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Conde Nast Britain gives subscribers free iPad access
Condé Nast Britain has begun to provide existing print subscribers with access to equivalent digital editions on the iPad at no cost. According to an article published on the UK Association of Online Publishers website, Apple's Newsstand app has increased the issue sales of British GQ by 94%, Wired UK by 169%, and Vanity Fair by a whopping 245% over the average sales per day in September. Digital Director of Condé Nast Britain Jamie Jouning said that "Our existing readers will benefit from the ease of access to subscribe, while the prominent inclusion of our brands in Newsstand will allow an even higher level of 'discoverability'. Ultimately this should lead to greater subscription growth." The magazines take advantage of the feature of Newsstand that automatically updates digital editions in the background as new issues are published. Vogue will be adding a digital edition at the beginning of December, after having two very successful iPad editions in the past.
Wired chronicles the (brief) history of Kinect
Got your Instapaper bookmarklet prepped? This is a bit of a long one: Wired UK has put together an in-depth creation history for the soon-to-be-released Kinect. While a "one man against all odds" story might be a little quicker to read, the story of Kinect (or Project Natal, as it's been known for most of its lifetime) is actually a pretty remarkable collaboration. An original demand and vision for the Xbox 360 from Don Mattrick (in pretty obvious response to the Wii), project leadership from Alex Kipman, gameplay creativity from Kudo Tsunoda, camera technology from PrimeSense, computer vision algorithms from Andrew Blake and Jamie Shotton -- and that was just the incubation stage! The vision was cast in 2007, the project really started in 2008, and we'll have the finished product (along with the all-important games of course) in our living rooms in November. While the most immediate battle for Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft is who can sell the most games and the most motion control hardware, it's clear that Kinect is a major technical achievement with some pretty broad reaching implications for human / machine interaction going forward. Still, we wonder: can it run provide an effective user interface for Doom? Oh, and if you need a little more Kinect in your life, check out our Engadget Show with Kudo Tsunoda where he dives into a bit of the tech and gameplay.
