San Francisco startup Tall Chair said it has just dramatically lowered the barrier to creating cool iPad books with a new platform called Active Reader.
Tall Chaira4ぎa4г technology was already used to create the in-progress graphic novel Operation Ajax, which I was quite impressed by when it launched at the end of last year. It was built around a traditional graphic novel, but livened up with animations and supplemental content like character biographies.
Now Tall Chair is making the technology available for any developer or designer to purchase, so they can build apps around graphic novels, cookbooks, textbooks, or any other book with a strong visual component.
Active Reader is built on top of the Unity platform for creating high-end games in the Web browser. Chief executive Dan Brazelton said Unity itself has been used to create iPad books in the past, but Tall Chair is built specifically for that purpose. Even more importantly, it doesna4ぎa4д require any coding. That means designers or even authors can build the apps themselves, rather than handing their ideas over to a team of programmers.
Brazelton and his team demonstrated Active Reader for me earlier this week. Ia4ぎa4m afraid that my impression is a bit useless, since I dona4ぎa4д use app development or design tools, but I can say that while I watched, the company took a few different images and created an animation of a character being sucked into a dimensional portal (or something). It wasna4ぎa4д quite as easy as making a few clicks and hitting publish, but it looked doable for a non-programmer.
Therea4ぎa4г also a free Active Reader iPad application, which simplifies the testing process by allowing customers to quickly upload and view the latest version of their app. Brazelton said the app is already one of the top 50 book applications in the Apple App Store.
Active Reader itself will cost $2,500 per user. For professional developers and designers, that should be very affordable, Brazelton said, because the development costs on high-end textbook apps can run $20,000 or $30,000. Brazelton said he has plans for new products and pricing levels that could make it even more affordable.
a4ぎAThis is 10 percent of the effort that it took to make an interactive book before,a4ぎ he said. a4ぎAOur goal over the next year is to make that another order of magnitude easier.a4ぎ
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Companies: Tall Chair
People: Dan Brazelton
Companies: Tall Chair
People: Dan Brazelton
Anthony is a senior editor at VentureBeat, as well as its reporter on media, advertising, and social networks. Before joining the site in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. (All story pitches should also be sent to tips@venturebeat.com) You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.
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