We’ve blogged about using NXTbook’s page-specific permalinks before because - well because it’s a very cool feature that other digital edition companies don’t have. Still, the best way to see it in action is when someone uses it. So here’s a great example.

On this blog post, Darren Johnson gives a top-notch review of one of our newest publications, launch. Just like any good reviewer, Darren wants to point out good content within the digital edition. With NXTbook Media, that’s easy: you just click the LINK button, and the URL from the content on that page is displayed. It’s very easy for bloggers to do this, and this is the result:

Other great articles from the launch magazine that I highly recommend:

• Dennis Wood’s (sure wish I had a blog to link to) take on Building a World Class Management Team. Dennis really is the godfather of human capital in the Western US. He has been instrumental in my career thus far (which isn’t really saying much, I know) and is absolutely the best sounding board for career advice that you will ever find.

• Paul Allen’s take on Search Engine Marketing. A very good primer for anyone not doing SEO or pay-per-click advertising. Subscribe to Paul’s blog - the guy knows his stuff.
  

• Ryan Money/Shawn Nelson “Peer Interview” - a great interview on entrepreneurship in general. If you haven’t heard of Hirevue, check them out.

With some other digital edition vendors, Darren would’ve only been able to post the URL of the front cover of the magazine - and then had to tell you to turn to what page he was talking about. Other digital edition vendors are worse - and don’t even publish a URL. You’d have to go to the magazine launch page, launch the digital edition and then turn to the content Darren was talking about. Not a good solution if you’re looking for your content to be shared.

Thanks to launch for working with NXTbook and thanks to Darren for the great review!

Leave it to Santa Claus - this is quite possibly the first time ever a publisher has embedded a game inside a digital edition. Happy Holidays!

We’ve added a lot of new features to the NXTbook this year and one of our favorites is the single-click upload to del.icio.us. This feature allowed readers of digital editions to easily save and share content for the first time ever.

If you haven’t fallen in love with del.icio.us yet or come to terms with the beauty of tagging, here’s a great cheat sheet that explains a very detailed paper on tagging taxonomy.

If you’re into curious ironies, one of the the authors of the paper is Danah Boyd, who grew up right here in Lancaster, PA - home of NXTbook Media. And who said this isn’t a high-tech town?

A year ago, if you asked us what makes NXTbook Media different from other digital publishers, I’m not 100% sure we could’ve given you the type of answers that would look great on a spreadsheet. Oh sure, we truly believed we cared more than the other guys and felt that when it came to customer service we were better, but that’s the type of stuff that just doesn’t fit into a feature/benefit matrix very well.

But two things happened this year… feature-wise. The first is that more and more competitors have come into the space this year, but with feature-sets that are inferior or equal to where we were when the year began. And the second thing is that during the year, we’ve come out with some wickedly cool features which generate either more readers or more revenue for your digital edition. So this year we’ve gotten more competitors and still positioned ourselves further from them.

So if you’re the type of person who asks, “Why NXTbook?” our hope is that the new section of our website will answer that very question.

And we still provide the best customer service out there.

Zinio’s done something curious this month with Popular Mechanics. They’ve published a Digital Lifestyle Guide and offered it up to readers for free. The issue is sponsored by NewEgg - nothing special here. We often have digital editions which are paid for in whole or in part by sponsors. But what’s curious is that the digital edition talks about many products people can buy - some of which are sold by NewEgg and some of which aren’t. But in many cases Zinio only created links to buy the products from the products sold by NewEgg.

So on page 37 of the publication (I’d link directly to it but Zinio - unlike NXTbook - doesn’t have page specific permalinks) we see the Top 2 digital camcorders this year. But NewEgg doesn’t sell the #1 ranked one, so the link is only live for the #2 one. More troubling is that links to some manufacturers (which appear on the page) aren’t made live, either (see Page 21) and that some article headlines link to product purchase pages at NewEgg (Clicking on the headline of an article about installing a graphics card takes you to the NewEgg Graphics Card purchase page (p.45)).

Is this a violation of church and state? That’s debatable - what’s not in debate is the fact that this likely isn’t in the readers’ best interest. Links are the cornerstone of digital editions and they should be used to first benefit readers, not advertisers.

We love the NewEgg sponsorship and think other publishers can learn from it - but think all links which appear in printed versions should be made live online and that links created should be as relevant as possible.

When we were asked to sponsor (yet another) trade show in the Spring, we originally hesitated… While we love trade shows, there’s only so much exhibition hall air one should inhale in a given month.

But then Carl Landau told us how his show was going to be different - how it was going to be fun. How it was going to be in Austin! And how it would include activities like bowling and speed-networking.

Frankly, he had us at bowling. And the fact that one of our publishers is speaking is the cherry on top.
So we’re thrilled to be a sponsor of this March’s Niche Magazine Conference. How about you dust off that bowling ball and join us?

Who says print is dead? Paul Conley points us to a magazine designed for magazine designers:

It’s being produced by Auras Design, a Maryland-based company that designed such magazines as American Style.

What Paul doesn’t say is the launch of a print publication aimed toward designers of print publications is further proof of the strength of magazines (or at least the confirmation that Auras believes in their strength).

Strange to hear such love for print from a digital publisher? Hardly: Digital editions exist to extend your print brand - not to replace it, and we’re thrilled when any publisher comes out with a new title.

How do we know this? Because more catalogs than usual made up our Top 20 list of most-viewed NXTbooks in the past week. So whether you’re looking for stuffed animals for a good cause, a nice bottle of wine, some Celtic soccer garb, or something from Fly Buys (for our NZ friends), we’ve got you covered! And if you’re looking to get something for your favorite NXTbook blogger, how about a nice Caribbean cruise?

Rex points out a great post from Chris Anderson at Wired, asking what a radically transparent magazine would look like? He points out how editors could use the tools of technology in a way to more embrace social media. It’s a poignant post - nowhere close to near-future reality for most pubs - but a great glimpse into where some adventurous pubs will likely get to.

As dominant languages became less dominant and ascending languages become more prominent, it could often make sense to have a bilingual magazine, like this one, produced by our friends at Mundologico. Very cool!