Bakersfield Californian iPad app hits market

One of our tabloid front pages as seen on our new iPad appIt's taken us awhile but a replica edition of The Bakersfield Californian is now available for the iPad. 

And I must say it looks pretty sweet. 

I'm not a big fan of reading replica versions of broadsheet newspapers on computer screens but our weekday tabloid format is well suited for most monitors and is near perfect for larger tablets like the iPad. Those with reasonable eyesight (I'm blind without contacts or glasses) will be able to read text without zooming.  

We're not alone in sharing that enthusiasm. Shortly after learning Apple had finally released the app into the iTunes The cover of our classified front as seen on our iPad appstore, we shared the good news with some of our readers who had been clamoring for an iPad-enabled version. One downloaded the app, then wrote us back a short time later:

"My compliments.  Quick download with % DL indicator, always handy with slower connections.  Great organization.  Crisp text and graphics.  I like how closely it mirrors the print version and the fact you can see the whole page.  Call me old fashion, but that's what I like about a newspaper, one glance and you can see everything.  Good work!"

How's that for a first reaction? We couldn't pay for that kind of applause. 

A week's worth of issues can be read using Apple's trademark carouselThe app is free to download. We'll give people a free taste of the content until mid-July, when we'll begin restricting access to paid subscribers. 

Features include:

• Archived editions viewable by Apple's trademark carousel
• Keyword search
• Various ways of navigating the content: Page by page, via dropdown tabbed navigation or film-strip style. 
• Hotlinked urls or email addresses

Our weekend broadsheet editions are crisp and easy to navigate, but because of their size, you'll find yourself zooming in to read the stories. Sunday's edition includes Parade magazine but no Pages can be viewed in a film-strip stylecolor comics or advertising inserts at this stage. 

Olive Software, which powers the replica edition offered for desktops and laptops, created this app specifically for the iPad. Apple, as you may know, hasn't traditionally played well, or at all, with Flash software so while our Olive replica edition worked perfectly fine on Android tablets like the Samsung Galaxy, Olive's Flash-based tools were unusable on the iPad.

However, when iPad has more than 90 percent of the tablet You can easily find sections using the tabbed navigation or a pulldown that gives you story countsmarket, that's an issue we needed to address. And that's one reason our first iPad app is hitting market a year after the tablet debuted. Not that that's a bad thing. We just got some research indicating there were about 1,000 iPad owners in our market, which seems about right to me based on what I've heard and seen. 

While our iPad app doesn't have some of Olive's cool desktop features -- such as language translation or "email this story" -- there's a lot of punch in this version. I know I'll be using it Stories can be enlarged: one tap to zoom, two taps for a text-only web-style versionregularly, if not daily. 

If you have an iPad, please give it a spin and let us know what you think. If you've been reading us on other tablets, let us know too.