We’re extremely pleased to announce that a brand new version of PressReader for iPad is now available from the iTunes App Store. In addition to the popular SmartFlow horizontal reading stream released in version 3.0, PressReader 3.1 now brings iPad 3 users full retina display support as well as translation and integration with Evernote!

With PressReader for iPad, users have the ability to read over 2,000 full-content newspapers and magazines from 95 countries in 54 languages. Check it out here:

The new iPad is a dream come true for people who enjoy the wealth of newspapers and magazines that PressReader has to offer. The breathtaking resolution of thMe new iPad Retina Display means that we can render razor-sharp text, at any zoom level,” said Alex Kroogman, CEO of NewspaperDirect. “Our new SmartFlow technology really shines at high resolution, and the integration with the best clipping applications like Evernote raises the bar for every other news app out there.

New features added in PressReader 3.1 include:

• Optimization for the new “Retina Display” resolution of the next-generation iPad. Pages, text views and images are rendered at 264 pixels per inch, resulting in amazing clarity, even when zoomed in.
• Instant translation of full publications in up to 12 languages is now possible when a title is opened. Or, a reader can choose to auto-translate all publications into a specific language with the ability to specify language exceptions.
• Clipping App integration enables any article to be captured and synced across devices. Articles can also be emailed or shared using Twitter or Facebook.

Clipping Web pages is one of the most popular ways of saving information in Evernote. PressReader does a beautiful job of extending this functionality, making it easy for users to read and clip newspaper and magazine articles on their iPads,” said Seth Hitchings, VP of platform strategy, Evernote. “The Evernote integration is seamless, and the clipped content can be searched and read in Evernote on any computer or mobile device. We recommend readers also try our Clearly app, which creates an optimal reading experience for articles, blog posts, and any other content you interact with online.

We would love to hear your comments on the new PressReader for iPad features!  Post a comment here or contact us at iphonesupport@newspaperdirect.com and let us know what you think.

Cheers,

Michael

We’re extremely excited to announce that PressReader has won the “2011 Best App Ever” award – iOS newspaper category – as voted by the readers of 148Apps!

Providing readers with over 2,000 full-content newspapers from 94 countries, PressReader beat out notable apps including The Daily, Flipboard, Guardian iPad Edition, NY Times, USA TODAY, and The Wall Street Journal Mobile.

We are committed to continually innovating to exceed the expectations of our readers and publishing partners,” said Alex Kroogman, CEO of NewspaperDirect. “PressReader 3.0 with SmartFlow technology is just one step in our journey to an unparalleled reading experience for newspapers and magazines. We are delighted with the award because it tells us we’re giving readers what they want — the best news-reading experience on the iPhone and iPad. I am looking forward to offering that same experience on every platform we support in the very near future.

Created by the editors of 148Apps to celebrate the best mobile apps and games available, the goal of “The Best App Ever” Awards is to gather together the favorite apps of real users. For each category, the winners are voted for in both iOS (iPhone and iPad combined) and Android divisions.

Thanks to each and every single one of our users who voted! Here’s hoping we win in both the iOS and Android categories next year .

Cheers,

-Michael

Hey everyone!

With every release of PressReader, the design team here has one goal – to exceed your expectations.

We’ve been presenting full content newspapers in replica format to you for about 5 years now and have grown the collection from 200 publications to almost 2,000.  But we’re not just focused on adding more content.  We’re continually innovating — looking for better ways to present the large inventory of publications that we have to our readers.

Here are some of our thoughts going into this redesign…

We believe that you should not be restricted by seeing only one story at a time; nor should you have to change context to read a story that spans more than one page in the newspaper. You should not be limited to viewing snippets to decide if a story is worth reading. Instead, you should be given visual clues to help you understand the importance of an article – clues such as the size of the title, length of the article, whether there are pictures, and their size, etc.

And so for the next release of PressReader on the iPad in November, you will see some of the new presentation concepts we believe will enhance your reading experience.

But don’t worry all you digital replica fans – we’re not abandoning you!  Remember how we added a text view for articles on top of the digital replica view in an earlier release?  Well, this an enhancement on the text view. 

I invite you to watch this video where Alex Gruntsev, VP of Business Development, will share with you our ideas about content presentation.

And then please take a moment to tell us what you think by emailing us at iphonesupport [at] newspaperdirect.com.  We’d love to hear from you.

Thanks!
Gayle

Hey there newspapers junkies! Just a quick thank you to everyone who submitted an entry to the first PressDisplay Mystery Contest challenge (scavenger hunt). We hope you had fun with it! The scavenger hunt entry form and its associated bonus form will be available for the duration of the contest to all new participants.

So, now that you’re all bona fide PressDisplay users , it’s time to get going on another challenge!

For the second challenge, we’ll be asking you to scour the over 1,900 newspapers available through PressDisplay (front pages only as usual for the purposes of the contest) for an “interesting” headline!

Now, we realize that one person’s interesting may very well be another person’s boring, hence the quotation marks. The great thing is subjectivity is the name of the game.  All you need to do is explore PressDisplay and send us a headline YOU find interesting along with the specific publication you found it in and date it was published – it’s really that easy!

Just like the previous challenge, there’s also a new bonus form available which means more chances for you to win! And just a quick tip – sharing your “interesting” headline/article as your bonus form entry means you can kill two birds with one stone. Convenient, eh?

Remember that you need to be registered and signed into the PressDisplay Blog to view each challenge form and bonus form.  For details on how to sign up to the PressDisplay Blog, get started with PressDisplay.com or for complete contest rules and requirements, please click here.

Happy hunting!

Michael

NOTE: THE PRESSDISPLAY MYSTERY CONTEST ENDED ON NOVEMBER 11, 2011 AT NOON PST. THANKS FOR PARTICIPATING!

Riding the wave of fun and excitement we had in our most recent iPad2 + PressReader contest, we’re giving it another go by providing newspaper lovers with even more chances to win an iPad 2 and year-long Personal subscription to PressDisplay.com and  PressReader – only this time, we’re making it a lot more “interesting”!

Starting Thursday Sept 1, 2011 at 12 PM (PST) and running until Friday,  November 11, 2011 at 12 PM (PST), [“contest term”] a new PressDisplay Mystery Challenge will be posted at random points throughout the contest term on The PressDisplay Blog (keep your eye out for them!)

Each challenge will require participants to search the over 1,900 full-content newspapers available on www.pressdisplay.com for correct answers to the current challenge (Don’t worry, we’ll provide some clues to help you).

Participation is easy! All you have to do is:

1. Sign up to The PressDisplay Blog by clicking the “Register” link located under the “Login to The PressDisplay Blog” widget in the right sidebar.

2. Once registered you will receive your password by email (please ensure you check your junk mail just in case it ends up there). Then, navigate to The PressDisplay Blog and login using your Username and Password to view the latest challenge clues and entry form (forms are only visible to logged in users).

3. Using the clues provided with each challenge, find the correct answers on www.pressdisplay.com (scroll down to view the first mystery challenge).

4. Complete each challenge form in full and click the “Submit” button to enter (only 1 submission per registered participant per challenge is allowed).

Once we’ve reached 300 correct submissions, we’ll randomly select a winner from our database of qualified registered users who submitted correct answers to date over the contest period.*

We’ll continue selecting winners for every additional 300 correct submissions we receive (regardless of challenge) until we reach the end of the contest period (Friday, Nov. 11, 2011 at 12 PM (PST)).

With every new challenge, you get new opportunity to enter and win, so don’t just stop at one.  Play them all to maximize your chance to win!

Pretty cool, eh? We think so too, but we didn’t stop there!  For the duration of the contest, participants will have the opportunity to double their chances to win in each challenge, by sharing an article from PressDisplay.com using our Sharing Tool and sending us an image of your shared message in our bonus entry form (scroll down to view the bonus entry form).

Here’s how:

1. Navigate to www.pressdisplay.com.

2. Register for free (if you haven’t registered already).

3. On the Home page, click the “Select Title” button and select a title by country or by language.

4. Click a blue highlighted headline of an article on the front page of that title (if you aren’t a paid subscriber to www.pressdisplay.com then you can only share articles from front pages of publications).

5. Click on the sharing icon within the article.

6. Select how you would like to share the article.

7. Take a screenshot of the post you shared on your blog or social media page, or the email you sent with the article.

8. Upload the screenshot to the bonus form, complete the remaining fields and submit!

Every time we draw a challenge winner from our database of registered users who submitted correct answers over the contest period, we’ll draw a bonus winner from our database of registered users who correctly shared an article using PressDisplay.com for that challenge period.  Now, how great is that!

So think about it…we will be holding 5 challenges over the two month period.  During each challenge period, you have two chances to enter to win:

• 1 for submitting the correct answer to that challenge, and
• 2 for sharing an article from that challenge period using PressDisplay.com

Remember that the more you share the contest with your family, friends and colleagues by email, on your blog, Facebook or Twitter (or anywhere else), the faster the contest database will grow and that means just one thing – faster time to owning an iPad2 and PressReader for some lucky winner!

Need a little help getting going with PressDisplay? Then make sure to check out our quick introductory demo video below:

Okay, now the legal stuff…

It is VERY IMPORTANT that you follow our CONTEST RULES to qualify to win.  Naturally we want people to try out PressDisplay.com so we have included in our rules that contestants cannot share answers online.   If you do publish the answers, then you’ve just disqualified yourself.  And no one wants that to happen!

*Please read full contest terms & conditions here.

So make sure you follow ALL THE RULES so you don’t lose your chance to win.

Okay, are you ready? Let’s do this!

Good luck everyone and happy hunting!

NOTE: THE PRESSDISPLAY MYSTERY CONTEST ENDED ON NOVEMBER 11, 2011 AT NOON PST. THANKS FOR PARTICIPATING!

The month of July saw 33 new publications added to NewspaperDirect’s digital publishing network. Make sure check out the new additions online at www.pressdisplay.com or on your favorite tablet or mobile devices using PressReader:

• Australia | Inside Golf
• Brazil | Valor Economico – Eu&Fim de Semana
• Pakistan | Enterprise
• Pakistan | National Herald Tribune
• Pakistan | Slogan
• Pakistan | Southasia
• Philippines | Bandera
• Philippines | Bandera (Mindanao)
• Philippines | Bandera (Visayas)
• Philippines | Cebu Daily News
• Philippines | Inquirer Libre
• Russia | Telenedelya
• Slovenia | Dnevnik
• Spain | La Vanguardia – Cultura
• Spain | La Vanguardia – Dinero
• Spain | La Vanguardia – ES
• Spain | La Vanguardia – Girona
• Spain | La Vanguardia – Motor
• Spain | La Vanguardia – Que Fem
• Spain | La Vanguardia – Tarragona
• Spain | La Vanguardia – TV Mania
• UK | Belfast Telegraph – Weekend
• UK | Sunday Sport
• UK | The Independent – I
• USA | Chickasha Express Star
• USA | Claremore Daily Progress (Claremore, OK)
• USA | Cleburne Times-Review (Cleburne, TX)
• USA | Richmond Register (Richmond, KY)
• USA | The Corsicana Daily Sun (Corsicana, TX)
• USA | The Eagle-Tribune (Haverhill)
• USA | The Eagle-Tribune (New Hampshire East)
• USA | The Eagle-Tribune (New Hampshire West)
• USA | The Meridian Star

For a complete list of available titles, please click here.

Cheers,

-Michael

Last week, the New York Times joined the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times in confirming something we’ve been preaching for a long time – people are still willing to pay a premium for high-quality news content! We were so excited to read this article from the Columbia Journalism Review, we just had to share it with our readers.

One quarter after establishing their metered paywall, the NYT saw its revenues go up for the first time in twelve quarters! They’ve discovered that up to 15% of their online audience are actually heavy users that are willing to pay for content.Additionally, their new digital deal has encouraged those wavering on renewing their subscriptions to move forward, seeing the value for their money.

If that’s not encouraging enough, the paywall also helped the newspaper’s ad revenues. Contrary to the public opinion that a paywall would slash digital ad revenues, digital advertising actually increased by 16%! Advertisers see the potential with this paywall, as these paid digital subscribers become sort of a premium class of customers whose reading habits they can analyze, which supports targeting and garners higher ad prices.

BCG did a study last year and discovered that large numbers users world-wide were in fact willing to pay for news content, and that the impact on a newspaper’s margins are significant. You can read more on their February 2009 study here.

Our publishers have long known the benefits in choosing a strong technology partner. They focus on doing what they do best – generating quality content, and they let us do what we do best – giving their subscribers what they want, wherever they want it, in print, online or on their mobile device/tablet of choice!

Here at NewspaperDirect, we’re feeling fantastic impacts as well.  With new tablets hitting the market, such as the iPad2, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and BlackBerry Playbook, more people than ever are discovering PressDisplay.com and its companion application PressReader and the great value they offer to readers.

It’s exciting to see that people are re-igniting their love of newspapers, and it gives us great pleasure to offer them access to all their favorite publications. As one loyal fan from Australia raves:

“Mighty impressed with PressReader App. For someone who enjoys reading quality newspapers it is pigs’ heaven! $1 a day for unlimited reading.” Neil, Australia

We’re thrilled that the word is spreading on what we’ve known all along, that newspapers aren’t dead and that people are willing to pay for quality news content. With a great app like PressReader, which can give users unlimited access to all their favorite publications worldwide, staying up to date with the news most relevant to you is easier and more convenient than ever!

Cheers!

-Kate

After 2 exciting and frenetic months of Facebook and Twitter liking, following and sharing, the PressReader “Win-An-iPad 2” contest came to an end on Friday, July 29^th, 2011.

When it was all said and done, 7 lucky participants won a brand new iPad 2 and year-long subscription to PressReader and PressDisplay.com.  Prizes were awarded once we reached 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 & 5,000 Facebook likes and contest entries and when we reached 4,000, 5,000 & 6,000 Twitter Followers and contest retweets.  For complete details on how the entire contest went down, please click here.

Our final winner, Theresa from Newfoundland was randomly selected on Wednesday July 27^th, 2011 once we hit the 5,000 “Like” mark on our PressReader by PressDisplay.com Facebook page. Here’s what an excited Theresa had to say:

This is so exciting!  The iPad 2 has been on my wish list even before it actually came out, I can’t believe I won one!  PLUS a year-long subscription to PressReader.  This is just fantastic, and I know a certain someone who is going to be very, very jealous .

Congratulations Theresa and a huge thank you to every single one of our contest participants for helping us reach each of our Facebook and Twitter milestones!

For all the latest news and PressReader happenings, make sure to continue following us on Facebook, Twitter and the PressDisplay Blog.  We’d also love to hold another contest so make sure to keep checking back and if you have specific ideas or suggestions on how the contest should work, we’d love to hear them!

Cheers,

Michael

Hey PressReader fans!

Our developers have just added a new feature to your favorite app, and we want to know what you think of it.

Just released for iOS devices, we’re introducing a  feature we’re calling “Newspaper Radio” — a new text-to-speech reading capability similar to many other on-screen text-reading tools for the visually impaired. Newspaper Radio lets you enjoy  your newspaper when safety or other reasons make it difficult for you to be looking at your device all the time!

Like our new fan and 40tech reviewer Bobby Travis pointed out:

“ Your newspaper story can be read to you, keeping your hands and eyes free for more important things — like not killing yourself while driving. I’ve seen more than one moron on the road that was reading a newspaper while in motion — and I’ve called the cops on the idiots, too”  

You can read his full review here. 

Much like Windows Eyez, Open Book, and other on-screen, text-reading tools designed for people with disabilities, our new feature allows anyone and everyone to enjoy their favorite publications, wherever they are, no matter what else they are doing. So, whether you’re driving to work, cooking up a feast for dinner, cycling, suntanning on the beach, hiking in the mountains or even exercising, you can catch up on the news through most of your favorite publications that you purchased and downloaded through PressReader.

Newspaper Radio doesn’t just read an article out loud. When you access one of your purchased downloads, you can now also:

• Listen to your newspaper as its downloading
• Jump from article to article at the *swipe* of a finger side to side
• Jump from section to section at the *swipe* of a finger up and down or through the table of contents
• Instant pause and play with the touch of a finger
• Like/Not Like an article while listening to it

We’ll be releasing this feature on all the platforms soon enough, but we want to get your thoughts on it first on your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch. Check out the video below and let us know what you think:

Useful? Coolest thing you’ve ever seen? Let us know your thoughts so we can make you’re your favorite app even better for YOU, our loyal fans.

Hey PressReader fans!

You know how much you love PressReader – and how great it would be to win your very own FREE! iPad2. PressDisplay fan @AshleaJade shared her excitement with us on Twitter by coming up with a rockin’ rhyme:

To win would be a dream come true,

An ipad from PressDisplay,

To share with all my family,

For use in every day.

To teach my daughter brand new words,

From apps I hear are great,

To use as an alarm clock to,

Ensure I’m never late!

To show my son where countries are,

New places he could go,

To teach him why the stars shine bright,

And how the flowers grow.

To read a book, or play a game,

Or watch a film that’s funny.

To use in when it’s raining out,

Or take out when it’s sunny!

To take with me to hospital,

So I don’t feel down or bored,

I’d even plug my earphones in,

So I didn’t hear others snore!

To lend my man, so he doesn’t talk,

Through the programmes that I like.

To find out where to go to eat,

Or where to buy a bike.

PressDisplay, if you chose me,

To win your amazing prize,

You’d see me smile from ear to ear,

And a sparkle in my eyes!

Thanks Ashlea! To read even more of the creative creations and poppin’ poems that our followers have concocted, go to our Testimonials page and check out Contests!

Now, we want to hear what else our fantastic fans have up their sleeves! Why not share how you feel about PressReader with all your friends and followers while letting your creative colors shine?

Write a poem, a song, or come up with a cool image or video and share with us and all your friends/followers. It will help get us to those key milestones faster, which means faster delivery of iPad2s to lucky followers and fans.

We still have 16 more iPad2s to give away, along with year-long Personal subscriptions to PressReader and PressDisplay.com. So show PressDisplay your funky side and share your work and our contest with your friends, family, and colleagues and/or follow us on Twitter! You could be our next winner – and an artiste in the making!

The next drawing will be held once we reach 4,000 Facebook “Likes” and 6,000 Twitter followers. Help us get there fast!

For complete contest rules and entry requirements, please click here.