The Nation, America's oldest political newsweekly, announced the launch of eBookNation, a new digital book initiative designed to make The Nation's most notable contributors, past and present, easily available to readers on tablets, smartphones, and computers.

The Huffington Post already has a number of international editions, but now it's coming to Germany. The media group announced that it will be introducing a German version of the HuffPo in conjunction with Tomorrow Focus AG.

Pingdom has introduced a free plugin for WordPress that makes it possible for anyone to add support for Real User Monitoring (RUM) to their WordPress site.

Adobe Systems Incorporated announced a new predictive publishing capability for Adobe Social, which predicts social engagement on individual pieces of content and automatically suggests ideal timing to improve how that content will perform. The initial version offers Facebook integration, and additional social platforms will be added later. Adobe Social, part of Adobe Marketing Cloud, enables marketers to scale social marketing across organizations, and listen and respond to customer conversations.

Germany's online insider magazine deutsche-startups introduced its English version. deutsche-startups.com provides readers with daily news about the German Internet startup scene, offering interviews, featured founders and startups, as well as market trends and development.

Sean O'Neal is the chief marketing officer for Mail Online, the wildly popular online newspaper. Mail Online is regarded as the world's most widely read newspaper site, and turned its first profit in 2012, setting it apart from many of its competitors. EContent talked to O'Neal about some of the secrets to its success, as well as its efforts to grab an American audience.

Today's consumers have ravenous appetites for econtent-enough to earn them the nickname "digital omnivores." While that moniker may already be familiar to many electronic publishers and content providers, they may be surprised to learn that, between 2011 to 2012, the digital omnivore population surged 160%, according to the results of Deloitte's recent "State of the Media Democracy" survey.

In an increasingly challenging publishing world where authors see their prospects fading, Tim Sanders saw opportunity. So he and a team of fellow entrepreneurs recently founded Net Minds, an ambitious new Pasadena, Calif.-based startup that seeks to transform the industry by offering an entirely new model for book writers to bypass traditional and self-publishing.

With its generous use of color and graphics--and its emphasis on shorter news stories--USA TODAY, the self-described "nation's newspaper," made a big splash when it stepped onto the national news scene 30 years ago in September 1982."USA TODAY sort of imagined what web publishing, web content would look like before we knew there was going to be a web," says Alan D. Mutter, a consultant specializing in corporate initiatives and new media ventures involving journalism and technology.

First there was Blogger. Then there was Twitter. Now, somewhere in between those concepts is Medium, the ambitious new creation of co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams, who are responsible for all three social media online publishing tools.Launched recently by Williams' and Stone's Obvious Corp., Medium offers a fresh take on blogging by combining some of the best features already built into competitor sites such as Tumblr, Pinterest, reddit, and Zeen. Medium's design lets users collaborate on works consisting of words and/or images that are published on the site. After reading a work, users can provide feedback to the author, indicate if they liked it, and supplement it with additional content.

While it may be easier than ever to disseminate content to the public via the web, it's not easy to build and monetize your audience and quickly expand a fledgling presence into a thriving publishing empire. Nevertheless, every year a few more brave souls take a leap of faith into the great econtent unknown and manage to make a go of it. Here is their advice to the future digital publishers of the world.

When Newsweek announced last year it would be scrapping its print edition after nearly 80 years and migrating fully to the web, it represented the latest example of what appears to be the print world's approach to the inroads of digital: If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

Creating and disseminating content is getting easier every day. There are countless free and premium tools ready to help you get your information on the web. As the volume of web content continues to grow, however, users are becoming more selective about the sources they rely on-and engaging an audience isn't nearly as easy as putting out content.

In the traditional publishing model, an author with an idea would need to attract the attention of an agent or publisher who would evaluate the idea and the author's credentials and abilities in order to make a decision. Stories abound of frustrated authors who faced rounds of rejection before finding a home for their work-or simply giving up. Some of those rejected had truly brilliant insights and, ultimately, popular prose to offer. Notable among them are Stephen King, George Orwell, and J.K. Rowling.

Brand-named writers, marquee editors, and publications named after founders is nothing new to publishing. Think H.L. Menken, Walter Winchell, Anna Wintour, Helen Gurley Brown, Brill's Content, O, Martha Stewart Living... In some cases, the brand elevates the writer or editor to recognizable status; in others, the publication is purely an extension of an individual's personal brand.With the rise of social media, the professional is personal. Social is fundamentally entwined with media. Yet as it has always been for old media, there is risk for new media too reliant upon the one-man-brand. When a brand is bound to a single personality, there are issues of scale, growth and, of course, the potential for implosion upon the eponymous leader's departure.

There are many different kinds of analytics in today's world of technology and information management: web analytics, predictive analytics, social analytics, etc. If you work closely with a web CMS or an ECM system, you have probably run into the notion of content analytics. But chances are good that no one ever bothered to explain what it is exactly and how one uses it.

One of the great dilemmas facing traditional print media is the idea that the internet makes everyone a publisher-writers are no longer beholden to publishers who guard the gate to large printing and distribution systems. In the mobile age, publishing capabilities literally sit in the palm of your hand--and when you add the ability to develop large networks via social media and substantial self-funding sources, the game has changed completely.

There have been many studies of consumer shopping habits and what drives the purchase of unplanned items. Product displays, sales, placement, packaging, signage: These all play a part in driving purchases, particularly for items that were not part of the reason the consumer went to that store. Emotion and instant gratification play a big part too. But do these same rules apply when it comes to ebook shopping?

This past week, as I was considering what to write for my column, I scored what I call a homerun post. It took off and amassed more than 24,000 page views at last count. I had another that barely broke 200. So it goes in the world of writing on the web.

I'm finally getting around to reading Anna Karenina, thanks to modern technology. Seems odd that a book lover like myself didn't download the year's best-sellers as soon as my iPad showed up, right? Well, here's something even stranger. I used my Amazon app to order the hardcover version of Dennis Lehane's new book, Live by Night, and the paperback version of John Irving's latest, In One Person. It seems a bit sacrilegious, huh?