As more people look for news on smartphones and tablets, the Standard-Examiner has responded with an array of apps and mobile-optimized websites.
A dozen apps customized for phone and tablet operating systems are in varying stages of operation and development.
Seven of those are available for free download today in the Apple, Android and BlackBerry markets. The other five are planned to become available over the next two months.
It's not too hard to explain why the Standard-Examiner has mobile on its mind.
Our readers and advertisers do, too, as evidenced by growing sales of iPhones, Android phones, iPads and Android-based tablets. Name a platform our readers are using, and we have an app or optimized website or edition for it, or hope to soon.
Do you have a Kindle or a Kindle Fire? Expect to see the Standard-Examiner there in coming months as well.
One trend of discussion at digital think tanks is that a newspaper today is more than a business and a civic institution. It is an algorithm a community can use for solving problems, writes Dominic Basulto, a digital-innovation thinker at Electric Artists in New York City.
As this algorithm evolves under the buffeting winds of advancing technologies, newspaper content once contained in the printed format is being carved out for consumption on mobile devices, Basulto writes.
This process already has a buzzword: appification.
"Appification promises to be the major force reshaping media in general and news media in particular during 2012," author Nicholas Carr wrote for the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard.
"The influence will be exerted directly, through a proliferation of specialized media apps, as well as indirectly, through changes in consumer attitudes, expectations and purchasing habits."
The Standard-Examiner started appification in 2009 with classified ad apps for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry, followed in late 2011 with general news apps for iPhone and Android.
To mark the new year, we unveiled our Standard-Examiner for iPad app. And just last week, our Utah Adventures iPhone app, dedicated to outdoor activities in the region, appeared in the Apple iTunes download store.
Users of the apps can do everything from calling up animated weather radar maps to checking the latest local breaking news to seeing Cal Grondahl's editorial cartoons. Social media tools make it easy to share items on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms.
The Standard-Examiner mobile-optimized website at m.standard.net is a good place to start for those who haven't downloaded the apps. It has much of the same content and is designed to run on most mobile operating systems, whether for smartphones or tablets.
Next up: Our tablet edition of the Standard-Examiner ePaper. It's intended for tablet owners who enjoy the replica experience of the printed newspaper edition, optimized for online reading.
Mark Shenefelt is online general manager of the Standard-Examiner. He can be reached at 801-625-4251 or mshenefelt@standard.net.
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