PadPressed, the WordPress plugin that makes your blog feel like an iPad app when accessed from a native browser, today launches its CoverPad, which takes the “browser to iPad app” concept one iteration further and recreates the paginated feel of Flipboard in the iPad browser with HTML5/CSS3.
Says founder Jason Baptiste on the motivation behind launching the app, “We thought, what’s the craziest thing we could do to push the browser? And this was it.” Baptiste hasn’t actually spoken with anyone at Flipboard about this.
CoverPad features include the Flipboard-esque 3-D page flipping, accelerometer resizing based on landscape or portrait mode, HTML5 caching for faster loading and the ability to add the your blog’s app as a native to the homescreen. All PadPressed integrations now have a full loading screen, removing the browser bar so you virtually can’t tell the difference between your blog’s web page and a native app.
Baptiste tells me that PadPressed is currently profitable, with over 150 customers (including GE and Dictionary.com) using the plugin to make blogs look like iPad apps on the iPad browser. He also tells me that since it first came out three months ago, the New York Times began charging $50,000 up front to license their tablet CMS-viewing technology, versus $50 for the PadPressed plugin which includes both the original app and CoverPad.
CoverPad is PadPressed’s last WordPress-only play, as Baptise wants to transform its core business into a hosted service focusing on easy tablet publishing for all CMS and ebook publishers i.e. if someone accesses your Posterous blog from an iPad it automatically switches to PadPressed.
You know tablets are here to stay when people start offering tablet-specific publishing as a service.
PadPressed is a Wordpress plug-in built to optimize browsing experience for a blog’s readers on an iPad. When a reader visits a blog from their iPad, the blog is automatically formatted to be tablet ready with swipe to advance gestures, accelerometer aware column formatting, touch navigation, and more. PadPressed makes your blog function like a native iPad app.
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