Innovative Science-For-All Digital Magazine Launches Free App

PRESS RELEASE 23 March 2013 – Embargoed until 28 March 2013 Innovative Science-for-all Digital Magazine Launches Free App

Guru Magazine, a pioneering digital publication that makes science understandable and accessible to all, has taken a major step forward with the launch of a new app, which promises to bring the magazine to the attention of an international audience.

The Guru app, funded by the world-renowned Wellcome Trust will be launched on Thursday March 28th.

The app is one of only a few free-to-subscribe publications currently available in Apple’s Newsstand and the Android Marketplace (‘Google Play’). The magazine will also be available in e-Reader and Kindle formats. Offering a user-friendly reading experience, the new app is designed to bring science to ‘Generation Y’ through alternative, light-hearted content. Receiving plaudits for its cool, fresh approach, the new app allows readers to download all ten issues of Guru published to date, and lets them share content quickly and easily on the popular social networking sites Facebook and Twitter, and provide instant feedback to the Guru team to help shape the future direction of the magazine.

“Since launching Guru Magazine last year, we’ve wanted to develop an App, as it’s a great way to instantly engage with our readers,” said Dr Stuart Farrimond, founder of Guru. “It is increasingly important that scientific research is made free and open-source. This is a vital way for us to achieve our vision of showing the wider public that you don’t need a University education to get involved in science.”

The prestigious global foundation, the Wellcome Trust (http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/), which supports high-quality science initiatives, awarded the Guru team a grant of £12,000/$18,000 in August 2012 to recognise the contribution Guru Magazine has made in engaging a non-academic audience with issues of scientific relevance, and to help increase the magazine’s reach and readership by

providing the financial support required to make the app a reality.

“Spreading the delight of science is an important part of our charitable mission” said Ben Stewart, Grants Manager at Wellcome Trust. “We hope that making the snappy, focused articles offered by Guru available for free through the iPad, the iPhone and other tablets and smartphones will make it even easier for people to access stimulating information about biomedical science and the issues that it raises.”

Guru remains a free bi-monthly publication, fulfilling Dr Farrimond’s vision to make science accessible – and interesting – to all. Alongside the new app, issues are available from the magazine’s website (http://www.gurumagazine.org) where it can be downloaded in a wide variety of formats.

The first issue published via the new App will be available to download from Monday 1st April. This special issue will include:

 Battling with chaos: why your office desk will never be tidy  ‘Eat your hearts out’: London’s edible baked body parts exhibit  From brain damage to Beethoven: how head trauma created a musical prodigy  What ‘they’ know about you: terrible truths about social media privacy  Death at the playground: kid’s deadly infection that must be stopped  Astronomers predict that new worlds may be closer than you think

Notes to Editors

Photo caption:

Stuart Farrimond, Director of Guru Magazine, with the new mobile app – launched on March 28th 2013 in Apple Newsstand and Google Play (the Android Marketplace).

About Guru Magazine:

 Launched in June 2011, Guru is a bi-monthly digital magazine that features contributions from a global mix of bloggers, artists and photographers. The magazine attracts readers from around the world, and offers its bi-monthly publication on a range of platforms, including the iPhone, iPad, and Kindle.  The new cross-platform mobile application will be one of the very few free publications available via the main digital outlets (the Apple Newsstand and Google Play).  You can follow the latest news from Guru Magazine on Twitter at www.twitter.com/GuruMag and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/GuruMag.

For further information, please contact:

Dr Stuart Farrimond, Director at Guru Magazine T: 07769 328 551 E: [email protected]