OomphHQ

13.05.13 Video - a brilliant way to promote your app!

One of the biggest challenges app creators have is convincing their readers/users to download their app. Videos are proving to be one of the most effective ways to overcome these barriers. They allow your potential reader to ‘look inside’ the app and get a feel for just what they’ll get when they download your app.

Oomph has worked with the RACV to create a slick video to help promote their app and drive downloads.

We’ve been working together since the launch of the fully interactive Royal Auto iPad app in September 2012 and the eighth edition of the iPad version has just gone live featuring a trip to Italy’s Dolomites, articles on Ballarat, Okinawa, a review of the BMW 120i and much more.

As part of their strategy to push the Royal Auto magazine app to a wider audience, RACV’s digital team asked Oomph to produce a promotional video for the app highlighting the easy to use functionality, extra content available and the key features of the app, including:

• Seamless navigation

• Videos and image galleries

• Interactive maps

• Calendar events

• Sharing content with via email, Facebook and Twitter

• New content notifications

Oomph’s in-house design studio collaborated with RACV to oversee the entire production process from storyboarding, scripting, studio time with a videographer, voice-over artist and sound recording team, as well as post-production video editing.

The result is an engaging walkthrough of the app, that can be viewed by all potential users across a wide range of marketing channels as well as an introduction to the app for first time users.

If you’re keen to increase downloads, please contact OomphHQ.com today!

Posted 6 days ago

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Publisher Australia’s Young Mind’s Event Review

Thursday, May 02, 2013

By Fiona MacDonald, PA Freelancer member and Young Minds committee member.

Young Minds is proudly sponsored by Oomph - Simply Smart Tablet Publishing.

In the three short years since Apple launched the iPad, tablets have become a major part of the publishing conversation. On 16th April, Publishers Australia’s Young Minds committee hosted a panel discussion analysing the state of tablet publishing in Australia and whether it had lived up to the hype, to over 60 attendees at Hotel CBD.

To Haymarket Media Australia creative director Sam Grimmer, who led development of the FourFourTwo iPad edition, the digital publishing industry is still very much a work in progress. “No one is really making money as yet,” he said. “But how long did it take after Gutenberg created the printing press for everyone to be reading newspapers?”

Maeve O’Rourke, executive producer of tablet and mobile at Bauer Media Group, agreed that it’s still too early to judge whether digital publishing ‘works’. “We’re doing pretty bloody well three years in,” she joked. “It’s unrealistic to think that tablet publications would suddenly become a publisher’s primary income source.”

Also participating on the panel were her Bauer colleague Robin Austin, who heads up the design side of the group’s digital publishing unit, James Thomson, editor of Fairfax Media’s BRW and Lisa Walton, marketing and strategy director at Oomph.

Better content
Despite the lack of success stories so far, the panel was convinced that tablet publications offer something unique to readers – the question now is how to make money from them.

Thomson had just finished working on the tablet edition of BRW’s famous annual Rich List issue and said that it offered surprising benefits over the print version. “We’ve made it so people can sort the list by marital status and age, as well as a range of other criteria. This is the type of extra material that’s perfect for an iPad edition,” he said.

On the advertising side of things, Sam Grimmer explained that there is huge potential for brands to create interactive ads that help readers engage with their product. He recently worked on an ad for a sportswear company and created a “really sexy” fully rotational model of a running shoe that readers could interact with. He believed it would make someone want to buy it more than an image in a print publication.

But O’Rourke told the audience that for now, most advertising is still produced for the print magazine and then inserted into the tablet edition as a side note by sales teams.

New revenue streams
Walton believed there would be five potential commercial models for tablet publishing – subscriptions, advertising and app downloads were the basic ones. But she also believed that sponsorship models – where one company could take out 70% or more of the ads in an issue – would be more lucrative in digital editions than print ones, given their potential to create interactive ads.

“The fifth model is content marketing, where you inspire people to buy more through the magazine, just like Coles does,” Walton explained, adding “iPads may have less reach than online at the moment, but research shows they have a lot more engagement, so there are big opportunities.”

Changing the way people read
But for now, said Austin, the amount of time, expertise and money that digital apps require is holding them back – and that goes for the ads as well.

This is the reason many magazines opt for a ‘replica’ tablet edition – essentially a PDF of the print magazine that people can view on their tablet devices. While these can be more profitable, particularly because they don’t require much in the way of extra design resources, they don’t take advantage of the features of tablets.

“We need to learn to combine strong work flow with good design, that’s the key,” said Austin. “Right now every designer is used to designing A3 spreads, and suddenly they’re working with an A5 spread with no page count and too many photos. “The whole structure is different to a print magazine – people don’t flip through iPad editions, they see a headline they like and they expand the story.”

Advertisers don’t necessarily have access to creative teams who can create material for tablet devices. This is where Walton believed publishers could find a sixth possible revenue stream: creating ads for their advertisers.

Now it just remains to be seen whether readers will pay for magazine content on a regular basis – that’s a question the whole publishing industry wants to see answered.

“If people aren’t going to pay for content, we’re all stuffed really, whether we’re on iPads or not,” said BRW’s Thomson. “But I think there’s definitely potential for tablet publishing, we’re still just working out efficient ways to give people what they want.”

View photos of the event

Like Young Minds on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/PAyoungminds

Publishers Australia Young Minds is proudly sponsored by Oomph in 2013. Oomph - Simply Smart Tablet Publishing. Visit OomphHQ.com for more information.

Posted 2 weeks ago

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The Coles Magazine iPad App promotional video. Jam packed with beautiful easy to cook recipes, with useful functionality including Shopping lists, meal planners and favourites. It’s fastest downloaded iPad magazine in Australian and recognised by Apple as one of six top Newsstand Apps of 2012 - be sure to check it out.

Posted 2 weeks ago

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Honda Digital Brochures

April 30th 2013

Honda Australia is following up on their successful Honda Australia Magazine that launched in July 2012 with the Honda Australia Digital Brochures App exclusively for the iPad. The app brings Honda vehicle information to life with awesome interactive media, vibrant images, video and the ability to customise your drive.

Every page provides the user with the option to request a find a dealer, request a test drive and presents all the car specs on easy to understand reports. Honda have launched with the CR-V, Civic Hatch and Jazz Vibe.

Choosing a car has never been so easy!

Proudly powered and produced by Oomph.

Posted 2 weeks ago
#Oomph-customers

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Congratulations MCA! Anish Kapoor App wins Best Web Award

On the evening of April 19 in Portland, Oregon USA, the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Anish Kapoor ePublication was recognised at the international Museum and Web Conference MW2013. The iPad application won the Rich Media category of the Best of the Web Awards.

Attracting over 600 museum professionals from across the globe, the event explores the current and potential use of digital technology within the museum industry.

Keir Winesmith, the MCA’s Manager, Digital Media, said: “We choose the Oomph platform because it has the wide range of features and stability we required to create the ‘living catalogue’ concept we wanted to explore with this ground breaking app.”

About the MCA’s iPad app.

The digital publication for Anish Kapoor’s solo exhibition at the MCA is the first of a series of free and paid digital publications that will be made available through the MCA Publications app for iPad.

This iPad app is proudly powered on the Oomph digital publishing platform and Oomph Creative Technologist Tony Redhead worked on the stunning panoramas of this amazing exhibition. You can read more about Tony’s involvement in his blog here.

About the Anish Kapoor ePublication

MCA is leading the way with this stunning ‘living catalogue’. The MCA website gives a great overview of the benefits of this type of catalogue and how the app was released in 3 stages:

“In a world first, the publication is a ‘living catalogue’ that evolved over the course of the exhibition. This has allowed the Museum to present the singular experience of the exhibition and its installation through interviews, photographs and videos recorded on site and in the Kapoor studio.

A traditional printed catalogue produced months ahead of an exhibition fails to capture the installation challenges and in situ exhibition.

The e-publication has unfolded in three steps: a preview, the installation and the exhibition itself.

The Preview Edition launched the day of the exhibition opening and focused on the breadth of Kapoor’s practice.

The Installation Edition explored the challenge of the exhibition installation through video interviews and documentation.

The Final Edition reflects on the Anish Kapoor exhibition, adding a series of different perspectives on the exhibition from curators, visitors and MCA staff.”

MCA and Oomph

Beyond the use of the Oomph platform to power this amazing app, the Oomph team provided MCA with training and production assistance with the Preview Edition. From here, the MCA team could used the Oomph platform to create the final stages of the app and will now be able to use the platform to power future ePublications.

Tony Redhead provided panoramic photography services and template development for the Final Edition and recalls, “Having the opportunity to work with the MCA Team was fantastic. Anish Kapoor’s work is incredible and to have the opportunity to get up close and photograph it was a unique experience. Finally, having a platform like the iPad and Oomph to present the work to a global audience in such a beautiful way is immensely satisfying.”

Download the MCA iPad App

Congratulations to the MCA for an amazing app!

Best wishes,

Team Oomph

Posted 3 weeks ago

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Introducing Oomph Cloud Connector

Connect your back office information such as spreadsheets with your apps via the Oomph Cloud Connector. Update pricing, inventory, specifications and anything else by simply updating your spreadsheet.

Advantages of Oomph Cloud Connector

No longer will your app and data be out of sync
No costly app updates
No slow content updates

Applications of Oomph Cloud Connector

Sales Decks - keep pricing up to date
Retails Apps - manage inventory, pricing and buy links from the cloud
KPI Dashboards - keep a realtime view of your companies Key Performance Indicators on your iPad

Oomph can now accept content from InDesign/Woodwing, CMS’s, databases and cloud documents. No other digital publishing solution offers this array of content formats all following Oomph simple smart publishing conventions.

The video below shows the availability and pricing of a group tour to Japan being updated in real time using a Oomph cloud connect app. Combining an update with a push notification means your app users always have the most of to date information where ever they are.

Oomph Cloud Connector will be available from the Oomph Pro team beginning in April 2013. Find out more about cloud connector.

We wil keep you posted!

Team Oomph

Posted 1 month ago
#newmobiletechnology #ipadappdevelopment #appdevelopment #latestmobiletechnology

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Announcing Oomph Pro - all our brands under the one umbrella

With the ongoing success of the Oomph brand in the digital publishing space, it made sense that our professional services, formerly Mogeneration, took it’s rightful place under the Oomph brand umbrella as Oomph Professional Services (Oomph Pro).

As a part of the new brand alignment, we have launched the new Oomph Pro Website.

Since 2008, we have provided the tools and expertise to help clients deliver world class tablet solutions. Oomph Pro services include account management, design and production, project management and strategy services.

Our website features an exciting new range of Enterprise grade products that sit along side Oomph Pro’s digital publishing solutions:

Sales Mobility Solutions

Retail and Kiosk Style Apps

Training and Development

Our plan is to continue to focus and expand our enterprise service offering as more and more businesses adopt media tablets into their sales and communication strategies.

Friends of Oomph Pro

Oomph the platform powers almost 300 Apps that are used by over 2 million people.

Oomph Marketplace
Oomph Marketplace is an online space where you can buy and sell iPad app templates. Marketplace operates in a similar way to many Wordpress template providers - simply download and modify an existing template, then publish. It’s that simple.

Marketplace is great for designers and publishers who want to make apps fast.

Want to talk to us? All of our offices can be contacted on sales@oomphhq.com or through our website.

Posted by

Lisa Walton - Strategy Director, Oomph Pro

More tablet insights from Lisa to help you increase your ROI

Posted 1 month ago
#createipadapp #businessmobilesolutions #ipadbusinessstrategy #businessstrategy #mobilebusiness #ipadapptemplates

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Spotlight on the Museum of Contemporary Art and M2 Magazine

MCA Publication - second edition.

The interactive view of the Kapoor’s work takes you through a preview of the exhibition and awesome behind the scenes information about the installation. As the exhibition comes to a close at the MCA, this app feature will become a multimedia celebration of the entire event. Something a coffee table book could never achieve.

Explore Anish Kapoor’s art

Download the MCA iPad App

We welcome exciting publisher M2 to the world of iPad

M2 publishing have hit the ground running, launching 5 iPad magazines in Australia, New Zealand and America.

They launched their first iPad magazine M2 on the 6 December in time for the hugely popular Annual M2 Man of the Year Awards in NZ.

From their they have launched M2 Australia, M2 Women, Capital Magazine and Spark.

We will follow their success closely and wish them all the best with their well designed iPad magazines.

Posted by

Lisa Walton - Strategy Director, Oomph Pro

Posted 1 month ago

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Preview app templates online - experience before you buy

We’ve launched web previews of app templates!

Now you don’t need an iPad handy to experience the awesome templates available on Marketplace. With just one click, your browser becomes an all singing, all dancing iPad.

Simply, hit the Preview button next to the template you are viewing and see for yourself.

All templates on the Marketplace can be previewed online.

Coming soon to all Oomph clients

Increase revenue by giving your online customers a web preview of your app.

How? Extend the exposure of your content by directing your marketing to an interactive web preview of your app - encouraging engagement and downloads.

Full details in the coming weeks.

Be the first to know, like us on Facebook or join the Oomph User Group on LinkedIn

Team Oomph

Posted 1 month ago
#ipaddapptemplates #apptemplates #appwidgets #digitalpublishing #previewapps

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Oomph 21 is go!

Oomph is pleased to announce release 21 of our iOS platform. This is available now for all online and full service clients. We have been working through updating all of our non-standalone apps to version 21 and expect to have this completed this week.

This release started its life as a bug fix release, however it was soon extended to include some new much requested functionality.

We’ve included a brand new audio widget, which is now implemented natively. This gives much better performance and allows us to introduce some new features such as support for streaming audio and support for continuous play while reading other content in an app (ambient mode). This new audio widget is completely backwards compatible with the previous version.

Also, based on some of the content our customers were producing, we noticed that many of you were wanting to apply static animations (i.e. not visibly animating to the user) to objects on a page, for example rotating or translating an image. Animations were not designed to support this, so we’ve added a new feature we call “default transitions”. This effectively allows you to apply a transition before the page is rendered, such as scaling, rotation or translation.

We have improved our URI scheme support to include allowing an app to be opened on the Downloads screen. Many customers use this in their email marketing, to drive customers directly to the download screen when a new issue is available.

If you are an Oomph SDK customer, we have replaced our previous time-based licence with an API key based licence. This gives you increased confidence when your customers do not (or are unable to) update their app, in that the older ones will no longer expire. Contact our sales team if you would like to enquire about licensing the Oomph SDK in your app.

Oomph 21 is our first release to drop support for iOS 4, the full reasoning behind this was circulated to customers and posted on our blog last year.

Due to a Twitter API change, we were also forced to drop support for our Twitter widget (full details here). We have replaced this with a new widget, the Twitter Timeline which uses Twitter’s “user timeline widget” under the hood. Full details on configuring a timeline widget for use in Oomph are provided here.

We have also fixed some bugs, in particular to do with Flurry and Google analytics, and also when using animations in popups.

As always, full release notes are available in our documentation.

Posted by

Tom Adams - CTO, Oomph

Posted 2 months ago
#awardwinningapp #graphicdesign #createipadapp #makeanapp #apppublishing #buildapp #latestapptechnology

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