• The Wall Street Journal, Monday, March 15, 2010 12:40 AM

Hearst, a publisher of magazines and newspapers, is jumping into the business of developing software applications, or "apps," for use on Apple Inc.'s iPhone. Hearst is focusing its apps sports teams, players and celebrities, but also hobbies and topics, like coffee, Barbie and cupcakes. Hearst unit LMK, which stands for 'Let Me Know,' offers applications that pull in information designed to appeal to fans of singers, teams and topics.

Hearst eventually expects to offer thousands of apps that pull together news and photos about narrow slices of information. Hearst said its informational apps follow a similar template and link to information, making them less complicated than a game application. LMK's five full-time employees dig up the best sources of information on each topic area and feed the sources into a common template. Hearst pays for rights to photos but not for the other content, which comes from traditional news outlets and blogs, keeping its costs down.

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