Main-Echo's iPad app is immediately available in the iTunes store. This is the first app that combines both mobile newspaper contents and e-paper editions in just one application. It is based on the Newsreader by ppi Media, a company of manroland.

What's so special about ppi's Newsreader is its workflow. The design of the iPad app is defined once during the project phase in line with publishers' wishes and their corporate identity. This layout is then used as a template for all mobile newspaper editions. The app does not require any additional manual customizing of the layout. Contents are media-specific formated fully automatically.

Content first, medium second
"This app is ideally integrated in the production processes for the editorial department and prepress technology," says Ulrich Eymann, Managing Director of the publishing and printing house Main-Echo GmbH & Co. KG. The Newsreader is able to import and display content via an XML over HTTP interface. Apart from editorial articles, this content consists of images, videos, animations and graphics. Creating and transmitting layout information, as is done by apps for magazines with long deadlines and little time-sensitive content, is no longer required. The news is automatically displayed based on the layout defined during the project phase, length of the articles and image dimensions.

Fast display of ads
In both this mobile content and its e-paper, Main-Echo offers the latest news from the Main-Echo as well as its local editions, Bote vom Untermain, Lohrer Echo and Wertheimer Zeitung, all supplemented by videos and images, so as to create an attractive digital advertising environment for local and national advertising customers. Even the ppi Newsreader Basic Package offers numerous possibilities for placing ads. A link to ppi's combined ad solution, AdX, that supports, for example, Mobile Ad Serving, or interfaces to ppi's multimedia editorial solution, Content-X, can be added as modules in the Premium Package. The ppi Newsreader Premium Package also offers customized GUIs and navigation structures, content integration, online reporting as well as enhanced PDFs for native tablet views in the PDF version of the newspaper.