Barnes & Noble has updated its NOOK app for Android phones and tablets, giving virtually any Android tablet much of the same functionality you’d expect if you purchased a NOOK Color device.

NOOK 2.6.1 for Android can run on any device with Android 2.1 and up, but you get a few special features if you install the app on an Android tablet with a high resolution display, including the ability to purchase magazine subscriptions or individual issues.

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The New York Times is starting to roll out digital subscription plans in Canada this week, with US and international subscriptions set to take effect on march 28th. Readers will be able to view the paper’s home page for free, and read up to 20 articles per month at no cost. You’ll also be able to access the “Top News” section of the company’s mobile apps for Android, BlackBerry, and iOS for free. For anything else, you’ll need to pay up.

Here’s the breakdown:

• If you want full access to the web site and smartphone apps, you’ll need to pay $15 every four weeks.
• For full access to the web site and the tablet app for the iPad you’ll need to find $20 in the couch cushions.
• Full access to the tablet and smartphone apps plus the web site will run you $35 every four weeks.

Existing newspaper subscribers will be able to continue accessing all of the digital content for no additional charge. That includes customers who sign up for weekday only, or Weekender Friday-Sunday only service. Because the New York Times is currently offering a 50% discount for up to 12 weeks on some print subscriptions, I can actually sign up for the weekday print edition and digital editions for $3.70 per week, compared with $3.75 per week for the web and smartphone plan. But after a few months that price would double.

The company will offer some sort of “introductory” pricing on March 28th.

News media companies have had a difficult time charging for online content in the past, with only a few big names such as the Wall Street Journal managing to convince a large enough number of customers to subscribe to make any real money. But the New York Times might have the kind of loyal audience and name recognition in the US to pull it off — and the fact that casual, occasional readers can still view some articles for free may help. It also means that unlike the Journal, the Times isn’t completely closing its content off behind a walled garden, making it difficult for blogs and other sites to link to.

The New York Times certainly isn’t the only company looking to make money off its web site and mobile apps. In fact, several newspapers and magazines have launched recently that are exclusively available on the iPad. But even though the Times plans to charge more money than Project Magazine or The Daily, I suspect the paper has a better chance of attracting readers than either of those publications.

For about as long as newspapers have been profitable, the secret to success has been a combination of subscriptions and advertising. Find customers who value your content enough to pay for it and advertisers looking to reach those readers and you’re golden. And then along came the internet.

A growing number of readers are getting the news they need online, and with very few exceptions, companies that have tried charging for news content have faced an uphill battle: There’s just so much free stuff out there that it’s hard to get a large number of people to pay for premium content. And for some reason that I’ve never really figured out, advertisers aren’t willing to pas as much for online advertising (despite the fact that they can get far more information about visitors and target highly effective ads, which is much harder to do with newsprint).

Now publishers and tech companies are taking another approach: subscription-based apps.

Rupert Murdoch unveiled a new iPad-only newspaper/magazine today. It’s called The Daily, and it will run you 99 cents per week or $39.99 per year. Readers will get a new issue every day, and you can navigate through the content using a touch-friendly user interface that’s a bit like a magazine or web site — but clearly designed for touchscreen tablets like the iPad.

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Ongo is a new service that sounds crazy, might be brilliant… or might just be as crazy as it sounds. Here’s the pitch: It’s a one-stop shop for news. Right now that stop is a web site, but there’s an iPad app waiting for Apple’s approval and other mobile apps could follow. Content comes from mainstream news sources including the AP, USA Today, The Guardian, The New York Times and the Financial Times.

Here’s the crazy part: Ongo is a subscription service with prices starting at $6.99 per month. That monthly fee will get you access to content that’s largely already available on the web for free.

Sure, there’s some benefit to getting the top stories from multiple sources in a single location. And an ad-free interface is certainly an attractive selling point, (although after spending the last 15 years or so online, I’ve found it’s generally pretty easy to tune out the ads if I don’t want to pay attention to them). But overall, Ongo is still asking people to pay for something that’s already available for free, and that’s a tough business plan to get away with.

Still, I could see Ongo taking off… if companies like the New York Times continue to support the service even after adopting paywalls. Word on the street is that the Times will begin charging customers $20 per month for full access to its site in the not-too-distant future, with limited free access. Even though the New York Times isn’t currently offering up all of its articles to Ongo subscribers, it does make its top stories available for free, which could make that $6.99 per month look like a bargain one day — assuming paywalls actually work for newspapers and they don’t all just go bankrupt one day.

via Business Insider and Mashable

Credit: JIm Ronan

Over the last few years, digital book sales have really started to take off — but publishers are hoping the next big thing will be digital newspaper and magazine sales.You can already grab subscriptions to some content using an eBook app like the Kobo Reader and Kindle apps for iOS or Android, and Apple offers subscriptions to iPad-specific magazine apps such as WIRED and Project.

But according to the Wall Street Journal, Google is hoping to create a more consistent experience for users — and take a cut of the revenue, by working with publishers to create a “digital newsstand” where you could purchase or subscribe to newspapers and magazines on an Android device.

Google has reportedly been in talks with a number of major publishers including Time Inc, Condé Nast, and Hearst. Google may offer publishers better terms than Apple currently does.

It’s not entirely clear at the moment if Google plans to offer a single app for reading newspapers and magazines, or just a marketplace for publishers to sell their goods.  While many periodicals offer much of the good stuff for free on web sites which you can access from any computer or mobile device, it’s a lot easier to view content on a phone or tablet if it’s properly formatted for the page. But I’m still not 100% convinced that consumers will be willing to pay for digital periodicals the way they have for books, music, and movies when there’s so much information available for free online.

Amazon has released a major update to its eBook app for Android. Probably the biggest change in Kindle for Android 2.0 is support for newspapers and magazines, with Amazon offering over 100 periodicals to choose from. But another nice touch is the fact that Amazon has finally integrated the Kindle Store directly into the app, which means you don’t have to flip back and forth between your web browser and Kindle app to purchase and read books.

Scan to download

Other changes include:

• Ability to share your reading progress via social networks, email, SMS, or other apps installed on your device
• Zoom on image and graphics
• Option to turn pages using volume keys
• Chapter titles now show up in the status bar
• You can move the app to your SD card on Android 2.2 and up.

With the new newspaper and magazine options, you can either purchase a subscription or pay for an individual episode. Subscriptions come with 14 day free trials.

Amazon Kindle for Android 2.0 is available as a free download from the Android Market.

You can find more screenshots after the break.

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NY Times Android app (which is available for free)

There are millions of Google Android smartphone users, with Google reporting that 160,000 new handsets are activated every day. But since Google is giving away the operating system for free, you might be wondering how Google plans to make money from Android.

The most obvious thing Google is doing is creating demand for Google services including search, email, calendar, contact, and other cloud-based apps. The more you use those, the more you’ll be exposed to Google ads — if not on  your mobile device, then the next time you login to your account using a desktop web browser.

But speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Google CEO Eric Schmidt suggested there might be another revenue stream: subscription services. For instance, if Google launched a service costing just $10 per year that lets you subscribe to premium newspaper content, Schmidt says, it could easily generate $10 billion dollars.

Of course, there is no such Google service right now. And if there were, Google would probably have to split the revenue with newspaper publishers. But you get the idea.

Oh yeah, and Google’s expected to launch a music service for Android users soon. Does anyone really think that Google isn’t going to figure out a way to make money off of the fastest growing smartphone platform around?

via Android Community