The Book as an App

Facebook has just acquired Push Pop Press, an ebook publisher and app maker. The two founders, Mike Matas and Kimon Tsinteris say in their farewell statement on the Push Pop Press site: "Now we're taking our publishing technology and everything we've learned and are setting off to help design the world's largest book, Facebook."


Apps Blog interviewed Tsinteris in May 2011 about the company's plans. 

"We think that the app is probably one of the richest, most interactive forms of storytelling that exist," he said at the time. "One of our founding premises is to re-imagine the book."

Tsinteris and co-founder Mike Matas used to work at Apple – Tsinteris as a binary mixologist working most recently on maps and location-based services for the iPhone, and Matas as a human interface designer. 

Former US vice-president Al Gore has used various media to make his climate change arguments in recent years, starting with a live presentation, which evolved into a book and then Oscar-winning film, An Inconvenient Truth. His latest platform is Apple's iOS, with book-app Our Choice.

Our Choice, the app Push Pop Press made for Al Gore as the ebook version of his sequel for An Inconvenient Truth, is a truly phat app and one that has taken a huge amount of material - text, some glorious images and video - and, particularly on iPad, made them navigable in a compelling way that doesn't feel overwhelming, despite the volume of content. 

It was developed by San Francisco startup Push Pop Press, working with book publisher Rodale, production company Melcher Media and Gore himself. 

The Our Choice app was released in late April 2011 as a paid app, costing £2.99 and running across all iOS devices. "We weren't really sure how it was going to be received," says Tsinteris. "There are a lot of naysayers around digital publishing, but people have been very appreciative of the level of detail that has gone into it."

That includes more than 250 images, an hour of documentary footage and more than 30 infographics and animations, along with text from the original Our Choice book and an audio commentary from Gore. However, Push Pop Press wasn't set up to create just one app.

The Next Generation of Digital Books... In this interactive app, Al Gore surveys the causes of global warming and presents groundbreaking insights and solutions already under study and underway that can help stop the unfolding disaster of global warming.

Our Choice melds the vice president's narrative with photography, interactive graphics, animations, and more than an hour of engrossing documentary footage. A new, groundbreaking multi-touch interface allows you to experience that content seamlessly. Pick up and explore anything you see in the book; zoom out to the visual table of contents and quickly browse though the chapters; reach in and explore data-rich interactive graphics.

Our Choice will remain on Apple's App Store, with Push Pop Press' share of the profits from now on to be donated to Gore's environmental campaigning group The Climate Reality Project.

Matas runs through the Our Choice app in this Ted talk from earlier this year.

Assuming their skills will be used beyond a kick-ass Facebook app itself, applying those kind of principles and aesthetics to Facebook starts to get very interesting. 

'Everybody is a storyteller at heart,' says Kimon Tsinteris...

From the Blogs:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/pda/2011/aug/03/facebook-push-pop-press-ebooks
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/appsblog/2011/aug/02/facebook-buys-push-pop-press
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/appsblog/2011/may/16/push-pop-ipad-al-gore 

The Next Generation of Digital Books

From: http://pushpoppress.com/ourchoice/

Our Choice will change the way we read books. And quite possibly change the world. In this interactive app, Al Gore surveys the causes of global warming and presents groundbreaking insights and solutions already under study and underway that can help stop the unfolding disaster of global warming. Our Choice melds the vice president's narrative with photography, interactive graphics, animations, and more than an hour of engrossing documentary footage. A new, groundbreaking multi-touch interface allows you to experience that content seamlessly. Pick up and explore anything you see in the book; zoom out to the visual table of contents and quickly browse though the chapters; reach in and explore data-rich interactive graphics.

A Guided Tour of Our Choice

Al Gore demonstrates the groundbreaking features that make Our Choice the first full-length interactive book of its kind.

.

PHOTOS

AUDIO

VIDEOS

MAPS

INFOGRAPHICS

Contents

• INTRODUCTION
• WHAT GOES UP MUST COME DOWN
• WHERE OUR ENERGY COMES FROM
  AND WHERE IT GOES
• ELECTRICITY FROM THE SUN
• HARVESTING THE WIND
• SOAKING UP GEOTHERMAL ENERGY
• GROWING FUEL
• CARBON CAPTURE AND SEQUESTRATION
• THE NUCLEAR OPTION
• FORESTS
• SOIL
• POPULATION
• LESS IS MORE
• THE SUPER GRID
• CHANGING THE WAY WE THINK
• THE TRUE COST OF CARBON
• POLITICAL OBSTACLES
• THE POWER OF INFORMATION
• OUR CHOICE

Two Years in the Making

In the five years since the publication and release of the landmark book and film An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore has convened more than 30 Solutions Summits around the world, bringing together some of the most acclaimed and forward-thinking experts in renewable energy, conservation, business, and governance in order to find actionable solutions to the environmental. Our Choice presents that incredible body of research, augmented by a revolutionary interface, fresh new content, animations, video, and interactive infographics.