901am

New Media News Every Morning

120 Years of National Geographic Captured in One Hard Disk

By

Screen shot 2009-12-30 at 11.21.16 PM

Fans of the National Geographic franchise will surely love to have this special hard drive. Yes, folks a 160GB Hard Drive containing all 120 years of National Geographic’s amazing discoveries, high-quality maps and photographies.  It’s the full National Geographic magazine’s collection reproduced in digitally stunning and high-resolution format.

Every library should have this in their collection as it will definitely add to the versatility of library services. The Complete National Geographic features an nice interface to make it easy and fun to explore topics, search photographs, browse maps or to simply discover things that you failed to read or watch on National Geographic TV.

The National Geographic  is housed on a 3″x5″ highly portable hard drive that requires only a USB port to connect to your PC. To make it worthy of the price you will have to pay for it, the National Geographic HD has around 100GB of free space to accomodate future updates or to be used for personal purposes.

Sounds good? But how much does it cost? – $199.99. Ok, now that may be a bit pricey compared to your regular 160GB portable hard drive. But hey, those hard drives don’t contain the National Geographic.  So, the price is definitely worth the information contain in the National Geographic HD.

Now is the time to check out National Geographic’s online site. If you’re not from the U.S. or Canada, National Geographic unfortunately doesn’t  ship outside of these two countries. So you’re best bet would to ask somebody to buy the National Geographic HD for you.

Originally posted on December 30, 2009 @ 11:23 am

Mag+ Take On the Possible Future of Magazines

By

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

As the future of printed magazine is being curved into its possible digital form, we’ve seen several takes already. How many of these future gadgets have came out  anyway? Let’s see, recently there was the CrunchPad which became the JooJoo. Then there was the rumored Apple Tablet, Time Inc’s Tablet Magazine, Wired Magazine and even Sports Illustrated showed us their own digital magazine reader.

Now here, we got another take on this  – Mag+. This digital magazine was being  conceptualized and developed in cooperation with Popular Science magazine’s publisher Bonnier.

Mag+ features scrollable articles which are placed side-to-side in kind of mountain range and are delivered electronically on the device per issue. Very much like how printed magazines arrive on our hands.

Another feature of the Mag+ is its ability to flip through articles shifting focus and by tapping icons displayed on the screen. So, Mag+ is definitely a touchscreen magazine tablet.  It will treat magazine articles in appealing format, so as to elicit long-time interest from readers. Very much like how printed magazines look like, glossy and colorful.

Of course this is still a concept. But considering the increasing interest on digital ebook ereaders and magazine readers, it is most likely that the Mag+ will actually become a reality.

Actually it should. Mag+ looks pretty sleek and cool. It can even give the current crop of ebook readers a run for their money.  The only possible contender that I can see is Apple’s tablet, if in case it goes to production.

Originally posted on December 17, 2009 @ 8:47 am

Did Time Inc. Just Demo Apple’s Tablet?

By

There are two points worth raising in this article by Peter Kafka of WSJ regarding the Time Inc. Tablet Magazine. First, it looks like the said Tablet Magazine is actually like the rumored Apple Tablet, or at least that’s how I envisioned the Apple Tablet to be.

The other point is the fact that Time’s tablet magazine if indeed it’s not the Apple Tablet, should be what all e-readers should be like.  Ok, this is to say that I was really impressed by what was just demoed – in terms of features and capabilities.  In other words, Time Inc’s tablet magazine if it becomes a reality will certainly rock on. [Read more…]

Originally posted on December 3, 2009 @ 4:06 am

Wired’s iTablet Demo with Digitized Magazine Content

By

Wired Magazine’s parent company Conde Nast seems to be taking the rumored iTablet PC seriously. A couple of days ago, the company was convinced by All Things Digital’s Peter Kafka to share a video demo of  Wired’s iTablet PC.

The video doesn’t say much about the iTablet PC, but you can fairly observe how cool it’s going to be especially during the part where the iTablet PC’s capability to handle animated and interactive graphic was shown. [Read more…]

Originally posted on November 21, 2009 @ 5:29 pm

Creative Touts Zii MediaBook eReader

By

And the latest company to join the ebook reader bandwagon happens to be Creative, more popularly known of course for their media players. In a surprising announcement during the company’s annual general meeting in Singapore, Creative showed a working model of its upcoming eReader, tentatively named the Zii MediaBook.

Specs-wise, we’re looking at a touch screen display, text-to-speech function like the Kindle perhaps, SD memory card slot, Internet connectivity – in short a multimedia device that can handle videos, pictures, text and services. [Read more…]

Originally posted on November 1, 2009 @ 8:11 am