Paperboy

Kooaba, a Swiss start-up specialising in image recognition

connects more than 2,000 printed newspapers

…in 95 countries to the digital world before the end of year. Using kooaba’s free Paperboy mobile app, readers can take pictures of full pages or articles of interest in their favourite printed newspapers and share them immediately via Twitter, Facebook, e-mail or SMS, or store full pages for future reference on my.kooaba.com or Evernote. Available for iPhone and Android devices, Paperboy also gives access to additional information such as videos or related online content.

From November 1st 2011, the second global rollout phase has started, adding hundreds of new titles to the list of supported publications in the US, UK and Canada. Amongst them are USA Today, The New York Post, The LA Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Toronto Star, The Vancouver Sun and many more. Russian, Asian and other European readers, as well as readers in Australia, New Zealand and many other countries will be able to use the Paperboy app with their local newspapers later in the year. Paperboy is available for free for iPhone and Android at www.paperboytool.com.

Publishers

Interactive Print beneficial for publishers: “Paperboy can become a valuable tool for publishers in their fight to stay competitive in the face of the digital competition from online or social media,” claims Herbert Bay, CEO and co-founder of Kooaba. “As the so-called digital natives come of age and more and more consumers turn to the internet as their primary source for news and information, the publishing industry needs to find ways to keep subscribers and attract new readers. Paperboy can help bridge that gap between print and online, substantially expanding and enhancing the reading experience. Because of our partnership with NewspaperDirect, leader in multichannel newspaper and magazine distribution we are able to roll-out this service on this big scale without any effort of the connected titles. It’s up to the publisher if they add additional, digital content to articles.”

How Paperboy works

Introduced in Switzerland in 2010, Paperboy connects printed media to the digital world with one click: All the application’s powerful image recognition technology needs is a photo taken by a smartphone camera of an article or page in a newspaper or magazine. Paperboy then matches the photo to the images in Kooaba’s extensive library of printed media or identifies that page or article from NewspaperDirect’s inventory of over 2,000 same-day, digital newspapers replicas. Users can then share, email or archive the electronic version on the go, anywhere, anytime or explore related information like videos, images or links to selected topics. Paperboy automatically finds URLs on pages of print publications. In some publications, exclusive Paperboy content is available for pages with the Shutter icon.