HP is helping new apps touch down on your HP TouchPad tablet with a digital magazine called Pivot. Pivot is installed on all TouchPads and will feed you news and reviews on apps for the webOS device.
The TouchPad gets apps from the webOS App Catalog. There won't be anywhere near as many apps for this new platform as there are for the iPhone, iPad or Android, so Pivot will both showcase apps and attract developers by making it more likely they'll get attention.
The digital magazine will cover apps and the developers behind them in "visually driven editorial pieces, columns from notable guest writers sharing their perspectives on digital culture, feature stories focused on applications around specific topics, and in-depth reviews". It will automatically update on a monthly basis.
Monthly?! We can't wait a month for new stuff! If only there was a place that featured news, stories, visuals and in-depth reviews of the latest technology that updated constantly. Oh wait, there is: you're looking at it.
Yes, we're sceptical about these platform-specific magazines: why take the best bits of the Web and cram them into a box with all the restrictions of old-fashioned print media? We're not questioning the quality of publications such as Pivot or the iPad magazine Project, but the format itself.
Still, we applaud the idea of promoting apps through the device itself. Good stuff, HP. Let's hope other tablet and smart phone manufacturers take a leaf out of HP's magazine. App discovery is woefully poor in Apple's iTunes App Store -- and don't get us started on the Android Market.
The TouchPad is a nifty little tablet, with a great 9.7-inch screen, Flash support and decent multi-tasking.
Pivot will be published in English, French, German and Spanish. Sacre bleu, mein gott and ¡Qué día más espléndido! It will appear on 1 July, the day the TouchPad goes on sale, pushed over the air to all HP TouchPad owners.
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