The Financial Times launched on Flipboard, combining its authoritative journalism with Flipboard's personalized reading experience. Flipboard users across all Android and iOS devices will now have access to a broad range of FT content, including news, commentary, analysis, blogs, and video.

LinkedIn says it wants to make it easier for you to stay on top of the news and insights you need. The social network is debuting a refreshed look on LinkedIn Today and introducing channels to make it easier to discover and share professional news and insights.

Pivotshare, a digital media startup, announced an update of its self-service online platform that allows anyone to sell their media directly to their audience. Filmmakers, comedians, speakers, and a host of other media producers may now offer their content on iOS and Android devices. The new platform also offers features such as the ability to buy videos as a download and the capacity for customers to tip or donate as a means of support.

Innovative Interfaces, Inc. (III) and OverDrive, a full-service digital distributor of ebooks, agreed on plans for deep API integration of OverDrive services into III products, including Sierra and Encore Discovery Services Platform. The plans with OverDrive include an option to take the integration beyond digital and into the physical collection.

Impelsys, a provider of electronic content delivery solutions, announced that it has entered into a partnership with DataLore Inc. The two companies will work to offer branded ebookstores to schools and colleges located throughout the Caribbean region.

Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) have long been quietly working behind the scenes to make sure content producers can get their products to consumers. But just like everyone else in the content business, CDNs are facing changes. EContent talked to Charles White, chief revenue officer for Mirror Image about the changes facing his industry.

While the newspaper industry has been embracing the need to charge readers for online content, bloggers have been more hesitant to take the paywall plunge-for good reason. More often than not, bloggers just don't have the audience or name recognition needed to convince readers that their content is worth paying for. But on Jan. 2, 2013, pioneering blogger Andrew Sullivan announced that his popular blog The Dish was leaving The Daily Beast to move to its own subscription-supported model. The media pounced on the news, debating the merits of Sullivan's move. While the discussion continues, it's likely that it will be a while before we know if his bold move will pay off.

Five years ago at the inaugural Intelligent Content Conference, there were 35 attendees. The 2013 ICC event, held in San Francisco on February 7 and 8, drew more than three hundred professionals from the disciplines of digital publishing, content management, content marketing, content strategy, mobile communication, and IT. It's as good a sign as any that corporate publishing-that is, businesses outside of traditional publishing using content to drive revenue growth-has moved to center stage.

Guy Kawasaki probably needs no introduction, but just for the record, he is the author of 12 books, a former chief evangelist for Apple, and an entrepreneur. He is the co-founder of Alltop.com and a founding partner at Garage Technology Ventures. And now he is an "artisanal publisher." Kawasaki teamed up with Shawn Welch to write and publish APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur. Kawasaki is now a bit of an evangelist for "artisanal publishing" and took the time to answer some of EContent's questions about his book and trends in publishing.

The digital age has given way to an open access renaissance - allowing for the free flow of information traditionally bound up in scholarly journals and academic publications. But when an influential analyst said that a European push toward open access could significantly hurt academic publisher Reed Elsevier's bottom line, many STM publishers took a second look at this model.

If you are in the business of digital content-and in this day and age, we all are-you have undoubtedly heard the phrase "content strategy" tossed around lately. You've heard how important strategy is to any content endeavor, but you may still be wondering what that means to you.Content strategy defines how a company is going to use content to meet the needs of a business, guides decisions about content from creation to deletion, and sets benchmarks against which to measure success. Deciding to post a YouTube video is not content strategy, nor are the myriad and growing numbers of features that your CMS offers. A strategy sets a vision for the future. Although it can be revised, it is perennial, not seasonal.

Few, if any, would argue that the internet has dramatically and permanently changed the publishing industry. As print publishers have scrambled to find ways to compete with and, ultimately, embrace the digital world, some are excelling through a combination of traditional and online options. Others, new to publishing, are operating in the online-only world, but everyone is dealing with the age-old problem of circulation building and audience development.

While some speculate that the web unearths more news sources than ever before, research into the actual sources of online news point to a virtual duopoly of wire agency news sources, which some media analysts find alarming. Is the marked decline in original reporting a threat to the business model of online news sites or a necessary part of their financial survival?

As digitized content disperses, publishing brands and content wares splinter across countless platforms, devices, feeds, and syndication venues; the business and editorial infrastructure beneath it all, is fragmenting and reassembling just as quickly. The business models, like the content, are flying everywhere and the trick is to keep the overall vision on target, not just cope with content shrapnel.

In the Old Economy, those who owned the exclusive rights to a product or service could become very wealthy. Today the tables have turned; it’s openness and the free availability of good ideas that drive value. The mindset of not only the content consumer is shifting, but also that of vendors and even content providers, which seek to find ways to profit from the new (digital) economy. peggy anne salz

Lately, I've been listening to a lot of Marc Maron's WTF. It makes for fascinating conversations, but it's also interesting from an econtent perspective. Maron has used this podcast to reach a whole new generation of fans; he has parlayed this connection into new opportunities in TV and beyond. More importantly, he's not the only comedian taking his act straight to fans.

The web: It's everywhere. It's a modern miracle. An amazing technological advancement that, when combined with mobile devices and wireless broadband, provides humanity with the promise of a more equitable dispersement of information and wealth...err, hypothetically. Despite the ubiquity of technology and the widespread availability of the mobile web, there are many places in the world where information critical to survival isn't available in a way that's relevant to those who need it. But it doesn't have to be that way. All that's needed is an understanding of the actual problems in need of solving.

I'm in the process of reading Walter Isaacson's excellent biography of the contradictory and unpredictable man that was Steve Jobs. Isaacson wrote that in 2010, wracked with cancer, Jobs was on a mission to accomplish as much as he could before he died-and to that end he turned his keen attention to journalism.

Being the owner of two of the most important e-readers on the market puts me in a unique position to speak to the best and the worst of what e-readers have to offer. In my view, the Kindle - iPad comparisons I have read are usually based on a rather arrogant assumption: that reading books is, somehow, a more worthwhile intellectual pursuit than magazines, newspapers, or other content sources.

I am addicted to National Public Radio (NPR). Ask anyone here at the EContent office: there is a near-constant stream of talk-radio coming from my desk. It always gets me thinking, but one day, during a pledge drive, I heard a particularly interesting claim: NPR is one of the few news outlets continuing to grow. Since we here at EContent spend a lot of time thinking and writing about the fee vs. free debate, I couldn't help but wonder what member-supported NPR was doing so right that they convinced listeners to voluntarily give them money for what is essentially a free service.