News Corp.'s Daily iPad Newspaper Launching "In the Next Few Weeks"
The “Daily,” the iPad news app News Corp. was supposed to launch last week, should hit the market “in the next few weeks,” according to James Murdoch. That’s not technically news, since it confirms what I had heard last week, but it’s the closest a News Corp. official has come to announcing an on-the-record launch date for the subscription service. So: Noted!
Murdoch, who runs Europe and Asia for his father Rupert’s company (which also owns this Web site), offered up the quasi-launch date during an onstage interview at the DLD conference in Munich.
As far as I can tell from the coverage, Murdoch didn’t reveal any other details that haven’t been reported–he confirmed that the service will cost 99 cents a week, etc.–but Staci Kramer at paidContent seems to have a good summary. You can watch the chat yourself here.
Meanwhile, I can offer up one tiny morsel of news about the Daily. And granted, it really is tiny. But: Here’s something you won’t see when the app launches, but will eventually–3-D video.
People familiar with the Daily tell me plans for future editions of the app include a gee-whiz feature that will allow correspondents to offer readers a 360-degree view of whatever they’re talking about.
It’s easier to show than to tell, and I can’t embed a sample here, but you can see one on this YouTube page. Most of the applications we’ve seen for 3-D Web video so far involve music videos set in party scenes. But you can imagine how much more interesting this might be if it involved someone reporting from, say, Tunisia.
