DC Comics--home to pop culture icons Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman (and lesser-known characters like Jonah Hex and The Losers)--announced Wednesday that it would be distributing its comics digitally in a deal that resembles those of its competitors, but with some unique twists.

The publisher has partnered with ComiXology and the PlayStation Network to digitally distribute its comic books on Apple iOS devices and on all PlayStation Portable devices. ComiXology has now locked down distribution deals with more than 30 comics publishers, including the "big two" of Marvel Comics and DC, as well as Boom Studios, Image Comics, and Slave Labor Graphics.

DC Comics also announced that the company would be digitally publishing the 26-issue comic book limited series Justice League: Generation Lost simultaneously through the ComiXology app and in stores, known in the industry as a "day and date" release. Although Marvel announced plans for a day-and-date release of The Invincible Iron Man Annual No. 1, it won't be published until Wednesday, June 30.

The ComiXology app offers the same smooth reading experience as detailed for the Marvel app. The page movement is smooth; auto-zooming on panels makes reading them easier while preventing yourself from reading ahead; and the store puts relevant details like the names of the comics' creators and a story synopsis easily at hand.

Marvel also has a different pricing scheme than DC Comics does for its day-and-date release (the two are gistoric rivals going back to Marvel's reinvention of the superhero in the 1960s). The paper version of the Iron Man annual, which will tell the "unknown origin" of the classic Iron Man villain The Mandarin, will be 80 pages long and retail for $4.99. The digital version of the comic, available from Marvel's ComiXology-based app, will be split into thirds. Each one will be available on June 30, but each will cost $1.99, the standard price for one of Marvel's digitally distributed comics.

DC's Generation Lost is available in the app for the same price as the paper copy, $2.99. Meanwhile, the three already published issues of Justice League: Generation Lost are available for $1.99, the price of most comics DC has published through the app. These include superhero titles as well as titles like The Sandman, written by uber-popular author Neil Gaiman; Bill Willingham's Fables, about characters from nursery rhymes and the fables of myth coming to life; and Tiny Titans, aimed at kids. A smattering of comics has been made available at 99 cents; most of them seem to be from DC Comics' WildStorm imprint.

The publisher has also made available a number of titles for free. These include black-and-white Batman stories from several years ago, the Web comic Bayou, an adaptation of the TV show Fringe, and a preview of Superman No. 700, released Thursday.

The variable pricing indicates that digital comics sales are even more fractured than book sales. Unlike music, which has been locked into a 99-cent pricepoint since Apple's iTunes Store pioneered it, prices for digital books and comics are heavily dependent on the publisher. ComiXology, as the first digital distributor of comics that has secured deals with the two biggest comics publishers, as well as 30 smaller publishers, could be in a position soon to dictate prices as Apple did and as Amazon.com is trying to.

The PlayStation Network launched Wednesday as well with more than 80 issues from DC, including the first 25 issues of the Superman/Batman comic that debuted in 2003. But the system will work slightly differently for PSP users, as only a handful of those issues are for sale in DC iPad app. Comic book adaptations of video games that DC has been licensed will be available exclusively on the PSP, but DC plans to add 50 comics per month to their PlayStation Network catalog.

DC hasn't yet ruled out involving other systems. "Android is a very compelling platform and it seems to be catching on very, very quickly," said DC Comics' Co-Publisher Jim Lee. "Our goal is to be on the best platforms possible." To that end, the DC Comics Web site will soon add the ComiXology Web app embedded in the browser, making your purchased comics available from your desktop computer. However, John Rood, executive vice president of sales and marketing for DC Entertainment, DC's parent company, cautioned that the company was still being careful. "We've learned that more is not better and we've certainly learned not to be first."

The selection of titles that DC has made available so far represents a sliver of the publisher's output, and appears to be smaller than Marvel's initial ComiXology launch. Although Superman, Batman, and Green Lantern are represented, most of the best known characters, such as Wonder Woman, the Flash, and Aquaman, are not. What is included appears to be a broad stroke of what the publisher does: there are superhero comics, mystery comics, kids comics, horror comics, thrillers, war stories, and even one comic about zombies. (Frustratingly, it's not the new series from the publisher's Vertigo imprint with the horrible name, iZombie.)

Censorship remains a strong concern for digital publishers, especially given several high-profile instances of Apple censoring content. There are certain titles that Lee said he expects will be restricted, although this hasn't happened yet. "You won't be able to purchase some comics through the Apple Store, but you can get them from the ComiXology site." Even with the potential restrictions caused by Apple's policies, Lee was quick to add his admiration for Apple. "Apple has been a tremendous partner in this. I don't think this rollout would've happened as well as it did without the iPad."

DC Comics' also took pains to announce in yesterday's press release that the company was adding digital comics sales to its royalties program for comics creators. That's not necessarily unique among comics publishers, but making sure that it was called out served to let the small comics community know that the company wasn't pocketing all the cash from digital sales. It also struck a contrast with Marvel, which also has added digital sales to its royalty payments but hasn't publicly called out their program.

This marks the first time that one of the two biggest comic book publishers has made a comic available day-and-date, and the concept is a live wire for many in comics. Although they might hold a fond place in the memories of older comics readers, newsstand sales and drugstore spinner racks are now virtually non-existent. For nearly two decades, the American comics industry has relied heavily on direct-market comic book shops and burgeoning bookstore sales of graphic novels. While Marvel made its Iron Man announcement in enough time for retailers to adjust their order level, DC has instead made all unsold retailer copies returnable, which cuts down significantly on retailer liability.

One retailer in San Francisco sounded largely unfazed by the announcement. Brian Hibbs, proprietor of Comix Experience, said it's too early to gauge how the day-and-date release will affect sales, if at all. "We can't avoid day-and-date. It's going to happen, at least as experiments. But there's no evidence yet that they replace these are 1:1 replacement sales."

Hibbs, who is also on the board of the comics retailers advocacy group ComicsPRO, noted that DC's plan to funnel some earnings from digital sales back into brick-and-mortar stores represents an unusual path to trailblaze in online sales. "Think if we had the record companies doing that when digital music started selling. We might still have record stores."

Full disclosure: I have been buying comics from Comix Experience for 17 years.

Originally posted at iPad Atlas

It's iPhone 4 launch day and we're sure there are many happy new owners of the iPhone 4 (review) even among those who are apparently finding some problems with Apple's latest device. To help you get started using your new front- and rear-facing cameras to make videos, Apple has released an iMovie app to the iTunes app store, and we think it's worth the extra five bucks.

iMovie for iPhone ($4.99) lets you create great looking HD movies with themes, all just using your iPhone. You can start your project by either shooting fresh footage (using either the front- or rear-facing camera) or by selecting a video you already have on your iPhone. Once you have footage to work with, you can touch the time line at the bottom to trim the footage to just the parts you want to use and clip away the sections you don't. To make sure your edits happen right at the correct moment, you can pinch to zoom in on your time line to pick specific frames. You also can scrub through your footage quickly by touching and dragging over the time line.

iMovie for iPhone comes with a small assortment of themes you can use to give your video a specific feel including Modern, Bright, Travel, Playful, and News. Each of the themes frame your video giving them a professional look and each come with their own background music, custom titles, and pre-made transitions. You also can switch themes in the middle of a project to call out a specific part of your video. Specific transitions will occur automatically between clips, depending on the theme, or you can select a cross-dissolve effect and select how much time the transition takes. Hopefully, later versions of iMovie will give you more transition options for further customization.

Once your footage is edited, themed, and ready, you can further add to your project by using music from your collection (in place of included theme music) or add photos from your library. To keep the flow of your movie, iMovie automatically adds the Ken Burns-style panning effect to your images so it's not so jarring to cut from live action video to still photos. You can even adjust your start and end points for the Ken Burns effect by touching and dragging the image and using onscreen controls.

Once you're finished with your project, you can export the movie to your desktop computer, upload it to YouTube, share it in your MobileMe gallery, or send it directly to your friends and family via MMS or e-mail. Depending on your needs, you can export your movie in three different resolutions to adjust file size and quality including medium (360p), large (540p), or HD (720p). Even at the highest setting, iMovie compressed and sent our test video quickly over Wi-Fi.

We think Apple's iMovie app is a great start, with only a few features we hope will eventually be included. Overall, at $4.99, it's definitely worth the money for those who want to add a little style to their videos without the need for a desktop computer. We only hope to see more options like video effects and more custom transitions in future versions.

Here is our test video we made during this post:

It wasn't exactly a surprise when Apple demoed video chatting that uses the front-facing camera during the iPhone 4 announcement on June 7.

However, many expected Apple to introduce a Skype-made solution akin to Skype's iPhone app instead of video chat service crafted in-house. The result of Apple's mobile video chatting efforts is FaceTime, which can be roughly considered an iPhone 4 take on the video calling portion of iChat for Mac.

Immediately after the FaceTime demo, we wondered what FaceTime's existence would portend for Skype and editorialized on why FaceTime could flop.

With several iPhone 4s in hand, we did the only responsible thing we could, with a side-by-side video chat comparison with Fring, FaceTime's most notable potential rival on iPhone 4. Skype's iPhone app doesn't currently support video chatting, so it's out of the running. Fring, though, will broadcast a contact's Web cam over Wi-Fi and 3G on services--like Skype--that support video calling.

The results were clear. FaceTime is the hands-down winner in terms of video quality, ease-of-use, and video chatting features.

FaceTime for iPhone 4 displays high-quality video of the caller (top right window,) though much grainier footage of our caller's camera. The three on-screen buttons make it easy to mute or end a call, and switch between the front-facing camera and standard back-of-camera view for the feed we produced. FaceTime video calls function in both portrait and landscape modes.

The fact that FaceTime is integrated into the address book also lends it an advantage over third-party apps, mostly because there are two ways to launch it immediately, and directly from the iPhone 4's contact list. Third-party apps, of course, require you to launch the program first, log in, and then seek out whomever is online.

At this stage, Fring's iPhone app just can't compete on the iPhone 4. Its VoIP video calling works fine, but calls are one-way, for a start. Despite the fact that Fring works on the iPhone 4, the software hasn't yet been updated  to take advantage of the phone's front-facing camera. iPhone owners can view others' Web cameras in a Fring call, but can't yet broadcast their own.

In contrast to FaceTime, Fring's Webcam window takes up only a portion of the screen, and does not flip over to landscape mode.

While Apple's FaceTime calling seems to win all the video chatting marbles, just remember that its victory is relative. FaceTime only operates over Wi-Fi, which hobbles its overall usability.

Even if you've got a strong 3G connection when you're on the move, you're out of luck. Hardware specifications, like that front-facing camera, limit its use to calls from one iPhone 4 to another, which essentially will cause anyone who doesn't have an iPhone 4--or anyone calling anyone without an iPhone 4--to find another video calling solution.

Although we'll probably opt for FaceTime when calling friends and family who are also in the iPhone 4 way, Apple is leaving a lot of market share open to Fring, Skype, and others--if they can follow Apple's example with two-way video calls (or Fring's own on Android) that keep the camera specs in mind for callers to visually connect on mobile phones that aren't the iPhone 4.

Originally posted at iPhone Atlas

Mozilla's open-source Outlook alternative Thunderbird gains an impressively fast and new way to search your e-mail, a new migration assistant, and a download manager in its latest update. Arriving on-time for its development calendar, Thunderbird 3.1 for Windows, Mac, and Linux debuts several helpful new features, along with performance improvements and bug-fixes.

The biggest change to Thunderbird is the Quick Filter bar. Although the global search field was impressive when it was introduced in Thunderbird 3, Quick Filter accelerates the search process by making a number of filters readily available. It lives just below the tab bar, above your list of e-mails. Type a query into the search field and filters to confine the search to Sender, Recipients, Subject, and Body appear below the filter. These can be applied individually or combined for broader results. To the left of the search field are more filters, designed for keyword-free searches. They focus on specific kinds of e-mails, including Unread, Starred, Contact, Tags, and Attachment. There's also a pin, which will allow you keep a filter active even as you switch folders.

The new migration assistant is also big news for users who are making the jump to Thunderbird. It's hard to convince a new user that your program is worthwhile if it doesn't make importing easy, and thankfully version 3.1 addresses what was generally viewed as a mediocre migration process from the last version. The assistant now will let you also roll back interface changes from Thunderbird 2, such as bringing back the previous toolbar, and it will link you to add-ons such as Compact Header that restore some functionality that was lost in last December's upgrade to Thunderbird 3.

Thunderbird shares the same engine as Firefox, Gecko 1.9.2, an improvement from Thunderbird 3.0's Gecko 1.9.1.5. The latest version also ports Firefox's download manager to Thunderbird, giving users much better control over downloading attachments. Users should expect generally better performance from Thunderbird 3.1 because of various bug-fixes that were implemented, most notably with the search bar and message indexing. If you have a deep inbox, though, you can still expect Thunderbird to take several hours to index all your messages the first time you use it.

Mozilla has made the full list of changes available at Thunderbird Web site.

It's odd that the need to create newsletters, fliers, brochures, and the like hasn't gone away, but desktop publishing software has. A decade ago,  you had your pick of at least a dozen programs, but now the field is nearly empty.

Sure, you can still buy heavyweight applications such as Adobe PageMaker and QuarkXPress, but they cost a small fortune--$499 and $799, respectively--and they're overkill for most people.

That's why I'm a longtime fan of Serif PagePlus, a terrific desktop-publishing application that's ideal for designing both print and Web-based documents.

The applications latest version, PagePlus X4, costs $99.99--but you can get PagePlus Starter Edition absolutely free.

Don't let the "Starter Edition" suffix scare you away: this version looks and operates exactly like X4. The only difference? The company disables some of its higher-end features such as LogoStudio and 3D effects.

The only real limitations, in my opinion, are that you can't embed hyperlinks or publish PDFs with it. If you need those capabilities, you'll have to spring for X4 that, incidentally, is available from Dell for $59.99.

However, for everyday projects such as business cards, posters, and newsletters, PagePlus SE offers all the tools you need to create stylish, professional-looking documents.

If you are a newcomer to desktop publishing, you will appreciate the built-in tutorials that include a quick-start video.

As I said, I'm a huge fan of PagePlus. You can't go wrong starting with the free Starter Edition, and $60 is a steal for a desktop-publishing app that can stand toe-to-toe with PageMaker and Quark.

Bonus deal: Speaking of cheap apps, do you want to get the best deal on Microsoft software ever? By signing up for a $200 TechNet Standard subscription, you can download full, licensed versions of Windows 7 Ultimate, Office 2010 Ultimate, and just about everything else in Microsoft's catalog. Those licenses are good to use on up to 10 PCs each. TechNet is intended for IT types, but there's nothing keeping home users from scoring this incredible deal.

Originally posted at The Cheapskate

Hulu, the popular Web site for streaming TV shows with limited commercials, has famously blocked mobile phones from accessing its free content. This is an odd move in the face of the growing number of companies offering on-demand downloads for a price. Bitbop is the latest mobile app taking a stab at filling Hulu's void.

On Wednesday morning, Bitbop, previously in closed beta testing, becomes available for all BlackBerry phones in the U.S., with Android and other mobile platforms to follow.

Now, before you get too excited about the prospect of Hulu on your BlackBerry smartphone, we've got to level with you. Bitbop isn't exactly Hulu, and it definitely isn't free. However, it brings Hulu-like elements to the mobile platform that could catch on like wildfire if the winds are right.

In Bitbop, you'll choose from the content you can search or browse--mostly TV shows at this point--and add it to your queue, Netflix-style. There they'll sit until you're ready to either stream or download them. You can do both over either Wi-Fi or 3G data speeds.

TV shows downloaded quickly and take up about 50MB per 30 minute episode. They played smoothly and with fairly high quality on our BlackBerry Bold 9700. Quality and bitrate will vary depending on your phone's bandwidth, but Bitbop quoted us a bitrate range of 120-500KB.

TV shows come to Bitbop's catalog from over 30 broadcast partners and include shows like "American Dad," "Glee," "CSI," "30 Rock," and "Chopped." A $9.99 monthly subscription gets you unlimited video streams and downloads, and in addition the shows play back to you commercial-free. Movies are planned for down the line.

Performance-wise, we tripped over a few hurdles during our beta testing, including some browsing errors and network interruptions that made it difficult to find content. We also noticed some lagging in the app's performance, and offer some design adjustments to the team, like integrating the default BlackBerry menu system, and improving navigation in the playback window. However, Bitbop performed well in our two most important real-world tests--at the gym and on the train--with playback on downloaded TV episodes running through without a hitch.

But what about Hulu?

Still, we can't help feeling that Bitbop is missing an opportunity to outplay Hulu at its own game by supplying a tiered option--one to go premium with an all-you-can eat monthly plan and the other to set up free streaming (and now downloads) with commercials. After all, TV-watchers are trained to suffer through commercials, and the Hulu generation likewise expects it.  If Bitbop doesn't seize the moment, it's inevitable that someone else will, and grab the early market share.

Right now Bitbop beta is available on select BlackBerry smartphones, but as we mentioned, the company plans to release versions for Android and iPhone "later this summer," with Android potentially coming before the end of August. Bitbop is offering a free trial for the Bold 9000, Bold 9700, Curve 8900, and Tour 9630. Get started by pointing the mobile browser to m.bitbop.com.