Wooden Horse News reports “Editions” is an iPad magazine getting ready to launch by AOL. You rank your interests in various topics and it goes and grabs stories from the web for you. The tag line for the magazine is “The Magazine That Reads You.”…Rupert Murdoch has launched the continuously updated digital The Daily to provide “the engaging design of a professionally edited magazine, the immediacy of the Web, the original reporting and distinctive voice of a newspaper as well as stunning photography, for the equivalent of 14 cents a day.” . . .Virgin has launched a monthly digital entertainment-focused magazine titled “Project” and Bonnier has introduced a news aggregator for the Ipad. Meanwhile Google is said to be readying a digital newsstand for Android users.
On a more modest scale, Paul Borden, president of SAMA, has launched a new blog: paul-borden.blogspot.com. It is an eclectic blog reflecting his long newspaper career as a sportswriter and then auto journalist. The first few covered cars, movies, football, a wedding anniversary and basketball announcing. He cautions, be sure to use the hyphen when checking out the site because there is another Paul Borden in cyberspace. . . . Kevin Taliaferro describes his BidderTruth.com “a new social media website that allows peers to share with one another their new car negotiated experience.” Essentially, what actual price have others paid for the make and model you want.
TrueCar.com goes after the same data in a different way – by aggregating data it buys from dealers. Later this year, Karl Greenberg reports in Marketing Daily, TrueCar will introduce Clearbook to vie with Auto Trader, Kelley Blue Book, NADA Guide, and the Black Book in providing used car prices. It will aggregate what owners are asking for their used cars. According to Greenberg, Clearbook is part of TrueCar CEO Scott Painter’s plan to eliminate lead-generation as a web model for the automotive market. Instead of selling dealers leads his sites generate, he will take a percentage of the actual sales they facilitate. A good deal for consumers and dealers, Painter thinks, because it makes pricing more transparent and breeds trust. And it will deliver to dealers consumers, at the end of the sales funnel, who have already decided on what they want and all that is left is the price they can get it for.