The Speccie might have been started in the early 19th century but it is, as far as Guido knows, the first British magazine to become available on that 21st century icon the iPhone.
The Speccie App is available via iTunes (link) and gives seven days access for 59p.
This is the future of journalism, the sooner the mediasaurs grasp this truth the more likely they are to survive into the future.
You can’t say you have not been warned…
Another Twittish Tweet from Kerry McCarthy | BBC
What’s the Point of Our Anti-Business Secretary? | Ruth Porter
HuffPo Hiring Pro-Iranian Mehdi “Act of Desperation” | Fox News
Krugman is Seductive, Simplistic and Unrealistic | Jeremy Warner
Lower Taxes, Higher Growth, the Statistical Evidence | CPS
Bash the Unions, Gatecrash the Quangos | ConservativeHome
I Told You So: Euro is Doomed | Douglas Carswell
PM Speaks for the Nation When Bashing Balls | Quentin Letts
Time for an Alliance | Dan Hannan
Farage’s Plan | ConservativeHome
Guardian Open News is a Failure | Heather Brooke
Balls Calls for Deeper Cuts | Speccie
Lessons from the Thirties | CPS
PMQs Idiots | Harry Cole
Jon Cruddas is Not the Messiah | Dan Hodges
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Lord Lamont told ITV News…
“I think the PM is just human and Ed Balls is a pretty irritating person”
But you can already access their website on your iPhone for free – so why pay for their “app”?
Maybe there is some truth in the rumour about them paywalling their website…?
The site is pay-walled for the magazine already.
most people are happy to browse for free but not serious enough to pay
online newspapers used to charge but then went free because presumably the advertising revenue was better
if I’m paying I want a hard copy
Spot on
well that’s the speccie fucked then
pay for it’s content online or through an app ?
no chance
job done Fraser Nelson madazine fucked
Suggest you buy the New Statesman.
You get a good laugh and if used for the lavatorial purpose it is most fit for it works out as a free read
validaiton of the creditation
WTF does that mean?
That has been done very discreetly. It seems that the current magazine issue is paywalled but last weeks’ articles (or at least some of them) are online. Subtle but probaly effective.
Coffeehouse blog is still free, which is why I hardly noticed what they had done.
WTF?
Guido_Boulton-Burley – are you using an iPhone perchance? Touch screen technology, you got to love it…
I and many others too, never received last week’s dead-tree subscription copy of the Specie. This weeks hasn’t arrived yet either! My 2 year subscription has been extended so many times it looks like lasting 5 years at the current rate of mishandling and they don’t acknowledge emailed complaints any more. Could it be that they are about to go arse up?
Prefer just loading an rrs feed reader and pointing google alerts at it for nout.
I am looking for an investment of £100,000 for a 30% share in my company that has invented a telescopic net specifically designed for fishig dead dogs from the canal following the Labour Governments introduction of canine chip & pin
The six puppies and a brick in a plastic bag will not have been ‘chipped’. Although DNA analysis might lead plod to the owner of the biyatch.
Us too!
We’re doing very well, thank you.
I wonder if the introduction of next-gen RFID chips in dogs might provide a government with useful information regarding the feasibility of tracking such chips in real time using temporary ad hoc networked detectors, and if so what such a government might do with such information.
That’s what I’m wondering, that is.
RFID next gen chips in dogs? I thought that they were developing that as
ID Card Version 2/upgrade for use in humans?
If you’ve nothing to hide…
Why is it the future? Who wants to sit on the bog looking at a tiny phone screen? You can’t wipe your arse with it either.
You obviously don’t visit the same sites as I do.
Yeah but you can get porn on it.
And he’s not called Steve Jobbies for nothing.
And you can grab and stretch and expand it without little blue pills.
iSavedtheworld …
… and will squeeze out a hung parliament thanks to postal votes and an electoral reform referendum for introducing ‘alternative vote’ backed by the libdems.
PS I can see the pills I’m on
Guido, please remove that fucking tasteless scumbag above (1&2)
Piss off you Labour Troll, go and fill one of the many empty seats at your fucking New Nazi Party conference.
DICKHEAD!
Maybe he is already. The speaches are so fucking boring he’s turned to his iphone for some rightwing blogging fun.
Are you bored with the Noel Edmonds app already?
Live fatty chat with Tom Watson 3.30pm The Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6852310.ece
Q: When you go for the Dominos 2 for 1 offo what combo do you order?
Q: how heavy are you and where can one purchase 46″ waist trousers
Q; did you have to get your glasses altered to fit on your unusually fat head?
Can you donate your skids to the circus? I hear they need a new tent.
When you get a stiffie do you look like a letter ‘Q’?
Have you been a cúnt all your life or since you joined the Labour party and wanted to fit in?
Does the Speccie say which type of tranquilisers Mad Gordo is addicted to?
Largactil, apparently. There are unfortunate side effects though. That’s probably why he does that weird gaping jaw thing.
Something hallucinogenic obviously.
The IPhone is ok for single taskers, those who can do more than one thing at once prefer Android. Or want to swap memory sticks. Or want to copy songs to other phones/PCs via bluetooth. Or want to change their own battery. Its rather like comparing DOS with Windows, or for something more appropriate here Bruin with Maggie.
Wrong: Jailbreak your iphone.
ensure you don’t download Jailbait for the iphone as that’s something very different which will land you in the next cell to Roman Polanski
At least that’s better than being landed in the same cell as the wee perv.
Got that covered
Phil Lynott was a bit Polanski in his day too, but that’s before paedophilia was bad.
You once sang there will be a jailbreak somewhere in this town? Wouldn’t it be at the jail? I’ve been wanting to ask you that question for 20 odd years
If they dug a tunnel though – theoretically it could exit anywhere in the town?
If the cons were escaping through a tunnel – theoretically that could exit anywhere in town, depending on how long it was?
bloody iphone apps…. when did tying your content down to 1 manufacturer/device be the future of anything?
Yeah. Fucking stupid idea.
Quite so. The Nokia E90 is the way forward, or would be if Nokia still made it.
Nokia. Ahhhh, well now that *is* a name from the past…
Its not going to get far by advertising How To Save the Labour Party.
I’d rather spend my 59p on a Mars Bar.
59p for a mars bar?
I’d expect it to come ready-inserted for that price.
Its a big one, Frank.
I’ve just been out on a 30 mile mountain bike jaunt and I’m starving.
more of a marathon man myself – that’s like a health food.
I wonder when I’ll start calling a marathon a snickers? Anyone else do that, or am I the only looney on this bus?
Its still a Marathon in THIS house, Frank.
Also, WTF happened to Aztec bars? They were the business.
I’m not sure about Opal Fruits though. See, *ordinary* opal fruits are obviously still Opal Fruits, not starburst, but what about all the *new* flavoured Opal Fruits? They didnt’ even exist when opal fruits were really opal fruits, yet I can’t call ordinary opal fruits opal fruits, and re-flavoured ones starburst, can I? That would be absurd.
Always was and always will be a Marathon bar.
Spot the ex-Mr.Philbin in this advert.
I believe that the Snickers started in America.
What happened to wagon wheels and curly wurlys?
Bring back Spangles “Olde English” variety .. That’s what I say ..
Talk about saving the Labour Party.Well it won’t be that tosser Austin Mitchell writing about ‘oop north and darn sarf in Times today.This ex-Sociologist who has been the MP for Great Grimsby (there’s nothing great about Grimsby) for some 32 years slagging off ‘London and the fat South’.He was referring to the LibDums Mansion Tax. Also slagging off Brighton. He’s typical of chippie Northern MPs who avail of everything the South has to offer during the week,claiming huge expenses,living in posh places most Southerners can only dream of,quaffing and stuffing themselves in the 19 HOC subsidiised restaurants then bumming off back ooop north to slag us offf.
Tha rayt, lad
Austin Mitchell was a prize twat when he was presenting “Look North” years ago .. since then he’s just become richer, fatter & more pompous ..
Mars bars
He-he-he-he-he! (Snickers) ;-P
Fooking great pork pie.
Show us your snickers
Haven’t got a mobile phone. Have never had one, and am never likely to. Nasty prissy little things. Bollocks to this crap technology which is no more than a fashion statement for many people – and before the rest of you condemn me to the dark ages – you can all fuck off.
You’re condemned to the Dark Ages.
Is your real name James Gordon Brown, jez?
They’re useful for calling the aa or rac if your car breaks down, and for finding your missus if you have to pick her up from the shops or a concert etc and use the “warmer….colder…nearly there….wave your hand so I can see you…” scenario.
Texting’s useful if you want to arrange to see your friends/family but can’t be arsed to talk to them at the time.
Other than that you don’t need one.
Car breakdowns though; I’d get/keep a mobile even if that was the only reason, especially for the wife.
Andy for reading this blog on the bog.
Y A W N – oh, sorry – did someone say something? oh yeah, iphone….doesn’t bother me as I don’t have a mobile phone.
I subscribe to several sites already but the Speccy ain’t going to be one of them…
If you ever went subs only Guido, I’d pay – not too much mind…that is, if you’d have me…
Yeah, and if this conversation had taken place 10 years ago you’d have been one of the luddites telling everyone how you’ll never read stuff on a PC, too.
I’m only a semi-Luddite, Court! Mind you, I don’t nuke my food either….
What’s an iPhone?
dunno – who is Gazza?
What is a T shirt?
Please can someone inform me what, exactly , an i-phone is.
They say that an Apple a day keeps the doctor away
A clean nappy a day makes Gordon feel gay.
Has pot-bellied Balls joined the allah akhbar brigade?
“Ed Balls spends £3m on office makeover… including massage room and Muslim prayer area”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1216583/Ed-Balls-spends-3m-office-makeover–including-massage-room-Muslim-prayer-area.html#ixzz0SP7RV97d
He does look like David Brent, doesn’t he? This office makeover sounds highly Brentish. I picture some sort of complicated, plastic-and-chrome coffee machine that takes your money and squirts scalding brown sludge.
It is for when the fucking rag heads take over.
“Massage room?!” FFS!
unreal isn’t it? worked all my life and these bastards live like kings at my expense. and anytime someone says cutting taxes up pops cocksucker brown or princess toynbee “that means cutting schools and hospitals” – cretins the lot of them.
Plenty of us south of Watford feel the same as you.
It was all done, for the benefit of that unforgettable Muslim Minister “whatsisname”, on his frequent visits.
It’s time that MI5 kept a close eye on Balls
58p too much.
Altogether now:
Tell us how they’re going to make it pay
Make it pay
Make it pay
Tell us how they’re going to make it pay
When folk won’t pay for on-line.
What are the aerodynamics of the iPhone and what is the hit to kill ratio? Just asking.
Only advertsing types, people in meeja and the arts use the poncey iphone – Grauniad readers, in other words.
Nice to play with for half an hour but soon gets boring
I’m a Windows Mobile man myself. If you want boring mate, Bill Gates can deliver.
Mate of mine – Ben! how r u doing, ponce! – had one of those iphones, and naturally had a BMW 5 to go with it. Now, the interesting thing is that the heater ducts leading to the rear seats are *exactly* the same size, plus maybe half a mill, as an iphone. So he leaves it lying around on the floor – probably fell out of his pocket in a dogging session – and loses it. Takes him a week to figure out it has slid down the duct and is somewhere deep inside the chassis of the car….
Today’s question – how did I get it out for him? Answers on a postcard.
You used an arrow with a rubber suction cup on the end.
Either that, or a hand grenade.
All BMW drivers are wankers. And Audi drivers.
And Jeremy Clarkson.
You sent a Nokia down to flush it out for the Jack Russells?
Nope.
Daft Idea. It’s got even less future than Gordon.
What looks cooler, sitting on a train with a copy of the spectator making knowing grins and the odd chuclkle or squinting and leering at your mobile phone ?
What’s a train?
Rod Liddle will be even Liddler.
They need to be deleted as you have not validated your creditation yet.
future of journalism? who’s going to pay 59p/week when they can get the info for free elsewhere?
Being a luddite when it comes to phones I don’t have an iphone, just a 10 year old nokia brick, so I don’t need an “app”, I just use my computer/telly instead and find things for free via google/sky/bbc etc, and if there’s news I want while away from my computer/telly then I just use the “I’m not that fucking sad, it’s not going to kill me to find this out in a couple of hours’ time” argument and wait until I get home and watch the telly or use my computer.
I think Gordon is dreamy.
I think you are looking at him through rose-tinted spectacles.
That’s “dreamy” as in “nightmarish”, yes?
As I told my young wife I once saw you eat a plastic pie. I can understand you and Gordon getting on well.
Brown told Mandelson he would quit as PM unless Mandy stopped the media asking questions about his mental health, pill-taking etc
Hence Mandy out and about in the stdios today propping Brown up for just a bit longer.
Not interested.
Not only do I not own an iphone or any other type of phone I have never even used a computer.
I get all the news I need live and direct from the Town Crier on my monthly visit to the village green.
“This is the future of journalism”
Well having just wasted 59p I can confirm the future has not yet arrived.
It will take over 7 days for most of the articles to download.
If this was the norm and someone had just come up with the idea of growing trees to then chop down and pulp prior to covering the result with ink you would my friends be looking at the investment opportunity of the century.
I already subscribe to the magazine.
If I want to read the content on my phone why should I pay again?
You don’t – you just need your special access code
It doesn’t say that anywhere in the App Store blurb.
I used to buy the Spectator, but under Matthew d’Ancona it became too business orientated and also, in sharp contrast to Boris J., it ceased to be value for money–very often over the last couple of years it barely ran to 50 pages. So I started to read it in the library after work;you really only need to read the best three or four articles and some of the reviews.
But I only use it (The Spectator) secondhand to wipe my arse – has Steve Jobs got an app for THAT too?
I bought it after reading your post, Guido, but it’s not that user-friendly. It hasn’t been reformatted for an iPhone’s screen and it’s very slow to load.
GF says..This is the future of journalism, the sooner the mediasaurs grasp this truth the more likely they are to survive into the future.
And so the tournament continues…. in the blue corner “the Blogs fav” and, in the red (haw haw) the dead tree press.
Grudge fights are always the best..
As others have said, the Speccie is now not worth buying just to read the few really good bits: Charles Moore, Tamzin Lightwater, Martin Van der Weyer on business, Lloyd Evans on theatre, Simon Hoggart’s wine offers, Mary Kenny. Otherwise it’s just ephemeral Cameroonie-wonk editorial cogitations, socially pretentious mwah-mwah candy floss (e.g. that useless ‘Diary’), Rod Liddle being predictable about muslims, rather tired columnists, and many pages of lux-ads. I’m not paying for that, and certainly not online.
The bits they put out for ‘hoi polloi’ a week late show how quickly the material seems dated. Not enough timeless good writing – they should have kept Paul Johnson on. He knows how to write for a magazine.
They actually got quite a bit of website-traffic from the casually browsing visitor.
No longer.
I think the Speccie has lost the plot, not found it.
The Spectator iPhone app is a dud. It doesn’t cache any data, if you leave the app after reading a page, you have to download it all again next time you visit. Basically, the app only works if you’re connected to wifi or 3G.
It’s also just a copy of the paper, with no real digital features like bookmarking or search.
Simply dreadful.
The Speccie app is crap.
They should have licensed the Independent’s iphone app, which is an excellent means of delivering content, better than the Telegraph, NYT, Wall Street Journal or FTs efforts.
Which is a tragedy, since the Indy has bugger-all content and merely reproduces AP press releases, NZ Herald articles and ludicrous ‘top 10′ lists that don’t even work on the iphone….
[...] The Spectator in the palm of your hand Thursday, October 1st, 2009 I WAS intrigued by a post by Guido on the new Spectator iPhone application, so I bought it. Fifty-nine pence gives you complete access [...]