#maz digital

[ithacacollege]

Did you know co-founding a student group on campus can help you in the business world after graduation? Simon Baumer '05 and Paul Canetti '05 talk about how creating and running the acappella group IC Voicestream prepared them to create a successful start up that works with over 200 media companies.

[mazdigital-blog]

ExecProtec Magazine created an awesome video to explain all aspects of their digital magazine. Available on both iOS & Android devices from iTunes & Google Play app stores!

[mazdigital-blog]

How to Shine in Cupertino

How does Apple choose what apps to feature in their store? While it certainly comes from high downloads, positive ratings and good press, these numbers don’t just show up overnight. They can only happen if people know about your app and like it enough to spread the word. How do you create an app like that? Give users a reason to keep coming back.

Newness Factor:

Each time a user launches your app, it should have something new to offer that wasn’t there before. Think of your app like a social networking site that you refresh to find something new.  Magazines, for example, generally publish their content monthly, or weekly at best. Imagine if magazines pushed out new content more frequently; users would be launching the app multiple times a day to read what’s new. Free trials, previews, and incorporating all your social networking sites into your app can be useful tools to showcase such content, and engage users new and old alike, as seen below in our storefront.

Point of Difference:

Another important reason for a user to return to your app is what I call its “point of difference.” What makes your app stand out from all other apps? Besides basic functionality, figure out what that extra oomph to the user experience could be. Whether it’s amazing graphics, especially fast and fluid performance, or a novel feature unique to your app, this distinguisher is key. A feature unique to our apps is Stream, demonstrated below, it is a visual archive from both the publication and reader of shared and saved content in app and from the web.

While in a perfect world, I would be able to simply say, “Follow these steps and your app will be one of the best on the App Store” -- I know it is easier said than done. But to me, these are truly the most important considerations an app developer can do to draw more downloads and keep users coming back for more.

Areeb Ahmad is Director of Quality Assurance in Noida, India. Follow him on Twitter @areebahmad.

[mazdigital-blog]

MAZ partner FOUR hailed UK's Best Food Magazine

Congratulations are in order: MAZ partner FOUR just won Gourmand World Cookbooks Awards' Best UK Food Magazine for 2013! We are proud to power the app for such a superlative publication and team. Read FOUR's news post here, and check out their app here. Treat yourself!

[mazdigital-blog]

New interview with Paul

We are always working on new things– updates to the platform, new designs, new features, and so on. Currently I am spending a lot of energy on exploring how people share content on mobile and tablet devices. We have a great tool called Clippings that allows anyone to “cut out” something from the digital page and then share it across social media, email, or save it for later. I want to take Clippings even further by understanding why and how people share while reading online. Some of our innovation comes out of customer demand, and some comes out of our own anticipation of what will be important in the future. You have to have the right balance.

BillionSuccess just posted an excellent interview with MAZ CEO and founder Paul Canetti. Over the course of the conversation, Paul touches on what makes MAZ different, building a startup, his time at Apple, and sound business advice writ large.

It's a great read! You can find the full interview here.

[mazdigital-blog]

Introducing MAZ Publishing 4.0

We are extremely excited to announce the release of MAZ Publishing 4.0, our fourth major release and the most ambitious one yet.

Not coincidentally, this update follows on the heels of Apple's iOS 7, and MP 4.0 is a total reimagining of our iOS apps.

We also took it as an opportunity to rethink the platform as a whole. There are updates for Android on Google Play and Amazon's Appstore, plus powerful new marketing and design tools in MAZ Control.

iOS 7 Design

The most striking difference in our new iOS apps is a total overhaul of the UI (user interface) that we had been using for the last three years. Our new iOS apps are cleaner, flatter, and more subtle, allowing the content to really pop.

Web & Social Content in the Store

Inspired by the use of web buttons inside the content our publishers create with MAZ, we now have web and social media buttons right in the Store- where users can access them as soon as they open the app.

Featured Web Content

Users can now see the publisher's latest news or promotions as soon as they open the app. Regardless of scheduled frequency of the publication, Featured Web Content allows any publisher to update their app with new content whenever they would like.

Custom Push Notifications

Push notifications can now be sent on the fly and say whatever you want, instead of only coinciding with new content going live. There is no better way to provide value to users than by providing them with important news as it happens, even if they are not in the app.

Used in conjunction with Featured Web Content, push notifications can alert users to specific content and breaking news, and when they open the app that content will already be queued up. Push notifications now work with Google Play apps as well.

Clippings Buttons

Clippings has become a staple of MAZ apps. 1 out of every 5 times someone downloads content, they create a clip. Each clip has a Clippings Link attached to it, which refers traffic back to the app or to the publisher's website.

We have now introduced a Clippings button right in the Store and on every website, so it is easier than ever for users to spread the word across social media.

Indicators

Users do not always understand how to take advantage of the amazing features available to them when reading on a mobile or tablet device. Now these simple prompts can be placed anywhere on the page to help educate users about how to best navigate and use their apps.

New Design Tools

We have added grid lines and zooming to the Design Tab of MAZ Control. Now you can have even more control and precision as you lay out interactive elements on the page.

The Organize Tab now displays page numbers in real time as you make adjustments and shows you what page you currently have selected.

Visual Page Linking

It is now easier than ever to link from page to page. Instead of needing to know the exact page number, you can simply select the thumbnail of the page you want to link to.

Our Best Release Ever

We've been hard at work building these improvements over the last few months, and MAZ Publishing 4.0 is by far the best version of the platform we've ever had.

Check it out now.

We hope you enjoy using it as much as we enjoyed making it!

-The MAZ Team

[mazdigital-blog]

This app will allow readers to explore reading in an entirely new way. By giving readers access to a new, secret website that only they can gain access to through the portals in the app version of the book, readers can respond to questions, ask questions, write their own versions of sections of the story and share it with others among many other new ways of connecting, reader to reader and reader to writer. In addition, there are links within the app itself to a variety of informative sites, resources that give readers a deeper understanding of the context, times and content within the e-book.

The most creative use of the MAZ platform that I've seen to date.

[mazdigital-blog]

Do you have any closing message for the future women leaders at the Indian School of Business?

Follow your dreams and don’t settle for anything less than what you’re worth.

Proud to have Shikha as our CTO. Read the whole interview here (starts on page 2).