We try to keep this blog news focused. We try very hard not to fall into shameless self-promotion. But once in a while, we do something that we think will utterly change the way people read NXTbooks and we have no choice but to plug it.

One of the most legitimate knocks on our product (and our competitors’ products) is that while you could share links to whole issues of magazines or send page links to people via e-mail, it was impossible to make it easy for bloggers to post “deep links,” - links that would deliver people to specific pages in the text.

Today, with the release of our single-page URL feature (ugh - that really needs a better name!), you can do just that. When you open a NXTbook, you’ll now find a new button that says, LINK. Clicking that button enables the reader to quickly and easily do the following:

1.) Copy the URL from that page of the NXTbook

2.) Add that URL to your own Favorites or Bookmarks

3.) Post that URL to either del.icio.us and Digg

Try the new feature out here.

We are the first digital publisher to add this feature and believe that it goes a long way to helping people save and share content, which is what the Internet is all about.

Stay tuned for the NXTbook Media Guide to the Social Internet, due to be released soon!

Let’s hear it for Sensors Magazine! This magazine cracked our Top Ten list of most viewed NXTbook titles in the best week. Well done!

MORE THAN HALF OF THE executives who read B2B magazines have acted on an ad they saw in one of these publications, according to a new study by Harris Interactive conducted on behalf of American Business Media (ABM), the B2B publication industry organization.

Good article. Read more about it here.

Adobe’s dean of all things cool Bill McCoy has a wonderful post about some of the things going on at Adobe. Along the way, however, he also makes some quotes about why Flash is the logical future for e-reading (the least you need to know: NXTbooks are built using Flash technology, unlike many of our competitors):

I don’t believe that HTML, even with AJAX and SVG, is going to cut it for representing this interactivity and richness in digital books. AJAX apps are tough enough to make work on the browsers du jour, much less to be expected to be usable on browsers of the future. PDF’s great but is really optimized for representing electronic paper, not interactive applications or free-form rich media. Microsoft’s WPF has a great “spec sheet” of capabilties but a Windows-lock-as the industry-wide cross-platform solution is repugnant. Java is way too heavy and not content-centric enough. Thus Flash SWF seems like an obvious choice to deliver the “surround sound” richness for the books of the future.

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

Lancaster, PA — July 27, 2006

Nxtbook Media, LLC
announces the immediate availability of HooClix Enhanced Tracking,
which helps magazine publishers share domain-specific click-through
data with advertisers.

HooClix Enhanced Tracking tracks
which digital magazine readers click on each advertisement of the
magazine. The domain address of the reader is placed in a report which
is automatically sent to the advertiser each month.

“This
is a major advancement for digital magazine technology,” says Nxtbook
Media President Spencer Ewald. “For the first time ever, an advertiser
will know which organizations are curious enough about their offers to
click on their messages. The automated reporting function enables
publishers to provide advertisers this information with a minimal
amount of effort.”

The HooClix Enhanced Tracking provides
advertisers with domain level information but does so without revealing
personal data about the reader.

“In the interest of
readers’ privacy, we don’t divulge personal information,” said Nxtbook
Media Director of Technology Matt Harrington. “Instead, we merely
report that a reader located at a given domain (eg. “someone from
“xyz.com”) clicked on a given advertisement.”

While such
technology has been employed by e-mail marketers for some time, Nxtbook
Media is the first digital publisher to utilize such robust tracking.
Borrowing technology from other mediums is nothing new to Nxtbook. Last
month, the company became the first digital publisher to provide
one-click submissions to Digg and del.icio.us, popular technology
solutions previously designed for bloggers.

“As a hybrid
product, it’s imperative that digital publishers don’t just embrace the
best magazine practices, but also that we utilize what technology
companies are doing for other mediums. HooClix Enhanced Tracking is the
latest example of that,” says Ewald.

Ewald expects advertisers to be overjoyed at the detail and regularity of the data.

“It’s
absolutely vital that publishers understand who is clicking on their
digital messages,” said Nxtbook Media President Spencer Ewald. “Smart
advertisers aren’t just concerned with click-through rates, but the
quality of click-throughs as well. HooClix is the perfect answer.”

A while back, I wrote about the in-flight internet service that Boeing has been testing on some of their international flights.  According to a Reuter’s article released yesterday, Boeing may be considering selling or closing the unit.  The service has yet to turn a profit and Boeing has reportedly invested around $1 billion into the service over the past 6 years.

Kevin Tofel from jkOnTheRun writes about how he got along fine without internet access on his recent 2.5 hour flight and questions the productivity gains from an in-flight internet service.  I agree that for shorter flights, it is probably not very useful, but for flights longer than 4 hours, I can see much benefit.  Whenever I take a flight across the country, I always feel a little bit behind in my email and work because I have lost most of the day.  An in-flight internet service would help me stay productive and help the time pass more quickly.  I think the main problem with the Connexion service is that it is priced too high.  Most people are used to the prices they are charged from wi-fi hotspots such as Starbucks.  If Boeing could get closer to those prices, I believe that a lot more people would use the service.

Let’s hope Boeing figures out a better way to market their internet services, price the services, and get the services on more flights that are over 4 or 5 hours.

Lancaster, PA — June 21, 2006

CMP Technology, a
marketing solutions company for the technology industry, has chosen
Nxtbook Media as the publisher of digital editions for its magazines.
The program will launch with six titles: InformationWeek, EE Times,
Embedded Systems Design, Electronics Supply Manufacturing, Dr. Dobb’s
Journal and Call Center Magazine, enabling over 100,000 readers of CMP
publications to receive their issues in a digital format. These digital
editions will replicate the look of the print edition while
incorporating hyperlinks, audio and videos. The special Nxtbook Media
format requires no software downloads and can be viewed on any standard
Internet browser.

Spencer Ewald, president of Nxtbook
Media™, said, “We’re thrilled that CMP Technology has chosen Nxtbook as
its sole digital publishing provider. CMP has a long and well known
history of providing readers worldwide with outstanding content and
we’re honored to be entrusted to optimize and deliver that content over
the Web. These first six titles are a tremendous platform for the
technology community and a strong basis of a successful ongoing
relationship with CMP.”

Michael Zane, Vice President of
Audience Development for CMP Technology, said, "We are looking forward
to working with NXTBook Media as a true media partner. They have
clearly made a commitment to producing a leading product with
functionality and tracking, and CMP’s audience will be the beneficiary."

Lancaster, PA — May 22, 2006

Company Shows Record Levels of Growth & Reader Satisfaction

Nxtbook
Media, LLC today released its most detailed analysis yet of the
company’s success in the digital publishing industry. The report
revealed strong growth in all of the companies’ four channels – digital
magazines, digital catalogs, digital collateral and travel collateral –
and showed users to be exceedingly satisfied with digital editions.
Divided into two sections, the first section of the report examines
data from Nxtbook’s robust tracking system. The second half of the
report is a thorough analysis of nearly three thousand reader surveys
compiled in the past year.

"The exceptional growth we’ve
seen over the past year is a clear indication of market acceptance of
the format," said Spencer Ewald, president of Nxtbook Media, LLC. "Our
publishers continue to demonstrate new and exciting uses for the
Nxtbook technology and the hundreds of favorable comments from readers
confirm that they love what publishers are doing with the format."

From an analysis of all Nxtbooks published in the previous year, Nxtbook has extracted several industry trends, including:

• From data pulled from the previous year, Nxtbook Media found:
  • Record months in titles and pages published and viewed in nine of the reporting periods.
  • Year over year growth in page views of more than 400%.
  • Interest in downloading has fallen 50% as users continue to embrace browser-based technology.
• Readership surveys from the same period revealed other key trends:
  • 82% of readers preferred the digital edition over the print edition of their publication.
  • 81% of readers said the Nxtbook format enhances their ability to collect information for their jobs.
  • 85% of readers said they had a more favorable opinion of the publication after viewing the digital edition.

Readers
also were asked which features of the digital edition most enhanced
their experience with the Nxtbook. Content proved to be king, as the
highest rating was given to hyperlinks to other information, followed
closely by rich-media content, such as video and audio.

To view “Nxtbook Media – By the Numbers,” please go here: http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/Nxtbook/marketresearch/

Links to the full report can also be found on Nxtbook Media’s website, located at http://nxtbook.com

NXTbook Media was thrilled to produce the post-conference brochure for INC. magazine’s INC. 500 Conference. Congrats to all the winners!

At NXTbook,we frequently point out the Macromedia slide that depicts Flash as having 10% more penetration than the Adobe Acrobat Reader. This article says some of that growth is due to the ease of creating videos in Flash:

“If you could have told me Google Video, YouTube and all these others would use Flash as their technology 10 months ago, I would have said you are crazy,” NPD Group analyst Chris Swenson said. “I’m amazed at how quickly Flash has become dominant in video.”

Flash has soared from zero to No. 2 in its market in just two years, according to Paul Palumbo, research director for Accustream iMedia Research. Microsoft’s Windows Media format is the leader, handling 60 percent of all streaming video in 2005; Flash has 19 percent of the market, jumping ahead of RealNetworks at about 10 percent and Apple’s QuickTime, with about 8 percent.

“Flash is going to be dominant,” Palumbo said. “You can embed this into the Web page and it’s instantly `on.’ It’s a seamless process. It has tremendous visibility and adoption among the creative agencies and artists.”