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BREAKING NEWS & VIEWS
Parents Mag Cuts Into iPad With Bargain Priced Virtual Pumpkin CarverWednesday, October 6, 2010 Some magazines are pushing the envelope of iPad digital magazine design, but at the same time attracting the ire of users who recoil at the high per-issue price tag. Other magazines, however, are creating low-priced branded mobile and tablet ‘toys’ that neither aspire to be digital mags nor bust the users’ iTunes budget. Meredith’s Parents magazine has been cultivating the latter strategy with its $.99 iPhone and iPad pumpkin carving app that tries to offer value by being a one-trick pony –– albeit a cheap one. Most iPad owning parents complain that their families bicker over who gets to play with the device next. Parents magazine’s new Carve-A-Pumpkin iPad app is designed to keep the peace  by having adults and kids carve a pumpkin virtually. The simple and straightforward app makes sensible use of the touch interface for all levels of skill. You can choose your pumpkin and either freehand the carvings or apply a series of stencils or pre-cut holes. The collection of eyes, noses and grins is extensive enough to make for many combinations. Users choose a background and can then share the creation on social sharing sites or email. You can save it as a wallpaper as well. The app makes very good use of the basic iPad palette. The touch interface responds well to free form carving, and when the user closes a circle or triangle, the app automatically applies the cut to make a hole. The rich visual experience of the iPad is leveraged in well resolved realistic images of the pumpkins themselves. The user positions the cut on the pumpkin and then uses pop-up tools to increase or decrease its size, flip the stencil, etc. While the $.99 price is trivial, compared to the value available in other paid games and apps, the Carve-A-Pumpkin apps could use more features. Having a gallery of past creations embedded in the app, for instance, would be an obvious next step. Being able to import pumpkin photos for modification or having the ability to create stencils that can be emailed and printed on the home PC also would have been welcome. In terms of features and depth of experience, this feels more like a good opportunity for a sponsored free app rather than a paid app. A rival virtual pumpkin-carving app adds kids games to the mix, for instance, and at the same $.99 price. By contrast, Disney’s Family Fun magazine has an elaborate Craft Finder app for the iPad that is much denser with content than Parents, and it is free. Nevertheless, the Carve-A-Pumpkin app from Parents demonstrates that not all magazines need to have a full bore magazine facsimile app on these mobile platforms to remain present and relevant. Parents and some other service magazines may do best to focus on utility projects like this and Parents' other flash card iPhone app. The approach may be working for Parents, since the app has already climbed to the #13 spot among best selling apps for the iPad in the Entertainment category of the App Store.  If you have breaking news to share please contact Steve Smith at ssmith@accessintel.com
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