Newspaper Innovation

Last week, New York free daily amNewYork launched its iPad version. With this version, there must be at least 20 free dailies with a iPad app. All can be downloaded – for free – from the App Store.

Like most of the free newspaper iPad apps, the amNewYork app is pretty basic; leafing through pages, zooming in/out and searching for words are options. Issues can be downloaded for offline use.

There are apps in Italian (City, Leggo), German (Österreich, Heute, 20 Minuten), Chinese (AM730, Metro), English (Metro UK, Evening Standard, amNewYork, Colorado Daily, Vail Daily, Politico), Spanish (Clarin – Argentina), French (20 Minutes – Swiss; Metro – Canada), Slovenian (z24), Hebrew (Israel Hayom) and Czech (iMetro).

Metro Holland has an iPhone app that can be used on the iPad. Dutch newspaper De Pers has a HTML5 web-app.

After Metro, also Austrian free daily Heute is trying to copy Groupon by launching a similar discount service: dealheute.

Readers with coupons can get up to 50% discounts on products. Today’s deal is the famous Wiener Schnitzel (€5.80 instead of €11.60).

Dealheute also has its own Facebook page and can be followed on Twitter.

French free daily 20 Minutes recently introduced their own 20 Minutes TV website with short movie clips.

The Netherlands edition of free daily Metro launched a special discount website savemyday. Readers who register at the website get special deals with discounts up to 50% according to Metro.

Their are national deals and local deals from Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht.

Metro also introduced savemyday in Chile and Denmark.

After launching apps for Blackberry, iPhone and iPad, Metro Canada also introduced a free app for the Android platform.

The Metro Android App detects in which of Metro’s nine Canadian cities the users is located and gives the version with local content. City preferences can be manually switched.

The app also detects if the user is a French or English speaking user and delivers the app in the right language.

The app can be downloaded from the Android Market.

The oldest surviving American free daily, The Colorado Daily celebrated the birth of the iPad2 by launching an app for the new device.

The app shows all pages a ‘flip-through’ mode or by viewing all pages at the same time.

Articles can be read in three different ways; by zooming in, separately in a split-screen option, or as text only. There is no search option and no sharing option. But its free of course.

The Colorado Daily started in 1970 as a free daily. The paper was founded as student paper “Silver & Gold” in 1892, adapted the new name Colorado Daily in 1953. The paper moved off campus in 1970 because of the editorial line on Vietnam. In 2008 or 2009 the paper went from broadsheet to tabloid. After many ownership changes the paper now is part of the Prairie Mountain Publishing group (Media News Group).

(The oldest surviving free daily in the world is the Australian Manly Daily, founded in 1906; The Colorado Daily is de second oldest.)

The blogs on metro.se – metrobloggen.se – will be terminated on April 25. Bloggers can update until that day but after that the blogs cannot be accessed. (Even now, the site seems unavailable.)

In 2007 Metro started the website and even offered successful bloggers a share of the advertising income. That plan was soon aborted.

The blog-site started with 2000 blogs while there are now 10,000 blogs registered, although not all blogs are active. (MediaCulpa)

Israel free daily Israel Today launched an iPad app last week.

The (free) app is somewhat slow to load but offers the full paper plus all previous ones. All editions can be viewed in a carrousel-like manner (right), while a copy can beviewed by lining up all pages and swiping through them, search, or going to a specific section.

No multi-media features that I could detect with mu minimal knowledge of Hebrew. The number of adds in today’s copy, however, are impressive.

Foursquare, the social media application that lets you check in at various location and gives you mobile content in return, will from now on also contain information from Examiner.com, the web version of free daily The Examiner.

There are online versions of the Examiner in more than 200 markets in the US, this content (reviews, news, tips) will appear on phones of Foursquare users when in check in at locations with available Examiner content. (Mashable)

Spanish website 20minutos.es – operated by free daily 20 Minutos – will only allow registered users to post comments from December 31 on.

Reason is to get rid of abusive comments from anonymous users. There are now already 150,000 registered users for the website. (AEPG)