• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, October 25, 2012

In addition to publishing magazines, magazine publishers have a full-time job keeping up with new versions of mobile operating systems. Condé Nast has announced plans to launch new magazine apps optimized for Microsoft’s new Windows 8 operating system, while Bonnier has already launched apps for a number of titles.
 
Condé Nast announced that it will deliver 21 apps for Windows 8 coinciding with the launch of the operating system, and promised additional content rolling out through the first half of 2013. To begin with, the company is offering complimentary sampler editions containing story highlights from the November issues of Allure, Architectural Digest, Bon Appétit, Brides, Condé Nast Traveler, Golf Digest, Glamour, GQ, Lucky, Self, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue and Wired.

The sampler editions will be updated monthly in December, January and February. Regular app subscriptions for all 14 digital editions of Condé Nast’s titles will be available for purchase through the Next Issue Media app in coming months.

In addition, Condé Nast is offering themed special editions of popular titles for $6.99 a piece, featuring archival content from Domino, Glamour, Lucky, Self and Vanity Fair. These will be followed later this year by themed special editions from GQ, Gourmet, Vogue, Wired and The New Yorker. Also on offer are Windows 8 apps for Epicurious and Fashion Hazard, the publisher’s popular style-focused casual game.

Bonnier boasted that Windows 8 apps for 16 of its biggest titles are already available for purchase through the Windows store, including Popular Science, Parenting, Saveur, American Photo, Field & Stream, Flying, Outdoor Life, Popular Photography, and Sound + Vision, as well as its TransWorld sports titles.
 
Cooking Light Offers Samples by Subscription
 
Cooking Light has partnered with CraveBox to deliver regular monthly samples of products from brands which advertise in the magazine to subscribers, who can sign up to receive the branded sample boxes for around $10 per month, according to Ad Age. Contents in the first Cooking Light-branded CraveBox include Dole fruit, Green Mountain Coffee, and spices from McCormick, Ad Age reports. CraveBox hopes to form similar partnerships with other magazines.
 
RDA Folds Healthy Cooking into Taste of Home
 
Reader’s Digest Association will no longer publish Healthy Cooking as a stand-alone print magazine, but fold it into Taste of Home, which Healthy Cooking’s 516,000 subscribers will now receive instead. The last issue of Healthy Cooking will appear in December. This is not the first shakeup in RDA’s cooking titles: last year the company sold Every Day With Rachael Ray to Meredith Corp.
 
Departures Launches Departures Home + Design
 
American Express Publishing is continuing its strategy of brand extensions with a new special edition of Departures Home + Design, which will appear in May 2013, when it will be delivered along with the May/June issue of the magazine. Departures Home + Design will have a circulation of 500,000, and will target consumers and designers in design hot spots nationwide.

Departures Editor in Chief Richard David Story explained: “This is definitely not a magazine about mansions -- what a constricted old-fashioned notion of high-end living. Rather, it will bring that very real and very Departures combination of access, real style, and super service to the world of home and design.” According to AmEx, Departures’ audience consists of over a million Platinum Card and Centurion members, with an average household income of $619,000, and an average of two homes.
 
Time Relaunches Web Site with Responsive Design
 
Time has relaunched its Web site, Time.com, with responsive design technology that should increase its compatibility with a wide range of devices, according to Folio:. Among other goals, the move is intended to make the site more welcoming to mobile users, who account for a growing proportion of visitors to the site -- especially users who are referred via social media accessed through mobile devices. As part of the revamp, Time is nixing its separate mobile Web site.