AllThingsD » Maxim

Maxim Comes Back to the iPad

Peter Kafka — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 01:01:19 +0000

Maxim magazine, which launched an iPad app last fall, then took a break over the summer, is back. The new Maxim+ app has a new publishing system: Mag+. And it also has a new price — the app “wrapper” is free, but each edition will cost $5.99, two dollars more than what Maxim publisher Alpha Media charged for the old app.

Bye Bye, Babes! Maxim's iPad App Bows Out.

Peter Kafka — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 18:24:04 +0000

Tablet magazine app launches still get plenty of attention, so it seems only fair to note when one disappears: Maxim HD, an iPad-specific version of the baberific print magazine, has called it quits, less than a year after launch.

A message which went up this month on the app’s iTunes page says its last issue was June, and directs users to try an older version of the app, which works on both iPads and iPhones. (Thanks to reader Steve Anderson for flagging.)

[UPDATE: Maintain, broseph! Maxim PR person Nora Garrity says the magazine will be introducing a new Maxim iPad app soon. This one will be brought to you by a different publishing system -- Mag+, instead of Bite Sized Candy -- but will still feature hot chicks, etc. In Garrity's words: "It will be a new app [with] the same qualities as the previous app that our readers have been enjoying.”]

[UPDATE 2: And now it's back.]

It’s not unusual for developers to abandon apps, of course. But this may be the first instance I’ve seen of a publisher bailing on an iPad-specific app. This spring, Condé Nast went the other way and dropped three magazine’s iPhone apps produced in-house in order to concentrate on iPad versions built on Adobe’s tablet publishing platform.

The advantage of an iPad-specific app is that it can be built to take advantage of the machine’s specific assets, the most obvious being its larger screen size. App developers have also used the platform as an opportunity to try super-sizing their pricing, and often charge more for an iPad app than one that works on the iPhone.

In this case, though, Maxim publisher Alpha Media is bucking the trend: It sold HD versions of its magazine for $3.99 a pop, but the remaining app goes for $2.99 a copy.

The Clock on the Wall Says It May Be Time for More Analog Deals

Arik Hesseldahl — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 00:34:52 +0000

The surprise acquisition of National Semiconductor by Texas Instruments has given stocks in other companies that make analog semiconductors a big jolt.

Here’s a sampling: Fairchild Semiconductor is up nearly 5 percent in after-market trading. Analog Devices is up a little more than 4 percent. Maxim Integrated Products, 5 percent. Linear Technology about 3 percent. On Semiconductor more than 5 percent. Intersil, 8 percent. STMicroelectronics, 3 percent. You get the idea: Investors are clearly hoping that another acquisition is soon to happen in the world of analog semiconductors.

TI was already the big gorilla in the analog business. It’s a $42 billion business and TI accounted for about $6 billion worth of analog sales in 2010, and the analog business amounted to 43 percent of TI’s business last year. With this acquisition it goes from being a chip company that supplies the microprocessors for most of the world’s wireless phones to a mostly analog company. A Gartner market ranking of analog chip makers ranked TI number one and National fourth. The combination makes TI an even bigger gorilla yet.

Who’s number 2? Analog Devices, ahead of Maxim and Linear Technology, who are numbers three and five respectively in the Gartner rankings. Further down the list you see names like STMicro, On Semi, Intersil and Fairchild.

So what’s so great about analog chips? They go into everything: From wireless phones to games to medical devices to military and industrial gear. They manage power; help convert light and sound into digital information; and measure temperature or pressure or any other quantity that occurs in the real world. And with all the digital gadgets we rely upon these days, we’re relying increasingly on analog chips of every stripe. Analog sales grew 37 percent last year, which was faster than the chip business as a whole, Gartner analyst Steve Ohr told me.

As is the case with TI and National, there’s bound to be a lot of overlap in products and customers among all these other companies. That suggests that more combinations are likely, though with valuations inflating on the speculation, any company thinking of making an acquisition would probably want to sit tight until the prices come down a little bit before making a move.

Playboy's New Web Bet: Ditch the Naked Ladies

Peter Kafka — Thu, 06 May 2010 16:41:18 +0000

Odds are, even if you really enjoy looking at naked ladies on the Internet, you don’t spend much time thinking about Playboy. So what about a Playboy site that doesn’t feature naked ladies?

That appears to be what the publisher has in mind with TheSmokingJacket.com, a “safe-for-work” site it has in the works (don’t bother trying out the URL–nothing to see there now).

PaidContent’s David Kaplan, who had to sit through Playboy’s (PLA) earnings call this morning, doesn’t have any other details, presumably because Playboy didn’t offer them up.

But it’s easy to imagine what a Playboy-run site you could view at work without getting fired might look like: Take a look at Maxim.com or FHM.com or AskMen.com or any of Break Media‘s sites or…you get the picture.

The Missing Final Chapter of Auletta's Google Book: 25 Media Maxims

Kara Swisher — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 08:01:48 +0000

Last week, New Yorker writer Ken Auletta launched his new book on the search giant: “Googled: The End of the World as We Know It.”

But one final chapter was actually cut from the book, which Auletta posted this past weekend on his Web site.

Auletta emailed BoomTown, explaining that he killed it because it was “not organic to the book’s narrative, and because I feared it [would] muddy the books purpose, casting it as a How-To book.”

The chapter contains 25 media maxims or things Auletta learned from covering the media and Google (GOOG), kicking off by recounting Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs’s famous “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish” commencement speech at Stanford University in 2005 (see video below).

Included among Auletta’s maxims: “Passion Is Required,” “Vision Is Required” and “Don’t Ignore the Human Factor.”

Here’s the chapter in its entirety:

And here is a video interview I did with Auletta at his book party in San Francisco last week, followed by the Jobs’s speech:

[ See post to watch video ]

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

What Do Maxim Magazine, Chrysler and Your Tax Dollars Have to Do With Each Other?

Peter Kafka — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 21:56:47 +0000

What does the collapse of lad magazine publisher Maxim have to do with the auto industry’s bailout?

More than you think, argues the New York Post’s Keith Kelly. If you’re interested in either publishing or Washington’s attempt to save the auto business, you should read the entire piece.

But here’s the important part: Quadrangle Group, the big media investment group run by Steve Rattner, borrowed $125 million from Cerebus Capital Management to buy Maxim and other high-concept, big-print titles from founder Felix Dennis. Those magazines are in disarray (yesterday, Quadrangle shuttered music title Blender) and Quadrangle defaulted on those loans last year.

Still there? OK. Now Rattner has left Quadrangle for Washington, where he’ll advise the Obama administration on how to deal with companies that include Chrysler, which is owned by… Cerebus.

Which should make for an entertaining conversation or two, at the very least.

More Not-Bad News From Time Inc.: People.com Booming

Peter Kafka — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 20:39:07 +0000

That was fun writing not-bad news from Time Inc. yesterday. Let’s try it again:

While it’s true that Time Warner’s (TWX) magazine unit is embattled, there are bright spots in the portfolio. Take People.com: The gossip magazine has always been one of Time’s strongest performers (good luck trying to find a discounted subscription). Now its companion Web site is, too.

The site boasts 8.6 million unique monthly visitors, per comScore (SCOR), up 36 percent in the last year, and generates a staggering 700 million page views per month–per Omniture (OMTR). Meanwhile, once-hot sites like TMZ.com (another Time Warner property) have tailed off.

Much of the credit for that goes to Mark Golin, the awesomely sharp and frumpy editor best known as the man behind Maxim magazine’s rise, way back in the late 1990s. He’s successfully broadened the site beyond just Britney/Paris/Lindsay news by adding features like a game channel, a shopping channel and the like.

One of the most successful expansions came via acquisition: When People.com bought Celebrity Baby Blog back in May, it was generating 6.9 million page views per month. Now it’s doing 30 million, Time execs say. And before my fellow journobloggers dismiss the work that the people at Celebrity Baby Blog do, ask yourself this: Did you know that Ashlee Simpson has named her kid Bronx Mowgli? Aren’t you glad you know now?

In any case, all those page views are translating into actual dollars–not digital pennies, as NBC’s Jeff Zucker would say. Time Inc. says People.com is now one of its 10 most profitable titles–that’s out of all of the company’s 174 properties, on or offline.

The company won’t attach numbers to that claim, of course. But given that Time Inc. generated $162 million in operating profit during a very lousy third quarter, you can get some sense of the property’s success. Now Time just needs many more just like it.