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Medium adds Bloomberg and other publications to subscription service
In a push to monetize its publishing platform, Medium added a $5 Netflix-style subscription last March. The system includes a way for members to "clap" different posts to give creators a percentage of their membership fee as well. Now Medium is bringing professional publications into the fold with curated selections from the likes of The New York Times, Bloomberg and Rolling Stone tucked behind the subscription paywall.
Rolling Stone archives hit Google Play Newsstand this week
Have you ever felt the need to dive into the history of music, movies and other pop culture? Well, you'll soon be able to do so with the help of Rolling Stone and Google Play Newsstand. The magazine is set to add its archive of decade-spanning content to the digital repository tomorrow, and some of it will be available free of charge. Three to four articles from each of the back issues can be read inside the app or on the Rolling Stone site at no cost. Later on, the plan is to bolster relevant content with the addition of sound and video. The magazine claims its archived issues do quite well, especially during certain events, and this gives readers another way to access it. For Google, the partnership shows off its reading platform with material from a popular weekly publication, which sounds like a win-win to me.
Flipboard launches user-created magazines, partners with Etsy (video)
Everybody loves Flipboard, right? If you're a fan like us, rejoice -- your favorite social magazine just got a whole lot better. Today Flipboard for iOS is receiving a major update that will let you create and curate your very own magazines. It also brings a boatload of other improvements to the table including a content partnership with Etsy. An update to the Android version will follow shortly. We were able to take the new version of Flipboard for a spin and get a demo from CTO Eric Feng. Hit the break to dive into the details and watch our hands-on video. %Gallery-183818% %Gallery-183819%
Rolling Stone comes to Newsstand
Clue's in the title, really. If you're craving Rolling Stone's eclectic mix of reviews and journalism but didn't fancy the trip to your local dead-tree merchant, it's now available on Newsstand. Each critique will come with a button straight to iTunes, so you can instantly download that amazing album that only garnered 3.5 stars. Annual subscriptions will set you back $19.99 a year, while standalone editions are $4.99 -- but be warned, it might try to sell you a Thunderbolt every now and again.
Spotify apps hands-on
The big reveal at today's "what's next" Spotify event? Apps. So, so many apps. As anticipated, the Swedish music streaming service launched its very own platform for third-party developers. The program is launching today in beta, with a number of partners, including some high profile music names like Rolling Stone and Last.fm along with some relative new-comers to the scene, like SoundDrop and Sharemyplaylists.com. We had the opportunity to play around with a number of these new apps at the event, and don't let the fact that our ears are still ringing stop you from checking out our impressions after the break. %Gallery-140703%
Rolling Stone magazine coming to the iPad
Unlike its competition, which jumped at the chance to get its magazines on the iPad, Wenner Media has been slow to embrace the tablet and its digital subscriptions. The publisher is finally ready to take the plunge and is preparing to bring Rolling Stone Magazine and US Weekly to the iPad in 2012. These two magazines will be tablet versions of the print magazine and, sadly, won't offer any new or unique content. Before it kicks off Rolling Stone, Wenner will test the waters with a tablet app about the Beatles. The app will be an enhanced version of Rolling Stone's The Beatles: The Ultimate Album-by-Album Guide. The print version of the album guide has little-know facts about every track on every Beatle's album. The digital version will include this treasure trove of information and add both song samples and interviews with the band. It will be available starting December 1st.
HTC ThunderBolt for Verizon and Inspire 4G for AT&T break cover courtesy of Rolling Stone ad
So yes, it's looking about as confirmed as can be: thanks to a full-page ad in the latest issue of Rolling Stone, we're finding out that the name of HTC's first LTE phone for Verizon -- and its first LTE phone regardless of carrier, actually -- will definitely be "ThunderBolt." This is the same phone that we've seen rumored and leaked over the last few months as the Mecha and the Droid Incredible HD, but we'll admit -- ThunderBolt seems like a pretty solid name for a phone that's sporting a 4.3-inch display and some of the fastest data around. Behind and to the right of the ThunderBolt, though, is another leak: the Inspire 4G for AT&T, though it's unclear what "4G" means in this context exactly -- AT&T's in the same boat as T-Mobile right now where they're topping out with HSPA+ and don't have any LTE markets live, so it seems they might be borrowing a play from their smaller rival's playbook and labeling the HSPA+ airwaves as straight-up 4G. We're sad to see that trend start to snowball -- but we'll admit, T-Mobile kinda forced their hand on that one. At any rate, we're pretty confident both of these suckers are going to get official here at CES this week, so keep your ear to the ground.
Rolling Stone names the 50 best rock & roll games
The game industry's head-banging love affair with rock and/or roll stretches back as far as we can remember -- sometime around the late '70s. Now Rolling Stone has strummed its keyboard to capture what it calls the Top 50 Rock & Roll Video Games of All Time, laying accolades at the leather boots of Rock Band and Guitar Hero, while giving the likes of Revolution X and Crüe Ball the chance to scream into the mic one last time as if to shout, "Remember me!!?"Lumping together the good (Loom, Frequency) with the awful (Spice World, really?) and just plain odd (are Simon's 'bleeps' and 'boops' really considered music?), the laundry list is something of a mixed bag. Though admittedly we're still reeling from the fact that whoever put together the feature managed to overlook Audiosurf and Gitaroo Man, but managed to give props to Sensible Software's canceled flamebait, Sex 'n' Drugs 'n' Rock 'n' Roll.
Rolling Stone interviews a Diebold whistleblower
In what is perhaps the most astonishing turn of events in the ongoing Diebold fiasco, a new article in the latest issue of Rolling Stone -- with extensive information direct from a named former company consultant -- makes one of the most damning cases against the embattled company. The article weaves an elaborate tale of how Diebold had at the very least some extremely skeezy deals signed in 2002 with the state of Georgia, which allowed Diebold to replace all existing voting equipment, and to speed things up by the fall election: "The company was authorized to put together ballots, program machines and train poll workers across the state - all without any official supervision." As if that weren't enough, days before the primaries, the president of Diebold's election unit, Bob Urosevich, personally distributed a patch to the elections software. The article goes on: "Georgia law mandates that any change made in voting machines be certified by the state. But thanks to Cox's [Georgia's Secretary of State] agreement with Diebold, the company was essentially allowed to certify itself." Before the election, the two Democratic candidates in the two major races (for one Senate seat and the state governorship) had been ahead in the polls, and on Election Day, Republicans won the two races by a slim margin -- and given that no paper trail exists there is no way to prove or disprove that the election wasn't tampered with in some way. And you wonder why we continue to insist on paper ballots for the time being?
