That’s One Small Step for a Digital Magazine…
July 22, 2009 by Marcus Grimm
So earlier this week was the 40th Anniversary of man landing on the moon, which is pretty amazing considering the computers they used (and I use that term very loosely) didn’t even have mice.
Uber-blogger Rex Hammock wrote a great post about various moon-related activities with lots of cool links. However, he missed the digital magazine dedicated to the Anniversary.
EETimes issued a special digital-only magazine called Apollo:, which featured tons of great articles on the engineering behind the Apollo mission. Special features included a video by Ken Mattingly (played by Gary Sinise in Apollo 13) and a slideshow of Apollo 11 circuitry.
Revenue-wise, Apollo: used ad-serving technology, bringing in a variety of sponsors just as you would on a website. Using the Nxtbook this way was a first for EETimes, and we’d call it a moonshot-worthy effort.
One small technical clarification: Apollo: was completed in the Nxtbook 2.6, not 3.0, because many of the animations were completed ahead of time in AS2, whereas Nxtbook 3.0 requires AS3. To quote an engineer from Apollo 13, "You’re telling me what you want. I’m telling you what we have." Regardless, the book rocks.
Marcus…what’s your take on the registration form? Wouldn’t it make more sense to give some content out without having to register? Can you tell the conversion rates from those that go to the form and don’t sign up versus those that do?