Bloggasm

For an article on PBS’ MediaShift, I interviewed editorial directors at Conde Nast’s Golf Digest to get an inside look into how the magazine developed its iPad app.

Bob Carney, the magazine’s brand editor, is someone who grappled with this question in the months leading up to the subscription’s launch.

“For Golf Digest, I think at the very beginning we thought we’d add every kind of bell and whistle we can,” he told me in a phone interview. “And we found out that not only is that costly, but really for someone coming to Golf Digest, what they want is more of what they get in the magazine. So for the magazine, instruction and service information about the equipment are the most important things, and the iPad app ought to take that and extend it, not go somewhere else.”

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In terms of being the baddest MoFo in the market Apple has no peer, but Apple is following its own very different course. Apple isn’t the next Microsoft, you see. Apple is not the next anything because the role it aspires to transcends anything imaginable by Microsoft, ever. Google is the next Microsoft, so Google is seen by Ballmer as the immediate threat — the one he has a hope in hell of actually doing something about.

Why Microsoft bought Skype

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As things stand, if you buy a subscription to The New Yorker or Popular Science in the iTunes store, you will get a little dialogue box asking if it’s all right if Apple shares some of your personal information with the publisher. Initially, publishers were worried, reasonably enough, that users would overwhelmingly say no. But they don’t. In fact, about 50 percent opt in.

The Surprising Reason Publishers Are Finally Saying Yes to Apple

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From the New Yorker:

As of this morning, that is changing. We can now offer subscriptions on the iPad, and we can give our U.S. and Canadian print subscribers access to iPad issues at no additional cost. Before long, we hope to be able to give the same access to international subscribers beyond Canada and to existing digital-only subscribers.

Golf Digest has also released a subscription model.

“Readers who do not yet subscribe to the print edition may go to www.golfdigest.com and with their print subscription they will receive access to the digital edition,” a spokeswoman told me via email.

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The deal means Condé will actually beat rival Hearst in the iPad subscription derby. Hearst said yesterday it was going to start selling subscriptions and single copies of Esquire, O: the Oprah Magazine and Popular Mechanics via the iPad effective with the July issues, available sometime next month.

Condé is expected to make the New Yorker available next week to capitalize on coverage of Osama bin Laden’s death.

Condé leapfrogs Hearst in iPad digital mag derby

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Asked to comment on The Daily’s performance, Carey says it’s a work in progress, which lost $10 million last quarter. Then, in the background, someone — most likely CFO Dave DeVoe, mentions “800,000 downloads”.

News Corp. Revenue, Earnings Miss; MySpace Still Burning Money

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As a web app, Fortune500+ joins what seems to be a slowly rising tide of apps that run in web browsers instead of the operating systems of particular devices. Magazines, like others, have introduced many apps specifically for the iPad. But magazines have also published a couple of web apps so far, such as Sports Illustrated Snapshot, a free daily photos app that sells extra content, and Skiing Interactive, a free app that updates weekly over the summer and goes daily again in October. “I think you’ll see that more and more apps will go this way,” said Daniel Roth, managing editor at Fortune.com.

Why Rush for an iPad App? Fortune’s New Web App Starts With Your Browser

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