by Gail Seymour

Created on: September 13, 2010

Graphic.ly, though still in beta testing, has big plans for online and mobile digital delivery of comic books and graphic novels. The recent Microsoft Startup of the Day CEO Micah Baldwin says that the company’s mission is to “provide an immersive social experience and marketplace around, and within, digital comics.”

It’s the brainchild of founder Kevin Mann, who, frustrated by the difficulty of keeping up with his favorite comics from the confines of “a small town in the northeast of England,” and struck by the ease of downloading digital content from iTunes, determined to create “a similar experience for digital comics.”

Graphic.ly is currently available as a Windows 7 or downloadable Adobe AIR desktop application, and as an iPhone/iPad app, with plans to create a Windows Phone 7 app and a web service.

Despite still being in Beta, the Adobe Air application has a smooth professional look and feel, and is simple and intuitive to use. After downloading, users are invited to log in or create an account, which takes seconds to do.

User accounts can be connected to Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm, XBox Live, Hulu or Netflix to see and share friends’ user activity in the activity stream on the home page, and while it’s possible to update the user profile with basic personal information like gender, date of birth and location, the profile isn’t unduly loaded down with irrelevant details. You can tell them a bit about yourself, what TV, movies and music you like if you are inclined to share, and upload a profile picture, or you can just head straight for thr store if you would rather not.

Being relatively new, the store does feel a little thin, with currently only 124 titles to choose from, 19 of which are free, and the others priced at a reasonable $1.99 each. When you buy a title, it’s clearly marked as ‘owned’ and the buy button disappears, so you can’t accidentally buy a copy you already own. Once you have made your purchases, you simply go to “my collection” to download and read them.

The graphic application itself uses arrow keys to move between images, and does a fair job of doing the artwork justice, even on a small screen. Users can switch “view mode” between double and single page spread, which are ideal for a large screen, or graphic view or graphic flow, which highlight individual graphics and are more suited to smaller screens. The graphic flow

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