JFK: 50 Days: The Legacy of an App

Originally appeared on Digital Book World

A few weeks ago my company, The Perseus Books Group, released an app for the iPad called JFK: 50 Days. It's meant to be a companion product to a large coffee-table book called JFK: Day by Day (Running Press), which covers the 1,036 days John F. Kennedy was President. We describe it as a companion because the app is focused on fifty select moments from the book to mark the 50th anniversary of Kennedy's election to the White House.

But what's in the app that's not in the book is more than an hour's worth of incredible video, most of which is rare footage culled from the archives of NBC News, featuring JFK, Jackie, and other members of the Kennedy family during the early 60s. Thanks to the technology of the iPad, we're confident the experience of both viewing and reading about these historical moments is truly gratifying.

So how did this all come about? Well, during a meeting with the folks at NBC News it was brought to our attention there were tons and tons of Kennedy footage in the vaults and they suggested we do a project together relating to our book. Naturally we loved this idea and immediately got to work. The first thing we needed to do was figure out just what this should be because digital projects featuring video and images are always a challenge due to the amount of file size these assets use. As a guide, we turned to the print version of the book, which is fully designed and has a particular look. Since this was going to be a companion product, we determined an app was the logical format because it would allow us to essentially keep the same design while maintaining a similar layout.

With that decision behind us, we forged ahead spending hours and hours viewing old clips in the NBC News archives division located at Rockefeller Center. It took about a full month to complete and as the lead producer of this project, I can honestly say it was quite an amazing experience and absolute privilege for our team to have been given the chance to take this unfiltered trip through history.

While all this was taking place we approached Vook about working together to program the app using Adobe's Digital Publishing Suite, since they were chosen by Adobe as a BETA tester for this new platform. If you've downloaded Wired or The New Yorker apps for iPad, which also uses this software, then the various ways to navigate JFK: 50 Days would be familiar to you. We felt it was the best option to present the fifty days in chronological order and as far as I know, this is the first book-related app using this approach. Here's a video example courtesy of NBC.

The structure of the "50 days" helped keep us focused since there was so much archival footage to watch. Even after we made our final selections there were still a number of choice moments that we just felt could not be left out of the app. So we decided to represent those pieces in montage form, which appear at the end of the app as bonus features. These montages are probably my favorite part of this project because they challenged us to string together unique pieces of forgotten history in a way that captured the essence and emotion of those moments in time.

I really hope readers come to appreciate the quality of the video because all the archived footage presented in JFK: 50 Days was painstakingly restored to deliver visuals with striking contrast and great sound. Believe me, this is not easy to do when working with film that's fifty years-old! But I feel the time, effort, and care we put into the clips really shows.

JFK: 50 Days was officially launched on November 15th with a segment on The Today Show. About a week later, David Gregory, moderator of Meet the Press, (who was kind enough to film the introduction for the app), agreed to promote it at the end of his program. There's also a terrific TV commercial airing on NBC to raise awareness in the marketplace. As you might imagine, all this has been simply fantastic to see and everyone who has been a part of this project is thrilled by NBC's support.

I'm happy to report JFK: 50 Days was #1 in the Books category of the App Store for two weeks and reached as high as #14 in paid apps overall. With the 50th anniversary of JFK's inauguration speech coming this January we're gearing up for another wave of promotions. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, if you have an iPad, you can get the JFK: 50 Days app here.

April 3rd, 2010 - A Date Which Will Live In (Tech) Infamy

Yes, it was a Saturday to remember, full of technological history in the making, but one which I could only watch from the sidelines :-(

As I mentioned in a previous Blog post a couple of weeks ago, I ordered Apple's iPad with Wi-Fi and 3G back in March and now I'm patiently waiting for it to arrive sometime in late April.

AND IT'S KILLING ME!!!!

Like most tech enthusiasts, I'd been following every bit of news I could about the April 3rd release of the iPad from any source I could devour. I confess, I couldn't get enough.

I was glad that gadget reviewers like David Pogue of the New York Times, Walt Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal, and Ed Baig of USAToday gave the iPad good marks overall.

It was fun to read people's enthusiastic tweets like these by a few folks I follow:
@petermeyers - UPS just called: my iPad is about an hour away!
@pablod - Ok, looking at photos is every bit as amazing as advertised
@ranajune - My iPad is synched and ready to face the world. I couldn't be more excited.
@maureengg - Mesmerizing for media consumption. Fab and fun as novel work tool. Can real-life experiences be as compelling as this?

There were also a couple of Blog posts that really stood out for me and I'd like to share them here:
iPad Review: It Only Had One Flaw by Craig Kanalley, The Huffington Post
iPad: The First Real Family Computer by Sarah Perez, ReadWriteWeb

Plus these two videos featuring Dylan Tweney from Wired do a terrific job of demonstrating the striking difference between using an eInk device like the SonyReader VS. the iPad with its color display and functionality:
Sony Reader Demo
iPad Demo

(The Sony Daily Edition currently sells for $399, so it's hard for me to imagine NOT spending the extra $100 for the iPad to experience all it can do.)

So after all this you might appreciate how excited I was when a colleague of mine brought his new iPad to the office and generously let me play around with it for a while. I'm definitely planning to post a full review later this month, but for now here are my immediate impressions:
1. It has a little bit more heft then I expected.
2. Just like my iPhone, I wouldn't want to drop the iPad 'cos it feels like it would easily get damaged.
3. Reading a book was simply wonderful and it felt great to sit back to enjoy a good book.
4. The virtual typing initially feels a bit strange, just as it did on the iPhone, but in short order I was doing just fine.
5. I can see myself bringing it to every meeting, on every plane trip, and reading newspapers, magazines, and email on the train with a dumb-ass grin on my face ;-)

There's so much more to say and I'm looking forward to doing so in a few weeks after I've really had the chance to dive deeply into this amazing device.

Whether you love it, hate it, or can't make up your mind, one thing for sure is April 3rd, 2010, will be the day in personal computing when everything changed - And for the better!

Don't believe that? Then check this out.

If you've got an opinion about the iPad, I'd love to hear it.