Rogers iPad apps top the charts

We are really really excited to see how much support our apps are getting in iTunes! BBTF put 6 apps in Newsstand before the holidays and ALL SIX apps are in the TOP 20! #1 Chatelaine Magazine #3 Maclean’s Magazine #7 Canadian Business Magazine #10 MoneySense Magazine #11 Sportsnet Magazine #13 FLARE Magazine

BBTF Launches Sportsnet Magazine on iPad

Fueling the passion of Canadian sports fans, Sportsnet ushers in a new era on with a rich and multidimensional integrated brand offering across multiple platforms that engages sports fans from across Canada! We are thrilled to have our 3rd successful launch for Rogers Publishing highly anticipated NEW title Sportsnet Magazine. Earlier this year Rogers announced they would be launching a brand new sports magazine that merged TV, Radio, Print, Mobile and Digital with a fully integrated re-branding expansion to the Sportsnet brand. This launch is especially exciting for us at Built by the Factory because the iPad app launched in the same week the first Sportsnet Magazine print edition hit the newsstands. This is part…

Maclean’s Magazine Tops the Charts

Built by the Factory’s partnership with Rogers Publishing results in chart topping app! Maclean’s Magazine ranks #3 in iTunes News apps, outranking CNN, The Daily, NY Times, BBC, Flipboard, The Economist & Zinio. “As soon as we got our hands on the iPad last spring, we knew we were looking at something important for the future of our magazine,” said Maclean’s Executive Editor Steve Maich. “Our close collaboration with Built by the Factory resulted in an app that is a beautiful rendering of the magazine and also takes full advantage of everything the iPad platform has to offer.” Read more in official Press Release The success of the Maclean’s Magazine app has Apple featuring the…

The good, the bad & the *$#%!

Our user experience team read, analyzed, reviewed and tested numerous iPad magazine apps on the market. The BBTF design team is currently working on reinterpreting a magazine experience for the tablet environment, and this audit was part of creating a guideline of “best practices” We analyzed both user interface design considerations and magazine page layout strategies. There were two key questions we asked while going through this audit: What enhanced the experience? What distracted us from it? There are many aspects of app design that can be covered on this topic. We are focusing specifically on magazine app user interface considerations for this post. “Once I figured it out…”  or “Once I figured out how…

ReBlog: Zinio’s iPad Magazines Suggest Disappointing Future

View the original blog here By Olly Farshi Zinio is a magazine store and reader for the iPad. In fact, for now, it’s the magazine store for the iPad, stocking all the biggest titles of which you can purchase one-off issues or even 12 month subscriptions. Just like Apple with its iBookstore, Zinio has established relationships with an impressive array of publications. As such, you can expect to find enhanced editions of magazines Cosmopolitan, T3, Rolling Stone and Hello among many others. However, unlike Apple’s iBookstore or iBooks app, Zinio certainly doesn’t live up to the hype. For starters, each page takes around a second to load. Take a moment and imagine that…imagine reading a…