Publishers connecting with iPhone
The publishing world is trying to hook up with the iPhone.
HarperCollins said it has created a link, at mobile.harpercollins.com, that will allow browsers to view excerpts from more than a dozen new releases, including Michael C. White’s “Soul Catcher” and Michael Korda’s “Ike,” a biography of President Dwight Eisenhower.
The company has about 10,000 books in digital form. Publishers are seeing vast consumer interest in finding content that goes beyond short videos and music. They hope to convince more users of portable media players, like the iPhone, that books are an ideal option.
Other works being digitally excerpted include Faye Kellerman’s “The Burnt House” and Ray Bradbury’s “Now and Forever.” Browsers can view up to 10 pages of a given book’s first two chapters and can quickly shrink or enlarge the print size.
Legal downloads
First there was Napster. Then came the lawsuits that shut down that peer-to-peer download den.
LimeWire, a site that began its life as a questionably legal p2p site, now is ready to go all in with a legal-music offering. Its new digital music store will launch in late 2007, said company executive Jesse Rubenfeld.
The yet-unnamed site will be similar to eMusic, the popular legal download site.
Future releases of the store will allow users to purchase music directly from the LimeWire program. LimeWire has one problem: access to copyright music. So far it has deals only with Nettwerk Productions and IRIS Distribution. Rubenfeld said further deals will take place before the new site launches.
Yahoo top news site in July
Yahoo News, with about 32 million views during that month, led the list of most popular U.S. news providers online during July, according to survey firm A.C. Nielsen. It also said that two sites dropped off the previous month’s list; Google and CBS News fell, replaced by USAToday and Fox News.
The next nine news sites behind Yahoo News were:
“ CNN, 29.7 million
“ MSNBC, 26.0 million
“ AOL News, 23.1 million
“ NYTimes, 14.1 million
“ Gannett Newspapers, 13.8 million
“ Tribune Newspapers, 12.2 million
“ USA Today, 10.6 million
“ ABCNews, 9.8 million
“ Fox News, 9.3 million