Tag Archives: TheDaily

The Daily staff offers a musical goodbye

Goodbye to The Daily, the ill-fated iPad news magazine that was launched with great fanfare in 2011 and will shut down tomorrow.

Some of The Daily's staff will migrate to The New York Post. Most will be let go. The Daily staff produced a farewell video to say goodbye to their readers (featuring plenty of Macs).

Although I didn't find the content of The Daily very compelling, it's going to be a tough holiday for the staff who were let go. Hope they will find something quickly and put their talents to good use.

The Daily app is already out of the App Store.

The Daily staff offers a musical goodbye originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 14 Dec 2012 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Daily Update for December 3, 2012

It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world.

You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here.


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Daily Update for December 3, 2012 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 03 Dec 2012 14:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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News Corp. to shut down iPad-based newspaper, The Daily

News Corp.'s experiment with the newspaper of the future is coming to an end. In a press release covering a wide range of corporate restructuring initiatives, the media conglomerate announced that it is closing The Daily, the tablet-only newspaper that launched with much fanfare in early 2011.

Though a "bold experiment in digital publishing," the venture was not "sustainable in the long-term," explains News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch in the press release.

Publication of The Daily will halt on December 15. Remaining assets and some staff of the iPad-based magazine will be folded in to the New York Post. The digital newspaper had approximately 120 employees after laying off staff earlier this year.

[Via AllThingsD]

News Corp. to shut down iPad-based newspaper, The Daily originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 03 Dec 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Daily to cut 50 staff members, switches to vertical-only layout

All Things Digital's Peter Kafka is reporting that The Daily expects to tell 50 of its 170 employees that they're being laid off.

Of those positions, 29 were full-time staff members. The Daily's Editor-in-Chief Jesse Angelo said sports coverage will be handled by content partners, such as Fox Sports, and the standalone opinion section will be eliminated.

The Daily launched with a great deal of fanfare 18 months ago originally on the iPad. It quickly added other editions as well, but never got subscriptions much beyond 120,000. It had dropped below 100,000 subscriptions by its first anniversary in February.

Earlier this month we reported comments from Angelo suggesting to staff that they ignore "the haters" and pay no attention to rumors about troubles at the digital publication.

All Things Digital reports The Daily will continue to try and save money by going to a portrait-only layout, instead of the current version that can also be read in a landscape orientation. It plans to keep releasing its new weekend edition.

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Continue reading The Daily to cut 50 staff members, switches to vertical-only layout

The Daily to cut 50 staff members, switches to vertical-only layout originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 31 Jul 2012 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Is The Daily on thin ice?

The Daily, the heavily-promoted news publication for mobile devices, may be on life support, according to a report in today's New York Observer.

I took a look at The Daily a few months after launch and found it pleasing to look at but not something I would spend money on. There are solid free news offerings from places like Slate, and aggregators like Flipboard and Zite which have a lot more content and can learn my interests over time.

The Daily launched in early 2011 as an iPad-only publication, later adding an iPhone edition and one for the Samsung Galaxy Tab. A large staff was brought in to do original reporting, but there are persistent reports that the enterprise is losing about $30 million per year. In February we learned that The Daily had 100,000 paid subscribers.

The Observer reports today, based on internal sources, that The Daily has been put 'on watch', and whether it survives will be determined after the November elections.

Reviews in the app store are pretty lukewarm, with a lot of complaints about the number of ads in a publication that people have to pay for. Subscriptions are $1.99 a month or $19.99 a year. There is a free version of the app with a selection of a few stories from the full edition.

The Daily was a bold experiment, but it may not be a compelling enough offering to sustain itself.

Update: The Editor of The Daily, Jesse Angelo, in a carefully worded denial, responded to the stories about the online newspapers reported problems. You can read his response here.

Is The Daily on thin ice? originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 11 Jul 2012 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft Office for iPad reportedly on track for November release

A recent report from BGR reiterates the earlier claim from The Daily that Microsoft is working on a version of Office for the iPad. According to BGR, Microsoft is bringing the complete Office suite to both the iPad and Android tablets by November of this year. BGR's source claims the version he saw was almost identical to the one leaked earlier this year by The Daily.

The Daily got wind of the BGR report and responded with a post directed at Microsoft that was sharp and forthright. The authors called Microsoft "filthy, lying liars" for allegedly showing The Daily a version of the Office software for the iPad and then saying publicly it was "not a real picture of a real Microsoft software product." You can read The Daily's response on its website.

Microsoft Office for iPad reportedly on track for November release originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 25 May 2012 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Daily hints at iPhone version

Speaking to Venture Beat, Greg Clayman, the publisher of the iPad-only newspaper The Daily, hinted at a forthcoming version of its newspaper app for the iPhone.

Clayman said a scaled-down Daily might just look like its recently released standalone guide to Angry Birds Space. The Daily's team has created five custom apps for clients so far, and the Android version of the ABS guide just arrived.

If [the phone version of The Daily] resembled the guide we built for Angry Birds, I wouldn't be surprised.

You can check out The Daily's guide to Angry Birds Space to get a sneak peek.

The Daily hints at iPhone version originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 21 Mar 2012 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Office for iPad reportedly due in weeks (Update)

The Daily has gotten its hands on the upcoming iPad version of Microsoft Office, which its sources tell them will soon go through the Apple App Store vetting process.

The interface is reportedly similar to OneNote, which we reviewed in December, and also contains technology that's in the Windows Phone and the upcoming Windows 8. Like similar office suites from Quickoffice and Documents to Go, users can create Word, Excel and PowerPoint files and edit them either on the iPad or online.

The Daily's sources did not have a launch date or estimated price, but it'll most likely be available within the next few weeks.

[Via The Next Web]

Update: Quite the soap opera drama is unfolding. Microsoft denied that Office for iPad is coming in a statement given to The New York Times, stating that The Daily published "a screenshot that is not Microsoft's software" as well as a story which is "based on inaccurate rumors and speculation."

Daily reporter Peter Ha then shot back that the image was not fake, and in fact came from a demonstration given by a Microsoft employee. He then supplied a screenshot of the app's icon running on an iPad.

Office for iPad reportedly due in weeks (Update) originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 21 Feb 2012 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Daily Update for February 3, 2012

It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world.

You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here.


No Flash? Click here to listen.

Daily Update for February 3, 2012 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Daily celebrates a year with 100,000 paid subscribers on iPad

One of the iPad's first regular periodical publications (if not the first one) The Daily launched a year ago. It's been a fairly rocky year. Originally, the Rupert Murdoch-funded app hoped it could get at least half a million subscriptions to keep its publication going; a few months ago we heard that there were 120,000 daily readers, and now Mashable says the paper boasts 100,000 paid subscriber. Despite not nearly reaching its original goal, The Daily still seems to be rolling on.

Publisher Greg Clayman says that when the app originally launched, the goal was to make an experience unique to the tablet. That's why The Daily began only on the iPad and has only recently added content on the Android platform, via the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. Clayman says that while the company has kept its choice of platforms slim, The Daily has been delivering on its promise to break news; it was the first to report on the story of Paula Deen having diabetes and Alec Baldwin wanting to run for mayor in New York. Clayman says that The Daily is still headed for profitability "over the next couple of years," which he says is actually better than most traditional publications.

The Daily might not have the readership that it hoped to have, but a year into its existence Clayman seems optimistic about the publication's future. "We now have a fully baked, fully functional app CMS, and a large, engaged readership," he says. "A year ago we were asking how to build the boat. Now it's about understanding the best way to steer the boat."

The Daily celebrates a year with 100,000 paid subscribers on iPad originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Daily Update for September 29, 2011

It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes, which is perfect for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world.

You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for listening through iTunes, click here.


No Flash? Click here to listen.

Daily Update for September 29, 2011 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 29 Sep 2011 15:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Daily averaging just 120,000 readers per week

News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch introduced the iPad newspaper The Daily (free) almost eight months ago with expectations that the paper would easily meet the half-million subscribers required for the publication to break even. Now Bloomberg is reporting that The Daily is well behind that goal, with an estimated weekly circulation of only 120,000 readers.

The Bloomberg post cites advertising exec John Nitti of Publicis Groupe SA as saying that the 120,000 reader figure is for unique weekly visitors, which also includes readers who are taking advantage of the paper's two-week free trial. As a result, the actual number of paying subscribers is less than the total readership figure.

After the free trial, The Daily is available for US$0.99 per week or $39.99 a year. Nitti thinks that 120,000 readers is still a respectable number for The Daily, and expects that his client (Verizon) will continue to advertise on the paper. Bloomberg notes that The Daily is expanding beyond the iPad, adding a Facebook version this month and an Android edition within the next three weeks.

The Daily averaging just 120,000 readers per week originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 29 Sep 2011 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Daily gets 800K downloads but loses $10 million this quarter

The latest quarterly results from News Corporation say The Daily, the much-publicized iPad newspaper, has lost US$10 million. Much of the loss is associated start-up costs. News Corp. reports The Daily costs about $500,000 a week to produce, and revenues depend on advertising and subscriptions. The company has not revealed how many of the people who downloaded the free introductory subscriptions have converted to the pay model.

When The Daily came out, I thought the $39.99 annual subscription cost was reasonable, but the content mix turned me off. I'm not sure if the magazine has the proper flavor of news that would appeal to iPad owners. The Daily looks great and works very well on the iPad, but without compelling content, I'll never be a customer.

Several other magazines have experimented with the iPad, often focusing on cost. Most recently, Time Magazine has offered free iPad issues to customers with paid subscriptions. Many publications are too expensive on the iPad, and cost more than the paper equivalents. Other solutions, like Zinio Newsstand, have a nice mix of magazines at reasonable prices, but basically you get a PDF of the magazine, which is a pain to read because you are constantly re-orienting the page to get the best fit. The Zinio app also offers a text mode, but then the layout and illustrations vanish.

What are your thoughts? Have you been willing to pay for magazines on the iPad? If not, what would it take to get you to open your wallet?

The Daily gets 800K downloads but loses $10 million this quarter originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 05 May 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Social sharing on The Daily dropping fast

The Nieman Journalism Lab reports that social sharing from iPad news app The Daily is falling precipitously, according to data from a firm called PostRank. Social sharing is when users share content on networks like Twitter or Facebook; the average number of pieces shared from The Daily on Twitter has fallen from over 200 to under 50 in just the past few months since its launch.

There's two sides to this. First, these are obviously not actual readership numbers, and just because readers aren't sharing many articles doesn't mean they're not being read. It's also important to remember that The Daily subscriptions run weekly or yearly, so a certain amount of its readers have already paid for a year of content.

However, given that this is one metric of engagement with the fledgling virtual publication, it's probably not a good sign. As Nieman's Joshua Benton says, this follows anecdotal evidence we've heard that the app has been declining despite an early spike in interest. If subscriptions and downloads correlate with these social sharing numbers, The Daily may be in trouble already.

[via BetaBeat]

Social sharing on The Daily dropping fast originally appeared on TUAW on Wed, 06 Apr 2011 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Daily set to launch in the UK, US edition only

According to The Guardian newspaper, Rupert Murdoch's The Daily will be available in the UK within the first half of this year, but first Apple must introduce its new subscription-based pricing system in the UK.

Jon Miller, the chief digital officer of Murdoch's News Corporation, said that it would be "not too long from now" until the news app arrives in western Europe. It's understood, however, that this will simply be the US edition made available outside of the US. There was some conjecture that a British-specific edition would be made available in the future, but The Guardian reports that "... the media giant [News Corp.] emphasized there were no immediate plans for a British edition of the title."

The Daily launched in the US on February 2, 2011 and was received with a mixed reaction, particularly by the TUAW team. Check out Steve Sande's, Dave Caolo's and Mel Martin's (first and second) impressions of the electronic newspaper.

The Daily has been available as a free trial since its launch, but next week it will cost 99 cents a week or US$39.99 for a year-long subscription. Although News Corp hasn't released any official figures, The Guardian estimates around 5,000 users have signed up for the the year-long subscription.

[Via TNW]

The Daily set to launch in the UK, US edition only originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 17 Mar 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Daily trial extended to the end of February

Several TUAW readers have noticed that the trial version of The Daily has been extended through February 28. When the app debuted on February 2, Verizon announced that it was sponsoring a two-week free trial. This also brought forth the rumor of the public release of iOS 4.3 within that time frame. It's been nearly two weeks, but it hasn't happened.

So, why has the trial been extended? Leave us your thoughts in the comments below. I think it has less to do with the public release of iOS 4.3 and more with the fact that so many people are becoming disenchanted with The Daily that the publishers want more of a chance to prove themselves before people delete it -- and the potential revenue -- off their iPads completely.

[via MacRumors]

The Daily trial extended to the end of February originally appeared on TUAW on Mon, 14 Feb 2011 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Yahoo! announces Livestand for iPad, available first half 2011

If you've been following TUAW's reports about The Daily, you're aware that many of the TUAW bloggers are so fed up with the buggy, crashing newspaper app that they've removed it from their iPads while the app is still free. For me, the crashes and slow loading weren't as much of an irritant as the lack of customizable and local content. I just don't want to pay for horoscopes, fashion news and entertainment gossip that I can't turn off, and the fact that I can't read any local news on the app killed it for me.

Yahoo! has apparently been listening, as the struggling internet giant has announced -- but hasn't shipped -- its solution to the problem that is The Daily. It has announced Livestand for iPad, a customizable news app that will be available "in the first half of 2011." There's no word on whether Yahoo! plans to offer the app for free or, as in the case of The Daily, it will be using subscriptions to refill its coffers.

Yahoo! wants to capitalize on the huge volume of content that it has available from multiple publishers, the billions of photos available from Flickr and the many advertising agreements it already has in place. The company says that Livestand will be a digital newsstand that is "continuously programmed by a person's interests and contexts."

Some of the screenshots (obviously mockups since the app isn't yet available) show local content boxes with top stories, weather and more, all wrapped in a very visual package that is reminiscent of the Flipboard content page. That makes me wonder if it might not just be a better, and more timely, solution to just load Flipboard with RSS feeds of local news from Yahoo! That solution would also make it less likely for me to have to put up with ads that are "data-rich, actionable, even location aware."

I'll let you know how my Yahoo! feeds + Flipboard = Local Newspaper experiment works. Perhaps I'll get my own version of Livestand for iPad well before July rolls around.

[via MacStories]

Yahoo! announces Livestand for iPad, available first half 2011 originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 10 Feb 2011 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Daily for iPad updated with new feature: It crashes more frequently now

Editor's Note: One tip that may resolve the frequent crashes -- the App Store description for The Daily is now showing a note stating "Current Daily users: Please delete your current app before upgrading to 1.0.1." This is not the way that app updates are supposed to be done. C'mon, News Corp. You're doin' it wrong!

I've had a love/hate relationship with The Daily. It was a great idea for a low-priced subscription newspaper, but over time I lost interest in the type of stories offered, and the app was downright unstable. Fellow TUAW blogger Dave Caolo experienced so many crashes and suffered through slow loading of content, and he finally just gave up on the app.

A fix was posted last night that claimed to make it faster, more stable and improve the "introduction experience," whatever that means. In my testing last night and today, I can say the app crashes more than Wile E. Coyote. In several instances, the app started up and left me staring at a blank screen. Sometimes the pages showed up. Sometimes they didn't. Sometimes articles had pictures, sometimes they didn't. Apparently the way to ensure it will at least work is to first delete the app while connected to iTunes, then download the updated version and re-install it. Not exactly the "Apple experience" for app updates, is it?

Continue reading The Daily for iPad updated with new feature: It crashes more frequently now

The Daily for iPad updated with new feature: It crashes more frequently now originally appeared on TUAW on Tue, 08 Feb 2011 15:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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More thoughts on The Daily

I've been reading the News Corp. iPad newspaper The Daily since it came out last week. While my first impressions led to a positive review, the more I use it, the less I like it.

First, it is VERY slow to load if it loads at all (an impression shared by others). Recently I'm getting a lot of black screens and am dumped back to the iPad app screen. When it works, the slow load, which is often more than 30 seconds over Wi-Fi, is just too long. The app should at least display a table of contents or top news stories while it downloads so that you don't wind up staring into space.

The news content does not appear to be aimed at a serious news reader. The second highlighted category is "gossip." The balance of news to fluff is seriously leaning toward the fluff. Horoscopes, celebrity news and other tabloid content just aren't appealing to this news consumer, and there is no way to turn those sections off.

The app itself has a beautiful layout. It's appealing to the eye and easy to navigate. The one exception is the requirement to have to rotate the iPad to portrait from landscape in order to read some stories. That seems just silly, and I hope that will be repaired. There is no tech section -- that's odd for something being sold to iPad owners. There seems to be some tech content under apps and games, but then that section isn't labeled properly.

Continue reading More thoughts on The Daily

More thoughts on The Daily originally appeared on TUAW on Sun, 06 Feb 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Talkcast, 7PM PST/10PM EST: Verizon iPhones and The Daily

If it's Sunday night, it must be Talkcast time! Tonight's live show will likely include a sprinkling of Macworld chat, along with other newsy bits from the week. We had Verizon iPhones line up for pre-order, The Daily launch event and another wave of iPad 2 rumors. Also, don't forget that Kelly hosting equals aftershow!

Your calls and questions help us make the show the best it can be, otherwise I'm just talking to myself. To participate on TalkShoe, you can use the browser-only client, the embedded Facebook app, or download the classic TalkShoe Pro Java client; however, for maximum fun, you should call in. For the web UI, just click the Talkshoe Web button on our profile page at 4 HI/7 PDT/10 pm EDT Sunday. To call in on regular phone or VoIP lines (yay for free cell phone weekend minutes!): dial (724) 444-7444 and enter our talkcast ID, 45077 -- during the call, you can request to talk by keying in *8.

If you've got a headset or microphone handy on your Mac, you can connect via the free Gizmo or X-Lite SIP clients; basic instructions are here. Talk to you tonight!

Talkcast, 7PM PST/10PM EST: Verizon iPhones and The Daily originally appeared on TUAW on Sun, 06 Feb 2011 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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