156 things karthiksetty likes Explore more popular stuff on Tumblr →

Wow. This is amazing. It’s only been a year since we founded 6Wunderkinder and guess what? We’ve hit our first one million users within 275 days. The icing on the cake? We’ve hit this number sooner than companies like Evernote, Twitter and Foursquare did. We couldn’t be happier. We knew at the very beginning that Wunderkit – a revolutionary, truly original take on productivity – would take at least a year of development, but we wanted to get something out right away.

Here are the annual prices of a variety of services, all of which allow users to access the service from the web and across multiple devices with a single unified subscription. See if you can pick out which one is the outlier:

As Frédéric Filloux and others have pointed out, The New York Times pricing seems designed not to get people to subscribe digitally, but rather to discourage existing subscribers from cancelling their print subscriptions. I think the chart above validates that view: they apparently have no interest in competing for digital-only dollars. 

Does The Times really think the mass audience is going to decide their $455/year is better spent on The Times rather than getting 20+ free articles/month from The Times plus The Wall Street Journal ($207/year) plus The Economist ($110/year) plus say The Daily ($39/year) for good measure, and still having ~$100 left over each year?

Worse, their payment plans are more complicated than any of the others listed.  John Gruber has assessed the numerous drawbacks of payment complexity in some detail.

Heck, even the URL for their payment plans is more complicated than anyone else’s: http://www.nytimes.com/subscriptions/Multiproduct/lp0145.html

Here’s what The Times doesn’t seem to get: sooner or later readers are going to cancel their print subscriptions and go digital. The Times’ pricing scheme is only going to encourage them to go with someone else’s digital. 

I don’t like to make predictions, but I have a hard time imagining their current “pay labyrinth” scheme even lasting til the end of the year. I sure hope it doesn’t last long. It’s sad that instead of competing for the future by pricing for the digital age, The Times has opted to fight an inevitably doomed battle to hold on to the past.

Some people have inquired about why I used the New York Times most expensive plan. As described in the original piece, this is a comparison of prices for full multi-device access. For instance, I used Rhapsody’s $14.99 plan which allows 3 devices (e.g. iPhone & iPad), as opposed to their $9.99 plan that allows only one. I think that’s a fair apples-to-apples comparison of how much different providers are asking for full access. Though in case there was any doubt how out of line The Times’ pricing is, even their “NYTimes.com + Tablet App” (i.e. no phone app access) is still 25% higher than the Wall Street Journal’s all access plan.

I’ve also added the explicit names of each subscription plan below for more clarity, as well as corrected the annual Dropbox price.

• Google - Apps for Business: $50/year
• MobileMe - Individual: $99/year
• Dropbox - Pro 50: $99/year
• Pandora - One: $36/year
• SiriusXM - Internet Radio: $12.95/month
• Rhapsody - Premier Plus: $14.99/month
• Amazon - Prime: $79/year
• Netflix - Unlimited Plan, No DVDs: $7.99/month
• Hulu - Plus: $7.99/month
• The Economist - Digital Subscription: $110/year
• The Wall Street Journal - Digital Plus: $3.99/week
• The New York Times - All Digital Access: $35/4 weeks

When the iPad 2 was announced, like most people, the part that I was most intrigued by was the new Smart Cover. I had nearly convinced myself it was reason enough to upgrade, but eventually calmed down and figured it would be wise to wait for the rumored Retina Display. I wondered though, if it would somehow be possible to retrofit the original iPad to utilize the Smart Cover. Turns out, it’s actually pretty simple. 

Before ever seeing a Smart Cover in person, I figured this hack might need to be much more involved, perhaps even needing a 3D printed part that would interact with the hinge in some way. After getting the cover in the mail on Friday, I realized that the solution could be much simpler. The flat edge of the iPad affords a perfect area to place a few thin magnets, and the hinge on the Smart Cover can lay flush across them. Coincidentally, the dimensions just happen to work out, and the right edge of the cover lines up nicely with the right side of the iPad. 

I purchased several different types of rare earth magnets from K&J Magnetics. I ended up using block magnets, 3/8” x 3/16” x 1/32” (found here). These particular dimensions work nicely because they sit flush on the iPads edge. I wonder, however, if the round equivalent might feel a little nicer (no sharp edges). Shipping ended up costing more than the magnets themselves so if you are ordering try to team up with some friends. 

To place the magnets, I stuck them first to the magnetized hinge of the Smart Cover. I slid them around until they became locked into a position. This ended being asymmetrical, but I didn’t mind. I then lined up the cover with the iPad and used masking tape to mark where the magnets should be placed. I wanted this to be a somewhat permanent solution, so I used super glue to affix the magnets to the iPad. If you are not so daring, or want to test it out to make sure you like it, just use transparent tape. Even though the super glue keeps the magnets secure and in place, they are actually pretty easy to remove by just “chipping” them off with a flathead screwdriver and a very light tap of the hammer. 

All in all, I am pleased with how it turned out. The biggest downside is not being able to have the iPad automatically turn on when the cover opens (as in the iPad 2), but this will hopefully tide me over until the next revision.

Check out the video below (or on Vimeo) to see it in action.

Because the primary input method of the iPad is a single piece of multitouch glass, developers have incredible flexibility to design unique user interfaces. It’s hard to appreciate the variety of UIs though, since turning the screen off removes virtually all evidence of them. To spotlight these differences, I looked at the only fragments that remain from using an app: fingerprints.

My method involved cleaning the iPad’s surface with a microfiber cloth, using an app for a short amount of time, then turning the screen off. Next, I photographed the iPad, positioning a light source and some black matte board to limit distracting reflections. I then brought the photographs into Adobe Illustrator, and created vectors of the iPad and the fingerprints to emphasize the data.

Click the image for a closeup:

Notes:

In Safari, I tended to hold the iPad with my left hand and scroll with my right index finger towards the center of the screen. I realized this allowed for close proximity when clicking on links. When reading something of greater length, I usually held the the iPad with both hands and scrolled with my thumbs.

In Mail, I typically held the iPad with both hands in order to thumb-scroll both the email list and the content.

In Fruit Ninja, there were few, if any, static prints. Even the menu items are selected by slashing your finger across them.

The bottom menu is essential to Fieldrunners; most actions start from there.

If you know of other iPad apps with unique interfaces, please let me know.