Now Wired would like to remind you that it’s still publishing on the iPad, and the Conde Nast title is offering a pretty good incentive to give it another look: Its newest issue, which should go online today, will be free.

The one-time promotion comes via a sponsorship from Adobe. Which shouldn’t be a surprise, given that Adobe and Wired have been working hand in hand on tablet publishing for nearly two years now.

Wired has also added a few more bells and whistles to the app, including the ability to share stories via Facebook and Twitter. There’s also an e-commerce partnership with Amazon, where  readers can purchase items the magazine writes about via the online store, but without leaving the magazine app itself.

None of that is revolutionary, but it does show you how relatively crude Wired’s first app edition was when it launched last May. In retrospect, for instance, it seems astonishing that it hasn’t had social media links: Any app that launched without them now would be hooted down.

So. Twelve issues in, how’s the app performing on the business side? Conde won’t share many details; Wired publisher Howard Mittman says that monthly download totals have settled into the 20,000 to 30,000 range. That’s down considerably from the first issue, which racked up more than 100,000 downloads, but not surprising.

Those figures might well go up if Conde Nast decides to work with Apple’s subscription plan, which would likely lead to a lower per-issue cost. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.

On the other hand, Mittman says that advertisers are even more willing to bet on the app than they were a year ago. Which is surprising, and contrary to what I’ve heard from other publishers about their own titles. Mittman won’t release figures, but he says that today’s issue will generate more advertising dollars than Wired’s first issue a year ago.

The folks at Internet research firm Renesys, who first gained attention for tracking Egypt’s disconnection from the Internet, and then similar events in Libya, say they’re surprised by how little the quakes have affected the undersea Internet cables that keep Japan connected to the rest of the world. Only a small fraction of Japanese connections went down and many of those have come back up since. This is good news because the Internet is providing a badly needed communication link both within Japan and between it and the rest of the world.

It’s a much different story from the Taiwan earthquake in 2006 that broke several undersea cables and knocked several carriers out of service.

That’s not to say there hasn’t been damage. There have been breaks in two segments of Pacnet’s EAC cable system. And the Pacific Crossing system has also gone down since the earthquake. This is the cable once featured in a Wired photo essay “Tracing the Journey of a Single Bit.” The Pacific Crossing site currently displays a message that reads: “The Japanese cable landing station in Ajigaura has been evacuated due to the tsunami on the east coast of Japan and currently information on restoration activities and timing is unavailable. Further updates will be posted as additional information becomes available.”

Meanwhile, I’ve been keeping track of all the aftershocks — and there have an alarming number of them — via the Earthquake Notification Service operated by the US Geological Survey. Subscribe and you get an automated email alert any time there’s an earthquake anywhere in the world, though you can specify by region and by the Richter Scale intensity so your in box is overloaded. For example I get alerts on North American quakes of greater than Richter 5.5, and all quakes around the world greater than Richter 6.5. When a big quake hits you’ll know about it well before the cable networks start flashing their “Breaking News” banners.

Finally, you can keep up with the constant stream of updates out of the Japan via this ongoing blog from our friends at The Wall Street Journal.

(Image via Wikimedia Commons)

The company hasn’t named a successor to Chubb, who spent the last year or so working on a homegrown platform for publishing the company’s magazines for Apple’s iPad and other tablets. Condé eventually decided to work with Adobe, an approach championed by Wired magazine creative director Scott Dadich, who has since been put in charge of Condé’s tablet projects.

Chubb says she won’t be taking another full-time job immediately, but plans on doing some consulting work for the near term. Condé says it will announce a replacement soon.

Here’s the internal memo from Condé Nast president Bob Sauerberg:

From: Sauerberg, Bob
Sent: Monday, February 07, 2011 3:25 PM
To: Conde Nast – All
Subject: Executive Announcement

After a wonderful 20-year career at Condé Nast, Sarah Chubb has decided it’s time to explore other opportunities. As we all know, there is a huge amount of energy and excitement in the digital world right now—and Sarah is interested in pursuing the next phase of her career.

Sarah has been a transformational force at Condé Nast and the media business as a whole. I am sure you will all join me in thanking Sarah for her many valuable contributions, congratulating her on her success and wishing her the best of luck as she moves ahead.

Sarah asked me to share her thoughts with you: “CN is the premier company in the industry and I have truly loved my job here. I am also tremendously proud of the contributions that my team and I have made to the Company. While the challenges of an exciting new world beckon me, I know that CN is set up exceptionally well for the future.”

In the coming weeks, we will name a successor to continue the outstanding work in digital growth and innovation.

[CLICK HERE FOR LIVE COVERAGE OF THE PRESS EVENT]
But a select crowd will get to see the iPad newspaper tonight, at an equally notable Manhattan location: Rupert Murdoch’s apartment, where the News Corp. CEO is hosting a “low key” cocktail party.

Although News Corp. owns this Web site, my email invite to tonight’s pre-launch launch event hasn’t arrived, and I’m told it never will. The company hasn’t offered me a peek at the Daily, either.

But at this point I’ve still got a pretty decent sense of what Murdoch’s guests will see this evening, and the rest of us will see tomorrow: A newspaper that’s both old-fashioned and cutting-edge.

People who have gotten up  close to the the Daily describe a digital paper where many of the news stories look just like news stories you’d see anywhere else.

Others will look more like iPhone apps, featuring interactive graphics or videos, or photos you can swipe, pinch and zoom–with perhaps almost no text at all.

And there’s more! There’s no 3-D video yet, though it’s on the agenda. But there will be an audio feature so you can have stories read aloud to you. And there’s a crossword puzzle! And Sudoku!

A Daily-watcher who thinks the thing is amazing compares it to the Daily Prophet, the magical newspaper read by Harry Potter and his wizard pals.

More jaded observers tell me it’s more or less what they’ve seen in existing iPad magazine apps, particularly Hearst’s Popular Mechanics and Condé Nast’s Wired. The big difference is that those magazines come out monthly, and the Daily will get beamed to your iPad… daily.

Still, the most striking thing about the Daily has nothing to do with any technical bells and whistles. It’s Murdoch’s insistence that he can sell a digital newspaper app to consumers trained to expect that digital news is what you get on the Web, for free.

The Daily is almost defiantly anti-Web: It will have a free site, with a grudging sample of perhaps 10 percent of the newspaper’s stories, but that’s it. While Web news sites increasingly focus on aggregation and filtering of other people’s content, the Daily will focus on making its own stuff, even though plenty of other people are already doing it.

And while News Corp. officials have tried to argue that the Daily isn’t a newspaper but something else, it is most definitely produced using a newspaper model: Six sections, written once a day–the Daily team is particularly excited about its sports coverage–and delivered in the wee hours of the morning.

The Daily will allow for some midday updates, but it’s really designed to land with a digital thud on your virtual doorstep, just like the newspapers Murdoch has loved all his life.

Murdoch will charge 99 cents a week for a subscription, and he’s certainly going to get some takers at the start, especially since the Daily will be free for the first two weeks after tomorrow’s launch.

Which will be a noisy one. The press will give it plenty of free promotion, and News Corp. will augment that with a digital ad campaign, in addition to offline marketing donated and/or bartered from other Murdoch properties. Perhaps there’s a way to mention it once or twice during Sunday’s Super Bowl broadcast on Fox.

Much more important will be the endorsement from Apple, which is using the Daily to roll out a new “push” subscription feature.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who was supposed to appear onstage in San Francisco with Murdoch to bless the launch, will send content boss Eddy Cue to New York tomorrow instead.

That’s still Apple’s seal of approval, though, and I can’t think of another time the company has so conspicuously blessed a single third-party product. That alone will be enough to prompt an enormous number of people to try it out.

Remember that Apple already has a customer base of  some 125 million iTunes users–if you do want to buy this thing, you won’t need to pull out a credit card. A few button clicks will do.

The real question, of course, is how many people are going to pay for the Daily a month down the road, when the buzz is gone. And there’s no way to guess at that when you get your first look at the thing. No matter when that happens.

So says Adobe. Which, of course, is in the iPad magazine business, via publishing tools it provides for companies like Condé Nast.

No need to belabor the link. But if you want, you can read a study that supports Adobe’s argument, conducted by a professor at the University of Connecticut’s Communications department, using the inaugural edition of Condé Nast’s Wired iPad app. Here’s a chart!

And really, there’s nothing wrong–or at least nothing new–about a company promoting research that supports its sales pitch. Happens all the time.

The problem the research doesn’t address, and which Adobe can’t really do much about, is that so far iPad magazine apps simply haven’t been that popular. Which means that advertisers who sponsor them aren’t getting their message in front of enough eyeballs, receptive or no.

Maybe that will change if the publishers and Apple can work out their subscription logjam. Or maybe Google, supported by a gazillion new Android tablets, will help make these things a hit.

It’s early days, still. I can say that with confidence, and I don’t even have a Ph.D.

I have a 3GS iPhone. Is there a way to connect it to the Internet cable found in hotel and motel rooms?

A:

Not that I know of. But you can do this indirectly by creating your own Wi-Fi network from the wired connection in the room. There are two ways to do this.

One possibility is to carry a small portable router. These are small devices that plug into the wired connection and propagate a Wi-Fi signal in the hotel room that the iPhone (or other devices, like laptops and tablets) can use. A second option is to plug a laptop into the physical connection and use it as a Wi-Fi base station by setting up what’s called an “ad hoc” or computer-to-computer Wi-Fi connection. Steps for doing this, which can be a bit techie, differ depending on whether you use a PC or Mac.

Q:

I have been struggling with a hard drive space shortage for at least a year. I have deleted duplicate emails. I have deleted videos and word files and put them on a stand alone hard drive. Do you have any other suggestions?

A:

If you don’t want to, or can’t, replace your laptop, and don’t want to be tethered to your external hard disk, you might look into buying a new, larger, internal hard disk.

Many stores and consultants can sell and install larger hard disks, and even transfer the data from your old one.

Q:

I have thousands of photos on my computer and external hard drives. I’m in the process of trying to organize them on one hard drive and noticed that there are many duplicates between the different devices. Is there one program that you recommend that reliably detects and allows the removal of duplicate files?

A:

You might try using Google’s Picasa to sweep the drives, locate the photos, and display them.

The program has a feature that can avoid importing duplicates. Once imported, if there are still duplicates, Picasa offers methods to hide or actually delete them from your disk. Information on this is at http://bit.ly/8YKTzy.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online for free at the new All Things Digital website, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

Below, four of Martin’s bulletins, each one of them a taut little send-up of the conference commanding so much of our attention this week.

• At Vegas Consumer Electronics Show: electronic wired “voice” phone, with “touch” rotary dial surface. Weighs a ton. Wow factor. 3-D.
• At Vegas Consumer Electronics Show: Saw large wooden device that can fling boulders over castle walls. iPad killer.
• At Vegas Electronics Show: Pet “cat” that you feed and will “die” if you don’t. Also needs air, kitty litter. Gives birth and has feelings.
• Report from Vegas Consumer Electronics Show: Saw demonstration of “bow” modular unit that can direct an “arrow” into bale of straw “pad.”

I am considering buying an iPad, but am wondering if I should wait for the second edition which is rumored to be coming soon. What do you advise?

A:

I regard the current, original iPad as an excellent product, and can’t say you’d go wrong with it. But while Apple is famously secretive, I’d be surprised if there isn’t a new model announced in the next few months that will have added or improved features. There’s wide speculation, for instance, it will gain a camera or two. The company has a long history of improving its products, and, in the case of the iPad, must keep making it better to deal with a host of coming tablet rivals. So, if you can wait a few months, I’d do so.

Q:

I see that many of the newer wireless routers with attractive features do not support printer sharing. Does that mean you cannot connect a printer via Ethernet cable to the router and be able to access that printer through the wireless network? Why do so many of the newer routers not support printer sharing?

A:

In the context you seem to be using it, the term “printer sharing” referred to plugging in an otherwise non-networkable printer via USB to a router, which would then make the printer usable over the network. I presume that this feature has declined in popularity as more home printers now have wired or wireless networking built in, and the latest Windows and Mac operating systems make it much easier to share even a printer without its own network features through the computer’s connection to the network. If the printer has wired networking built in, you should be able to plug it into one of the Ethernet jacks on most wireless routers and make it usable on your wireless network.

Q:

I have an almost two-year-old MacBook Pro. The hard drive is nearly full, and I wondered if you knew of any tricks to free up some space. I’m particularly interested in cost-effective fixes.

A:

One useful free utility for freeing up space on a Mac is called Monolingual, and is available at http://bit.ly/dqTCSC. This little utility allows you to remove all the obscure files on a Mac that allow the computer to operate in languages you can’t read or don’t use. For instance, if you only speak and read English, you can erase the files that enable the computer to run in, say, Albanian and Portuguese. Its maker says this can free up hundreds of megabytes of space. I have tried it and it works. Of course, whether you have a Windows PC or a Mac, you can free up space in many other ways, such as by deleting files and programs you don’t use, archiving or deleting old email, and removing temporary browser files.

Email mossberg@wsj.com.

• When Wired magazine launched on the iPad in June, it racked up more than 100,000 downloads. By November the number dwindled to between 22,000 and 23,000.
• Vanity Fair, which sold about 10,500 iPad downloads in August, saw sales drop to 8,700 in November.
• Glamour saw a 40 percent decline in iPad sales between September, when it sold 4,301 copies, and November, when it sold just 2,775.

There were other declines as well, all helpfully catalogued over at Memo Pad, but you get the idea.

Seems that iPad magazines haven’t yet captured the public’s attention. Why? Overpricing, perhaps. Why pay $5 a pop for a digital copy of a publication you can subscribe to for $10 a year? Of course, the larger issue is the publishing industry’s insistence on using new platforms like the iPad to ape antiquated models like print, when it could be using them to develop entirely new ones. Just because you can arrange a pile of massive image files into a digital magazine doesn’t make it a good one.

Next Issue‘s initial incarnation will only work for devices running Google’s Android software, CEO Morgan Guenther tells me.

It’s not a technical issue, Guenther says, because “we’re ready to support Apple as well,” and he says he’s confident that will happen. But “Android is a very important tablet platform, and a very important platform for smartphones.” (Read Walt Mossberg’s review of Samsung’s Android-powered Galaxy Tab.)

Guenther wouldn’t disclose other details about his launch, but you don’t have to squint to read between the lines here. The takeaway is that Google has been flexible on the business issues that are important to the publishers that own his company. And that Apple’s not there yet.

The key split, still: Publishers want the ability to sell their tablet magazines directly to consumers, or at least to be able to access the data that iTunes collects when it sells them.

Some publishers tell me that Apple’s stance has softened somewhat since this summer, when the company refused to let Time Warner’s Sports Illustrated sell subscriptions for its app. But that hasn’t led to any real concessions so far.

If you buy a subscription to Newsweek’s iPad app, for instance, the publisher has no idea who you are or how to reach you: Apple keeps all the data, as well as 30 percent of every dollar.

Presumably Guenther and his publishers are hoping sales of their magazines take off on Android tablets and phones, giving them leverage in discussions with Apple. And that seems to be what Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes was getting at it with his oblique but pointed comments last week.

But all of this wrangling may be non-issues if publishers can’t figure out how to come up with digital magazines that people are interested in, at a price they’ll pay. Aside from a few outliers like Condé Nast’s Wired, early sales numbers from iPad magazines haven’t blown anyone away.

[Image credit: Hard seat sleeper]

The move isn’t a total surprise, as Condé and Adobe have been working together closely for more than a year. But Condé wasn’t convinced that using Adobe, and/or any outside software company at all, was the best way to go. And last spring’s Apple/Flash flare-up gave the publisher pause about going forward with Adobe. But that’s over now.

In practical terms, that means that iPad titles that Condé Nast has already published on its own, like GQ and Glamour, will be “reintroduced” using Adobe tools. And that Condé executive Scott Dadich, who spearheaded Condé’s first Adobe launch when he was creative director at Wired, is now an even shinier star.

Condé’s press release:

CONDÉ NAST WILL USE ADOBE TECHNOLOGY FOR DIGITAL MAGAZINE PRODUCTION

New York, N.Y., October 25, 2010 – Condé Nast plans to introduce digital replica editions across its portfolio of magazine brands using the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite, it was announced today by Robert A. Sauerberg, Jr., President of Condé Nast.

This decision comes as the result of an ongoing R&D period that included the introduction of five digital replica apps using two different approaches and tools in order to gain maximum learning in this emerging area.  The company will continue to seek the best technologies to bring its award-winning content to market as platforms and devices emerge.

Digital editions of WIRED and The New Yorker are available for iPad and were created by the magazines using Adobe tools and workflows.  Brands with apps already in the market – GQ, Vanity Fair and Glamour – will be recreated using Adobe tools.

“The innovative work our in-house team at Condé Nast Digital did made us first to market with replicas on iPhone and iPad and has allowed significant learnings,” Mr. Sauerberg said.  “Our team considered many factors to ensure we had a platform that could be continually enhanced to meet the needs of our consumers and distributors.”

Joe Simon, Chief Technology Officer of Condé Nast, is participating in a keynote discussion about this announcement at MAX, Adobe’s annual worldwide conference taking place in Los Angeles today.

“We have always intended to deliver our content on a variety of platforms and devices, and the Adobe Design Suite will help us efficiently achieve the ‘author once, publish anywhere’ goal,” Mr. Simon noted.

Condé Nast, a division of Advance Publications, operates in 25 countries.  In the United States, Condé Nast publishes 18 consumer magazines, two trade publications and 27 websites that garner international acclaim and unparalleled consumer engagement.

BoomTown had to park a badillion miles away from Facebook’s suburban HQ in Palo Alto, Calif. and hoofed it there for a press event that unveiled the sFund.

What’s that? A $250 million fund for social start-ups.

10:40 am PT: The excitement was building–well, not really…well, not at all, in fact–at the Facebook cafeteria, as the Silicon Valley press got to see the name of the sFund on screens throughout the room.

Kleiner Perkins power VC John Doerr started off the proceedings with some microphone snafus, when he tried to get out from behind the podium.

“John, sometimes you have to stay in the box,” joked Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who was sitting onstage in what appears to be an Internet Hall of Fame group.

The others would be Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, Zynga CEO and Founder Mark Pincus, and giant-man-about-Web Bing Gordon.

Doerr talked on about the importance of social, related to the Internet.

Then, he introed Zuckerberg, hoodie-less, who agreed with him, talking about photos and how social made them hot on Facebook.

Apparently, everything is going social. Personally, I am now contemplating becoming a hermit.

Doerr went full Oprah on him, asking what would inspire him to innovate, if he were starting out today (and presumably there were no Winklevii around to “borrow” an idea from).

“If you take any passion and map it to an industry,” said Zuckerberg, it will result in disruption.

Then Doerr channeled Barbara Walters at Pincus, tossing him a softball query about the fabulousness of it all.

For example: “What’s inspired you to be a CEO at this amazing company?” (Note to Walt Mossberg: Let’s file that tough one away for D9!)

11:01 am:Thank goodness then for Bezos, who simply said he hoped these new companies will take some of that $250 million and use Amazon Web Services.

He talked about how these trends grow virally and “sometimes violently.”

Ouch!

Speaking of pinchy, Bezos moved on to some chemical explosion metaphor, and I am now certain I want to be a hermit crab.

Then, after a question about what he would do now, he veered to bioengineering! Doerr wanted a social answer, but Bezos was talking test tubes and “engineered and synthetic life.”

But Gordon behaved for John “Diane Sawyer” Doerr and talked about how social is the only place to be for the cool kids.

He reeled off the other partners, including Comcast, Liberty Media and Allen & Co.

One more question from Doerr: Five years from now, what is going to make you “delighted” about and for the customers you service.

Gordon: He could see the family.

Pincus: He has 12-week twins, not the Winklevii, who are still too young to use Facebook. He was excited it is all getting wired.

“When everyone is always connected to one another, rather than connected to the Web,” he said, that’s the bomb.

He called the big social companies “dial tones,” as in Zynga was the gaming dial tone, Amazon was the shopping dial tone and Facebook was the dial tone.

Zuckerberg: I was not sure he was actually answering the question. But I believed his wish was about these social networks getting to scale.

He went on though, talking about how some companies were building a “light” social layer versus companies where social was “built fundamentally into the product.”

These, of course, have an advantage, according to the gospel of Zuckerberg.

Bezos: He talked about Amazon’s Web services some more–this dude is a retailer, so he was sure good at selling.

Gordon, who is apparently like Ed McMahon to Doerr’s Johnny Carson, rounded up the feel-good session.

11:17 am: Q&A.

Go Miguel Helft, from the New York Times, who asked a good question, about what took so long for Doerr to do this fund, since social–i.e., Facebook–has been around for seven years or more.

Doerr joked, “Next question.” Ha.

But really. Doerr did not answer except to say that Zynga only exploded a year ago, so back off, Miguel.

There were two other dullish questions, about new partners.

“It’s a quarter-billion-dollar party,” said Gordon, which I was not quite wanting to attend. Which made me a social party pooper.

Larry Magid from CBS asked about social responsibility around privacy, especially after the recent controversy around the leaking of Facebook user info to advertisers, via third-party apps companies such as Zynga.

Then, there ws a question about whether this is not simply the “fbFund,” as in Facebook, since the social networking site was going to benefit the most from all this.

No, it was not, declares Doerr.

More questions–about monetization, advertising, free versus paid and an off-topic one about rumors of Amazon launching an app store (of course it is!).

Zuckerberg took the monetization one. All of the above, it’s great, money for all.

The event finished with a very odd poem by Gordon, which ended with a decent joke about the possibility that entrepreneurs, if they are lucky, get a movie “made about you.”

He was referring to “The Social Network,” which trashed Zuckerberg.

In any case, quarter-billion-dollar party on, Mark.

The publisher is rolling out its “best practices” for iPad ad makers this morning, via a press release and presentation. Most of this stuff seems like common sense to me: Take advantage of Apple’s (AAPL) device, but make sure readers know how to engage with the ad, etc. But again, it’s the very early days, and if you haven’t spent much time with the tablets, it will be news to you.

Ditto for the other findings in Condé’s research, which I would find more interesting if the publisher put them out in raw data form instead of qualitative assertions. But Condé thinks it’s worth sharing with the outside world. So if you want to take a look, too:

CONDÉ NAST RESEARCH OFFERS KEY CONSUMER INSIGHTS INTO
iPAD DIGITAL MAGAZINE APPLICATION ENGAGEMENT AND EXPECTATIONS

Results pave way for initial recommendation of “5 Best Practices” for advertisers

NEW YORK, October 13, 2010 – Condé Nast, which was the first magazine publisher to offer digital magazines on the iPhone and iPad, released key insights today derived from the first stage of a multi-phase research initiative evaluating consumer engagement. Based on over 100 hours of one-on-one interviews and more than 5,000 in-app surveys this early feedback on overall consumer usability, expectations, and sentiment has shaped initial recommendations on “best practices” for advertisers. Brands included in the study were GQ, Vanity Fair, Wired and Glamour.

Overall iPad and brand experience:
“We continue to see that reader engagement with our digital magazines apps, in terms of time spent, is on par with or exceeds our print editions,” said Scott McDonald, SVP market research, Condé Nast. “We were surprised to find however that many iPad users surveyed were not the typical tech “early adopter” or familiar with Apple products and their navigation conventions. This has very important implications for application interface design.”

Specific to Condé Nast digital magazines, eight in ten reported that the content and experience associated with the brands met or surpassed their expectations, and 83% reported a likelihood to purchase the next month’s digital issue. Eighty-nine percent felt the apps were easy to use and, on the whole, users showed little sensitivity to download times.

It was also noted that users preferred to read the magazines in portrait mode, but chose to watch video in the landscape orientation. There was also an expectation for flexibility in buying options, e.g., a single copy purchase, a digital subscription or supplement to their print subscription.

Advertising:
User recall and enjoyment were the basis for establishing the overall success of a particular ad.

The study showed that readers expected to find ads in digital magazines and expressed that their inclusion was an enhancement to the experience, which is often the case with printed magazines.

“When we initiated our R & D phase, we felt strongly that by choosing a multi-advertiser model for our digital magazines it would enable us to garner some valuable learning that we could pass on to our clients,” said Condé Nast Chief Marketing Officer Lou Cona. “With such a rapidly changing marketplace, we expect behaviors to evolve quickly; however, our initial results enable us to offer clients our five best practices for producing successful digital magazine creative, insights we feel will be helpful as the industry navigates this new medium.”

Condé Nast’s five best practices for creating advertising that will engage and resonate with the user:
1. Take advantage of This New Medium’s functionality: Users responded positively to the additional functionality of the iPad. Therefore advertisers that included compelling and unique experiences, that were self contained and exclusive to the environment, were liked more than those that did not. Increased opportunities for engagement including video, photo galleries and links to websites are recommended.

2. Provide Clear Instructions on How to Engage with Your App: As many surveyed were not familiar with iPad navigation, ads that included clear calls to action and cues on how to engage the creative were more effective. Icons should be clearly visible and intuitive and state whether more content or additional functionality can be found.

3. Supply Additional Information but Avoid Repurposing Creative Assets Used for Other Media: Users enjoyed advertisements that provided something new and useful. Including detailed product info and how-to’s are recommended, however re-purposing video or creative used for other mediums is not suggested.

4. Tell A Story: The most remembered ads contained narratives. The iPad’s ability to showcase various forms of media offers a unique opportunity for telling a brands’ story. However, it was discovered that users became bored when the same advertisement was used repeatedly throughout a single application.

5. Lead Them Down the Purchase Funnel: Brands that enabled a user to directly access and purchase the featured product faired better than companies who offered homepage links alone. It is also recommended that due to compatibility issues, Flash not be used.

The first one came in at about half a gigabyte of memory, and it hasn’t shrunk that much since.

And Condé Nast’s newest iPad app, from the New Yorker, isn’t much better: It takes up 173 megabytes–but that’s for a weekly issue. If Condé can’t slim the app down, a month’s worth of New Yorkers will be much heavier than the first monthly Wired app.

And at that rate, a year’s worth of issues would consume more than seven gigabytes–that’s close to half of the smallest iPad’s 16-gig memory capacity.

No problem, says New Yorker Deputy Editor Pam McCarthy, who oversaw the production of the new app. She says it’s going on a diet, soon.

Both the New Yorker and Wired have the same weight problem for the same reason: They are built on the back of an Adobe (ADBE) program that essentially functions as an image reader.

That is, each page of the magazine is turned into the equivalent of several big photos. Which means an image-rich layout at Wired or a page of text at the New Yorker both consume a lot of memory.

The New Yorker could fix that overnight by presenting the text using HTML code, McCarthy says. That would use much less memory and allow the magazine to do things like resize the type. But for the moment, Adobe doesn’t have the ability to break up HTML text into individual pages. Instead, the text scrolls down the screen, a la the popular Instapaper app.

That sounds pretty good to me, but McCarthy says it’s not a good way to read the very long pieces her magazine is famous for. “It’s pretty clear that when you have a 10,000-word story, smooth scrolling is not a good option,” she says.

So for now, the New Yorker presents small items, like its “Talk of the Town” pieces, via HTML, and presents its long stories on individual pages. Once Adobe figures out how to break up HTML text into individual pages, McCarthy will make the switch, she says. Perhaps in a month.

“The goal is to be all HTML, and we will be,” she says.

Great!

But take note, grumblers: You probably still won’t be able to download the magazine wirelessly. Apple caps wireless app downloads at 20 megabytes, and the app is unlikely to shrink that much soon, which means you’re going to need a Wi-Fi connection to get your hands on the app.

And the fact that Condé Nast can’t yet sell subscriptions for its mag apps, which would let it knock the $4.99 issue price down considerably, has nothing to do with tech limits. That’s an issue between Apple (AAPL) and the publishing industry, and that may still take some time to sort out.

Today’s reminder: Time Inc., the industry’s biggest player, generated more than $900 million in revenue in the last quarter.

Some of that does indeed come from digital, but the vast majority of that revenue still comes from readers who buy magazines and advertisers who pay to reach them. And it can be a profitable business, too: Time Inc. generated operating income of $153 million.

The not-great news in those numbers is that while profits are up 50 percent over the previous year, that’s all because of $50 million worth of layoffs and other cost cuts. So revenue hasn’t really budged. And given the state of the economy a year ago, many media companies are showing big year-over-year increases. So that’s a problem (click image to enlarge).

On parent company Time Warner’s (TWX) earnings call this morning, CFO John Martin said that the flattish ad sales numbers are in part because Time Inc. used to publish more titles a year ago. Adjust for that, and domestic ad sales are up in the “high single digits.” he says. Ad sales will also be up in Q3, when the comps are more challenging, and for all of 2010, he predicts.

So what about the iPad? Well, Condé Nast sold more than 100,000 copies of its Wired launch issue at $4.99, which nets out to $350,000 for the publisher. But Time hasn’t sold anything close to those numbers, or it would be boasting about them too. And even if it had, that wouldn’t mean a lot to a company that does nearly $1 billion a quarter.

Still, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes needed to say something about the iPad, so he did: He said that the apps are great and that “very shortly” the publisher would be offering similar apps for “every tablet.”

Since Apple (AAPL) is the entirety of the tablet market for now, you’ll have to guess about who he had in mind. But presumably Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT) will make this a bit clearer in the near future.

This one’s from Glamour, and you can check it out for yourself at iTunes. If you’re very impatient, you can see a promotional video at the bottom of this post.

A quick rundown of things you should know about this one:

• Like Condé’s GQ and Vanity Fair apps, this one was built in-house, as opposed to Condé’s Wired app, which was built with Adobe’s (ADBE) somewhat controversial assistance. Casual readers may not tell the difference, but the performance of the two sets of apps is of intense interest to Condé, which is trying to figure out which way to go. The New Yorker is scheduled to get the Adobe treatment next.
• The app sells for $3.99, the same as the print edition. That could change down the line, because Condé is in R&D mode right now. Condé would also like to sell its own subscriptions for this stuff, but so far, it can’t. Just like every other magazine publisher.
• A new twist for this app: Readers can tap on certain images and get whisked off to a Web page where they can buy the item. Condé doesn’t get a slice of any sale, but that could change down the line.
• Excitement over the iPad goosed ad sales for Glamour’s September issue, which clocks in at 420 pages. That’s the highest total in 23 years. On the flip side, producing the app took real resources, says editor Cindi Leive. “It’s definitely a lot of work, but we’re not complaining. It’s 1,000 percent worth it.”
• Not to put too fine a point on it, but Apple’s (AAPL) App Store, and particularly the iPad department, skews very dude-heavy. This is one of the first iPad apps–and the first magazine app, I believe–built with the ladies in mind.

So, ladies–what do you think?

But don’t tell Hearst. The publisher says it will charge at least as much for the iPad versions of its magazines as it does for its paper and ink version. And in the case of at least one title, it may ask for more.

Hearst says that when the full version of its Popular Mechanics app launches in the fall, it is considering charging a dollar more for the digital magazine than the $3.99 the title fetches at the newsstand. Meanwhile a demo version of the app, which doesn’t contain everything in the magazine, is now going for $1.99.

What gives? John Loughlin, Hearst Magazine’s executive vice president, makes two arguments:

• True, Hearst doesn’t have to pay to print and distribute copies of the app. But it’s still spending money on it, both for app-specific features like new interactive graphics and videos, and for digital overhead costs.
• At least as important: Hearst thinks everyone else who sells their digital stuff at a discount–or worse yet, gives it away online–is dead wrong. “I think publishers have learned a huge lesson from our cousins in the newspaper world,” Loughlin says. “I think we’ve got an opportunity to reset the right expectations out of the gate.”

Philosophically, Hearst isn’t alone. Nearly every publisher I’ve talked to imagines that the iPad will give them the ability to reverse the price-eroding effects of the Web. But the digerati squawked when Time Warner’s (TWX) Time Inc. and Condé Nast charged the same price for their first magazine apps. And even though Condé’s Wired app debut sold 100,000 copies at offline prices, the publisher has since shaved a dollar off the price.

Loughlin doesn’t expect to charge a premium for every magazine app Hearst puts out. IPad editions of Esquire and Oprah Winfrey’s O magazine, due out in August and November, respectively, will have fewer bells and whistles than Popular Mechanics. So there, he’ll be willing to charge the same price as the print edition.

And Loughlin says he’ll follow the same pricing philosophy when Hearst begins selling subscriptions to its iPad magazines, which it plans to start with Esquire at the end of this summer–digital subscriptions will be priced at or above the price that print subs pay.

Meanwhile, a word on iPad subscriptions, which Hearst’s competitors are also planning on rolling out but haven’t done yet: Hearst doesn’t like the current plan, which involves selling bundles of issues for one-time payments via Apple’s iTunes store.

That’s because that method gives Apple (AAPL) 30 percent of the transaction, and more importantly, it doesn’t give the publisher access to crucial subscriber data. But since that’s the only option Apple is offering for now, Hearst will take it.

Ideally, Loughlin says, Apple will relent and allow it sell iPad subscriptions directly. If not, he’s hopeful that iPad/iTunes competitors–most likely Google and its Chrome and Android platforms–will give Hearst the terms it wants.

We chatted about all of this yesterday, after a show-and-tell session where Hearst laid out its digital road map for the rest of the year (short version–lots of apps!):