Al Gore's 'Our Choice' App Reinvents Books, Reading. Push Pop Press is reinventing reading. For Al Gore's book Our Choice, the startup has created an ebook that talks, spins, moves, and folds, featuring video, interactive infographics, maps, and more, all seamlessly interwoven with the text in a way that helps bring the concepts to life. Even if you've already read Our Choice, a follow-up to the urgent environmental call-to-action of An Inconvenient Truth, the app offers something completely different. While this digital version has the same rich photo content and clear writing as the book, it transforms the act of reading into something totally new. The Our Choice app is a digital reading experience that matches a book for ease and outdoes it in ways that Gutenberg surely never imagined. With just your fingers, and the screen, the 400-page book becomes a portal to video, photo, and infographic content that demonstrates just how powerful an aid technology can be to the cause of knowledge.
"It was about re-imagining the book," said Matas. A Talk With Al Gore About Climate Change, Birthers and His New App. Al Gore's Our Choice is now an app. Push Pop Press: Apple Alums Launch Digital Book Maker. The ailing print-book industry has gotten a shot in the arm from the rise of e-books, which cost little to distribute and can be sold far more profitably than their dead-tree brethren. Several old school media companies have tried to ride the e-tide as well, launching iPad versions of news products designed to take advantage of the full audio and visual capabilities of tablet computers.
Now a new player, Push Pop Press, is about to enter the game. Push Pop Press was founded in February 2010 by a team that includes Mike Matas, who joined Apple (AAPL) as a designer at the youthful age of 19. The new digital book maker aims to push the envelope on what electronic books can do. That means a relatively new way of interacting with the media, centered on lots of hand gestures, pinching, and other actions now familiar to users of Apple's iOS devices. Austin Sarner dot Com. Kimon Tsinteris. Push Pop Press. Tuesday, 1 February 2011 My general policy is not to link to teaser sites, on the grounds that there’s plenty of stuff that’s actually shipping to write about and draw attention to. But, there are exceptions. Push Pop Press is an exception. Their teaser site, which opened today, offers this description: Our team is bringing together great content and beautiful software to create a new breed of digital books. Books that let you explore photos, videos, music, maps, and interactive graphics, all through a new physics-based multi-touch user interface.
Their team has a track record of creating excellent, boundary-pushing software: designer Mike Matas (whose work includes Delicious Library, and, at Apple, work on the original iOS), and engineers Kimon Tsinteris and Austin Sarner. Last week in San Francisco, I got a hands-on demo (from Matas) of what they’re working on. What I saw (and used) was a multimedia-rich book running on an iPhone 4. You use it almost entirely by swiping and pinching. Push Pop Press : un aperçu du livre de demain. Un petit nouveau dans le monde de l’édition numérique qui risque bien de faire parler de lui… Trois talentueux designers / développeurs bien connus du monde Mac se sont associés pour créer Push Pop Press, une solution technologique innovante permettant de développer des livres-applications interactifs. John Gruber, qui a eu la chance d’assister à une démonstration de l’application, s’est montré impressionné par l’expérience utilisateur.
Pas d’ePub, pas de HTML, pas de barres de menu, pas d’éléments superflus, du texte et seulement du texte, agrémenté par des contenus mutlimédia (vidéo, audio), intégrés sur une base développée en Cocoa, le langage natif des application iOS. “L’écran est le livre, le livre est l’écran”. La navigation serait, selon John Gruber, d’une simplicité et d’une fluidité déconcertantes permettant au lecteur une immersion totale dans le livre. Gore, Ex-Apple Engineers Team Up to Blow Up the Book | Gadget Lab. Former Apple engineers Kimon Tsinteris (left) and Mike Matas teamed up with Al Gore to create a new publishing platform called Push Pop Press.
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com What do you do after working for Apple, a company whose mission seems to be nothing less than disrupting entire industries? Easy. You start a company to create your own ding in the universe. That’s the idea behind Push Pop Press, a digital creation tool designed to blow up the concept of the book. Developed by former Apple employees Mike Matas and Kimon Tsinteris, Push Pop Press will be a publishing platform for authors, publishers and artists to turn their books into interactive iPad or iPhone apps — no programming skills required. “The app is the richest form of storytelling,” Matas said. Push Pop Press is pushing into a widening niche within the print industry, which is scrambling to produce digital versions of books, magazines and newspapers in hopes of reversing declining revenues. Not impressed with words alone? Al Gore's Our Choice. Melcher Media. Rodale Books | Rodale Inc.
Push Pop Press bouscule les codes de l’édition numérique avec l’aide d’Al Gore. Même si l’édition numérique est encore jeune, elle a déjà ses codes propres. Tout d’abord, on y trouve deux grandes familles : les partisans de l’ePub (et du livre homothétique ou d’un ebook multimédia contraint par les avancées du format et des applications de lecture) et les adeptes de l’application (souvent synonyme d’un ebook libéré des contraintes, interactif et beaucoup plus graphique).
Ces deux groupes idéologiques continuent à s’opposer avec leurs arguments distincts. D’un côté, les partisans de l’ePub se réclament d’une plus grande ouverture, notamment en terme de facilité de production et de compatibilité, tandis que le coût d’élaboration d’un fichier joue en leur faveur. De l’autre, les partisans des applications vendues sur des App Store prétendent travailler directement au développement du livre du futur mais qui implique des investissements en conséquence.
Ces derniers mois, l’ePub a marqué plusieurs points grâce à l’arrivée de l’iBookstore.