demand.

NPR has an interesting advertising model as well – they intersperse occasional audio ads in between programs or before certain programs.

The only thing that doesn’t work outside the US is the station finder. As it uses zip code look up, it can’t find anything near you if you’re outside of the US. I’ve seen this as a problem in many US-centric apps; for a long time trying to use geolocation on The Daily would simply crash the app.

RTÉ RADIO PLAYER

It is difficult to find a general “audio news” app that isn’t either full of content specific to the producer (like NPR) or more of an aggregator (like Stitcher). The RTÉ Radio Player is an example of a “local news channel” app. Wherever you live, it’s possible that a local media outlet is doing something similar and providing streaming, podcast feeds or an app for you to listen live or catch up on local news.

Upon opening the RTÉ Radio Player (which is landscape view only), the live radio begins playing immediately. It starts in RTÉ Radio 1 streaming the live radio station.  Underneath a small summary of the current playing program is a tabbed interface where users can select the schedule, website or podcasts. There’s currently an ad to the left which, if you click it, takes you to Safari and then immediately the App Store to download the same application again for some reason.  But maybe it’s a rotating ad and I just caught it on a bug.

The schedule link is a bit off-putting as it appears as though you could click on one of the programs and start listening to it, but it’s just a static listing of the programs for that channel. Clicking back from the current day takes you to next week’s programs, so there’s no way to look at the schedule from the previous day. 

The website tab simply embeds the RTE website into a small view. You can increase the area by clicking the up arrow icon on the right and navigate around the website, but as it’s full-sized and contains flash ads, it’s a little bit shoe-horned in. It would be much more useful if it were streamlined content or maybe a mobile device-friendly version of the site.

On the podcasts tab, you can select from things like most popular, most recent or recommended and you can also search. While you’re presented with only the last day or two worth of podcasts, you can search and find much older recordings if you’re looking for a specific broadcast. I did find it strange that while the podcasts on most popular and most recent seemed to play correctly, clicking on recommended podcasts didn’t always play the podcast I clicked on. I am wondering if it has to do with them being listed but not yet uploaded for that day maybe?

To get back to live radio you can click the “Back to Live Radio” button in the top right, which turns into a “Change Station” option when you’re listening to the live radio channel. So you can select that and switch from RTÉ Radio 1 to RTÉ 2fm, RTE Choice, etc. When you change channels, the schedule and website tabs will update but the Podcasts always contain a variety from RTÉ Radio 1, RTÉ 2fm & RTÉ Raidió Na Gaeltachta.

SUMMARY

If you travel a lot or spend a lot of time already in front of bright screens, audio news may be a great option for you. Alternately it’s an excellent source of entertainment and education. Whether you decide to go with an aggregator or a local news outlet application depends a lot on the type of content you prefer to hear. Think about your preferences and give one of the audio news apps a shot.

PODCAST RECOMMENDATIONS

As a podcast enthusiast, I listen to quite a few different podcasts (mostly technology). These days I primarily use Stitcher on my iPad, but I also use Zune software (yes, still) to sync my mp3 player and listen on my desktop computer. Anything to keep me away from trying to use iTunes for podcasts, which I think is a miserable piece of software.

The 5by5 Podcast network has a few different shows I listen to regularly including:

• The Big Web Show with Jeffrey Zeldman. Quite simply, it’s the best.
• Founders Talk with Adam Stacoviak – interesting interviews with startups
• Latest in Paleo – Excellent Paleo-focused podcast by Angelo Coppola

and several others I listen to occasionally such as:

• Build & Analyze with Marco Arment – Mostly iOS/Apple-related
• Let’s Make Mistakes with Mule Design – Design topics
• Back to Work with Merlin Mann – Productivity and work topics
• The Talk Show with John Gruber – Technology, Apple, the web

Other podcasts I like are:

• TechCrunch Headlines (produced daily by Stitcher)
• Onion Radio News (does what it says on the tin)
• 99% Invisible – Insightful design & architecture topics
• Stuff you Missed in History Class – Always fascinating & fun
• BBC World News Update: Daily Commute – Excellent world news
• The Economist – Also excellent world news
• Freakonomics Podcast – The hidden side of everything

And of course I have to mention Tech Radio, where I occasionally join Dusty Rhodes and Niall Kitson to talk about everything tech-related in Ireland: http://techcentral.ie/pod_casts.aspx

For a place with such an amazing tech community of developers, designers, startups, entrepreneurs and just plain “do-ers”, it’s shockingly hard to know what’s going on all the time with the Irish technology scene. The most effective way to find out about interesting startups, new technologies, cool design studios, great places to work, upcoming events, testing techniques, great new fonts, etc. is usually an impromptu meetup with a fellow geek.

When I moved to Dublin four-and-a-half years ago I spent a lot of money on technology magazines, from Ireland and abroad, to find out what was going on (still do – I am a magazine junkie). Foreign magazines always had cool profiles of interesting people, tutorials on things that are new and might be useful techniques, list of stuff that was going on and things to get involved with.

I rarely read about anything interesting happening in Ireland. <sadFace/>

But at the same time, I was constantly blown away by unique companies being created here. Things like Build (happening this week in Belfast for the third year!), Coder Dojo (happening every weekend now!), 24theWeb (2nd annual event happened a couple of weeks ago!), that are all creative and beautifully executed initiatives. Studios that turn out gorgeous websites and mobile applications. People turning industries on their heads.

AUGH! AREN’T YOU SO FREAKING PROUD OF IT ALL?!

But there’s no platform for talking about it yet. Existing publications write about global gadgets & popular “apps you need now!” They cover huge sales deals. They publish bland PR for big brands. It’s time for something new.

WITHOUT FURTHER ADO

I’d like to introduce Idea Magazine. Idea Magazine is a brand new, bi-monthly digital magazine by and for the tech scene of Ireland and Northern Ireland. We’ll be launching on December 8th with our first issue available online for free.

Idea Magazine aims to highlight startups and technology created in Ireland and Northern Ireland, along with excellent design, educational programs and training, investment and business-related information of interest to the tech community. Things like “Which accelerator program has the best terms”, “What should you know about patenting your software”, “Tips for increasing customer engagement in web apps”, “Which tech events are happening next month”, and much more will be covered in Idea Magazine.

Together with the incredibly talented Stewart Curry as Design Director, we have an excellent team working together to make sure we are covering interesting, relevant and useful topics for you, the tech community. If you have suggestions or things you’d like to see in future issues of Idea Magazine, please feel free to contact me at martha [at] readidea.com.

WHERE CAN I LEARN MORE?

If you’re interested in learning more, you can go to (the very lovely and responsive) http://readidea.com & sign up for our newsletter today or follow us on Twitter at @readidea. Our launch is only a month away, so we’re busy getting our content and new platform ready for you.

I’d love your feedback and suggestions any time & look forward to creating an outstanding magazine for an outstanding community.