So I’m all of about 7 days into this whole research thing, but already I have my preferences.

It’s funny because just a few months ago, I was convinced that my company should change how we present our magazines on the web. Right now, most are available as searchable text with an option to view a PDF of the magazine pages. My belief was that we should flip that. Push the PDF — granted a much more useful, interactive, and just plain cooler PDF a la Texterity or Zinio — to the forefront and give readers the option to view the plainer, formatted text if that’s their choice.

Here’s what I think today. It’s still the right thing to make people “name their poison” and choose how they want to view the digital magazines, but I’m really liking what little I’ve learned about the ePub format so far. Mostly that we can convert our XML to ePub and leave the rest to the customers, who can feel free to use whatever ereading device they choose. Even a Kindle after an additional conversion.

Then I saw this. Maybe I’m actually on the right track. Maybe.

I expressed my extreme frustration awhile back that some of my decorating magazines were arriving in the mail long after I’d seen all of the pictures online and scanned the covers while waiting in line at the supermarket.  But, problem solved! A friend of mine treated me to an online subscription to Elle Decor from Zinio and now the magazine pops into my inbox the day the magazine comes out! I didn’t think I’d like reading magazines online, but there are so many advantages, you can immediately click on the links for products and jump to the Web site and I can right-click and save images I like to my computer.

Anyway, to my point… of the last surviving shelter magazines, I do believe Elle Decor gets it right. They seem to be reaching a broader audience with a greater mix of interior styles and are spicing up the front of book with some actually affordable options paired with high-end pieces. Their spread on tartan trends, which I loved, has pieces from JC Penney, HSN, and Williams-Sonoma Home. Good job Margaret Russel, thanks for remembering us common folk!

In other news, whatta badass holiday outfit accessory these would make:

Dsquared2 via FashionPolice

We’ve been working on digital magazines for about four years now, so they don’t seem like such a new format to us. But if you look across the Web, you’ll see a lot of bad examples of the format.

Not “bad” so much as wasted opportunities. What other digital magazines seem to forget about the format are two main things:

1. It’s on a screen
2. It’s still a magazine

I know these points are obvious and so don’t mean much on their own, but let me explain.

It’s on a screen. Why are you creating your magazine in the same way you make the print magazine and just uploading the PDF? First of all, the dimensions are all wrong – it’s a portrait image on a landscape screen. No one likes to scroll up and down on each page. Secondly, in order to read anything - because people still read magazines – you force people to zoom in and then out again to see where they are.

So we’ve got two really bad experiences going on in a single screen: scrolling up and down repeatedly and also zooming in and out. It’s no wonder people don’t like to read digital magazines.

It’s still a magazine: Then there are those that create the PDF for the screen (thank you) but then make this hideous, boring, flat, amateur-looking “magazine” with clip art, and try to compensate by running annoying Flash videos and audible page turns. The latter is a gimmick, the former attribute has yet to be proven as something that will attract and engage readers. We link to videos outside the magazine, but I’m not sure you want to watch it within the magazine.

Wait, scratch that. Watching it within the magazine would be great, but we have yet to see this function well. If it loads quickly, the video screen is usually very small. And if it’s big enough it takes forever to load.

The thing is, this digital mag thing has potential. Here’s a list of its top attributes:

1. Cheaper to print. Because you don’t print it.
2. Cheaper to distribute. Notice on these first two I didn’t say “free.” They still require a lot of work, but the cost is exponentially lower.
3. More… pass-along-able. Yes, you can hand your print magazine to a friend or float it in a doctor’s office for a month, but you can post a link to a digital magazine on Facebook, Tweet about it, email it, add it to a comment, add it to your LinkedIn page… think of the reach.
4. Linked up. Think of the potential of “link journalism.” And think of the power of an ad with a Web-specific call to action a reader can actually act on with a click.
5. Long-form content mixed with compelling design. You can’t get that on the Web the way you can in a magazine.

We’re obviously fans. If you think you’d like to explore the benefits of a digital magazine for your organization, please let us know.

David Carr(l) and Ken Auletta have a Google chat

Did you know that employees at Google’s Mountain View, CA campus get free oil changes and car washes on Thursdays? Or that there are five doctors on campus? How about the fact that engineers can spend 20% of their time working on what they want? This 80/20 rule, which has spawned Google Wave, Google News and Gmail, is part of a corporate culture where boss and cofounder Sergey Brin rollerblades (late) to meetings in his gym shorts. Every building has its own cafeteria serving everything from Mexican food to sushi and free food is everywhere.

These delicious facts emerged at the Magazine Publishers Association of America’s first ever Magazine Innovation Summit, where David Carr, media columnist for The New York Times, interviewed New Yorker writer Ken Auletta, author of the new book “Googled: The End of the World as We Know It.”  “I went to Google and walked out of there with my pockets full,” confessed Carr. “Why wouldn’t you? It’s free!”

The laughter that followed was one of the lighter moments in a conference where Google loomed large for its success in contrast to the devastating loss of magazine advertising revenue in the last 18 months. As Auletta pointed out, Google got it right in more ways than their unique corporate culture: they manage to give away much of their content while generating more money from search than  the combined revenues of all the major magazines companies gathered for the MPA conference.

In fact, the quest to avoid the mistakes of the music industry through innovation and collaboration were leitmotifs at the conference. Instead of the false optimism or beleaguered pessimism that have prevailed at recent MPA conferences, this time participants talked excitedly about new e-readers, shared magazine digital storefronts, mobile as the bridge to truly engaged content, and paid content as a no-brainer–the secret sauce that will hopefully do for magazines what Adwords did for Google. “In the end you have to have guts to say I’m not going to give content away for free,” said John Squires, Time Inc.’s Executive Vice President, who is leading an effort to join Time Inc., Hearst and Condé Nast in the creation of a shared digital storefront to showcase their magazines. The principle focus, Squires added, was the development of new paid mobile apps. “People will pay for content on mobile,” he said with great assurance.

At points in the conference, the technology talk was deafening. Doug Carlson, CEO of Viv and Managing Director of Zinio,  prophesized that “the world is going wireless and mobile. The future of the magazine industry is portable tablet devices so that consumers can have content with them wherever they are.”  Mary Lou Jepson, CEO of Pixel QI, confidently predicted that e-readers and laptops would soon merge. Josh Quittner, former editor of Business 2.0 and now Editor-at-Large at Time Inc., hailed the arrival of the Apple Tablet. “We all know it’s coming,” he said. “When Apple’s [tablet] device is announced, there will be a mass ascension and everyone will go to media heaven.” Those on the ground, he noted, can look forward to even more advances in the next six months including devices that give a great reading experiences through color, eight-inch-on a diagonal, multi-touch screens and broadband-only network access. “Tell your readers not to buy e-readers for the holidays,” he urged the audience. “They will be stuck with TV’s with rabbit ears.”  And speaking of TV’s, Netflix founder and CEO Reed Hastings professed with great certainly that Wi-Fi- enabled TV’s will be here by Christmas.

Of course, whenever magazine executives gather, there’s no shortage of talk about the longevity of print, no matter how snazzy the new technology that threatens to eclipse it. When Scott Donaton, President and CEO of Ensemble, asked his panelists whether they cared if their brand existed in print, David Carey, Group President, Condé Nast publications, neatly sidestepped the issue: “Each platform will create a new audience,” he answered.  Efrem (Skip) Zimbalist III, President and CEO of Active Interest Media, shrugged and said it really didn’t matter. “A great e-reader can help the environment and make edited content very immediate.” But Maria Rodale, Chairman and CEO of Rodale, Inc., would have no part of that debate. “Fifteen to twenty years from now, what matters is that our brands stay relevant and viable,” she declared. “Magazines will still be here because everyone likes to read in bed.”

For more about the longevity of magazines, check out the MPA Video: The Twenty Tweetable Truths About Magazines

Andrea Chambers

La nuova diavoleria di Google Labs di chiama Fast Flip. E’ un sistema per “sfogliare” letteralmente il web, si tratti di news su un determinato argomento; temi di attualità; notizie relative a un luogo geografico. Ecco cosa succede se si cerca “Italy”.

Subito evidenti le implicazioni per i magazine cartacei: sul web potrebbero finire in formato “googleflippato”. Del resto, servizi per sfogliare magazine online erano già diffusi da tempo: un esempio, già attivo da qualche anno, è Zinio.

Altre applicazioni possibili: rassegne stampa; raccolte di pagine web da costruire manualmente, embeddare e archiviare; fake da scambiarsi con gli amici per scherzo!

Vedremo presto se sarà Google a svelarci gli utilizzi del servizio o saranno gli utenti a sbizzarrirsi con i mash-up. Intanto, come nota Cnet, Fast Flip si inserisce in un quadro di rapporti piuttosto tormentato tra Google News e gli editori, che contestano da tempo il modo in cui Google aggrega e diffonde le notizie provienienti da diverse fonti. Fast Flip, in questa fase di test, include alcuni publisher nel progetto. E’ dunque possibile che Google stia cercando alleati nel mondo “tradizionale” con cui identificare nuove forme di revenue pubblicitarie da dividere e non contendersi.

No, I don’t have a Kindle, and in fact, a lot of people — including writers — who are concerned about the future of publishing are concerned about the way people in the industry will be paid if Kindle explodes. But that’s not what this post is about; it’s about Zinio, an online magazine distributor, which I decided to sign up for a few months ago after hearing all kinds of good things about the Aussie rag Frankie.

Zinio is a company, and a piece of software, that allows you to subscribe to magazines and read them on your computer. I wouldn’t recommend this for just any ol’ magazine, though, because I still think there’s still nothing nicer than having a sheaf of glossy paper filled with gorgeous images and type. (Though it’s still possible to print out the magazine, once you’ve downloaded it.) What’s nice about Zinio is that it seems to specialize in non-USA, obscure/edgy magazines, which tend to run high in price Stateside, and can often be hard to find unless you live near a big bookstore.

I just received the Sept/Oct issue of Frankie today, and I’m not going to be able to curl up in my rocking chair and read it like it’s made out of paper. But I’m not sure I’d be inclined to read it at all without Zinio, either — and that’s when I think the Internet can be pretty special.

Steve Smith at minonline has a nice post with five interesting examples of magazines that have developed new approaches to online paid content. With one exception (PC magazine’s digital edition – more on that in a minute), they get past the idea that magazines’ online premium products have to be online “editions” of the magazine. Instead, they’re mostly new product concepts entirely.

Will they succeed? They have a better chance than just putting the stories from a print product behind a pay wall. Useful premium databases, “membership”-oriented services and communities, alerting tools, and bundles of online and offline content have higher odds of generating significant online revenue.

I do have to grouse that I ended up with a paid subscription to one of these products, PC magazine’s online edition, and I hated the thing. I used to like the now-dead print PC magazine, but it seems pointless to replicate print so slavishly, using the clumsy Zinio reader with its associated password/account frustrations and endless zooming in and zooming out to read something. I’ve always been a nay-sayer on “digital editions” of print, but people still keep trying this. Zinio must have great salespeople, because publishers are paying them good money to create these resuscitated corpses of print products. I just don’t get the appeal. If you know of anyone making real money with this, I’d love to hear about it.

Going into our third week, the magazine section is just about done. So here are some of the take-away points I’ve gotten.

1. Magazines are not dead: They’re kind of like cockroaches that everyone likes, they simply refuse to die. Admit it, people like holding a magazines and the art/layout makes the price worth it.
2. Magazines are changing: Sure the printed version may stick around but that doesn’t mean they won’t go digital. Groups such as Zinio, Flyp and Ceros are pioneering the best of interactive magazines.
3. The traditional revenue model needs some serious revision. Over the years of ad surplus magazines began to depend on ad revenue to support the magazine instead of their subscription base. Well both revenues are now shrinking so someone needs to come up with a brilliant plan. JPG, may be on to something.
4. I don’t understand the business side of magazines. Marketing/publicity I get but until someone can give me some good old fashion worksheets the P&L’s will be beyond me.
5. New distribution strategies are really exciting, especially Maghound. I like it because while I don’t subscribe to any magazine I could get a great selection for cheap and change my titles essentially every month.
6. Twitter, Twitter, Twitter. I swear to goodness I am so sick of hearing about Twitter. Seeing as one of my best friends got the service almost as soon as it came out (coughTigascough) I’ve been hearing about it for at least a year. I’ve been studying it in class since last fall. …yeah I may finally get it…*shivers in horror*
7. Newsletters are a great promo tool and you can sell ad space.
8. So many magazines seem determine to keep their web and print staff seperated, that seems a little backwards. Wouldn’t you want a partnership from the beginning on those stories to truly make them converged pieces?
9. Sitting in the front row keeps you honest.
10. You can tell who is well paid among the men, they wear cufflinks. I had never actually seen cufflinks before this program.
11. Bonus: I hate printers and they hate me.

My inner geek was a very happy geek today. As you all have read before, I love technology (sometimes I want to smash certain parts to pieces but on the whole, I love it). Basically today our lectures mainly focused around the changing product of the magazine. In other words, “Hello digital.”

Now by no means am I saying that the magazine is dead but there are now some really cool ways to distribute it. Front and center is Zinio and its ability to distribute digital magazines. Now there are some really cool magazines that are taking full advantage of this new means of distribution. Check out Flyp and Viv. We are talking the match made in heaven between the layout of the magazine and the content of the web.

I almost drooled in my seat. It was all so pretty and shiny and fun to play with. And of course let us not forget the quickly advancing technology of e-ink. Goodness I wish I was  more of a computer nerd so I could get in on the frontlines of this new technology.

I freely admit I am not keen on being a journalist anymore but if I got to play with that technology I would sign up in a heart beat. It just gives me little shivers of pleasure to think about all the cool gadgets we could be seeing in the next few years.  I think I just giggled…eww.

And it was Digital.  And Amazing.  And Beautiful.  In a Space-Agey, Totally Green Way.

I’m really not a Monday person, especially when I only have access to one round of coffee.  So I was somewhat a disenchanted with with the concept of sitting in a rather uncomfortable chair (sorry NYU) for eight hours with few breaks when I went to class this morning.  Until my mind was boggled with presentations and a glimpse into the future as seen by:

• Steve Malley, Senior Deputy Editor, ESPN magazine
• Robert (Bo) Sacks, Owner, The Precision Media Group
• Jeanniey Mullen, CMO/EVP, Zinio

Pay-caption found on ESPN Magazine's site

Malley presented first, and had a hard time containing his evident excitement as he shifted his weight and gestured wildly with his hands behind the podium.  He is the first Editor of the many we’ve heard speak who has put their digital content behind a pay-based wall: Yes, that means the content found on ESPN.com is no longer free (which is too bad, I really wanted to read the story about Kim Kardashian and Reggie Bush).  Malley compared the current changed in the media industry right now to when Gutenberg invented movable type – so people, get ready for revolution.

Bo Sacks is impressive, having held what seems like every title available in the publishing industry (Twitter @bosacks).  Some of you may be impressed with his status as the Founding Father of the High Times magazine, but today he spoke from his position as President of the Precision Media Group.

It’s more important to know how to search for a fact than know a fact. -Bo Sacks

Sacks is omnipresent in ways, dividing the media as “BD” or “AD” – Before Digital and After Digital.  He showed mind boggling technology amid humorously photoshopped pictures (there were quite a few laughs of Einstein with an iPod, etc.).  The technology shown is light in weight, small in stature but is without a doubt changing the publishing industry: e-paper.

e-paper

This foldable, bendable, light weight piece of space-age technology will in the future be a pocketable book, but for now ables the Kindle and Sony E-reader.  It is expected to have a virtual keyboard – as in it somehow reflects a keyboard onto a surface that somehow tracks your actions (crazy I know, I really can’t explain the concept, it’s akin to magic to me).

Crazy e-paper aside, Sacks says that while he doesn’t believe magazines should not be printed, he does think the physical editions will become more expensive and only account for 25% of the market within ten years.  Without a doubt, he believes competition to be redefined; digital publications to become stronger and more reliable; and the digital publishing realm to continue its advancements.  Senior management beware: put your palpable fear aside, Sacks thinks my generation is the smartest.

Who reading this had “paged through” a digital magazine? I’ve had very little experience with the medium and have always thought of magazines to be much more of an experience – glossy pages, perfume samples, vivid ads… That is, until Jeanniey Mullen of Zinio presented her site.

Jeanniey Mullen

As EVP/CMO, Mullen is in the ideal role at Zinio.  In an arena with plenty of room for growth, (unlike the cell phone industry which is almost at full saturation) she is at the forefront of a fast-emerging media – the digital magazine.  With printer and distribution costs on the upswing and weak advertising revenue, many magazines are struggling (some even closing, like Domino and Nickolodean Kids) at this time.

Not only are digital magazines more economically friendly (ie green, so automatically trendy), but they offer more opportunities for interaction both with the content and advertisements.  Mullen pulled up the Zinio-published women’s magazine Viv, and I was astounded at the potential.  Not only is the reader able to actually change the model’s clothes in a photograph, but the advertising content is able to be interacted with as well.  The ads change content within a brand, and even link through to individual websites where the featured product can be purchased.  Dior took the advertising a step further and embedded their TV spot with a corresponding print ad, along with a link to purchase directly.  Unlike traditional advertising, specific metrics are available!!!!!!

What’s shocking is that the digital magazine advertising is still considered in line with print – not a different, more expensive business model.  I see potential to change to a CPM business model as the digital magazine industry continues to grow, with potential for different advertisers to buy identical content that changes once a minimum number of impressions has occurred (does that make sense other than in my head?).   Now Zinio is a company for which advertising sales would prove fascinating.

Another really cool aspect the digital magazine realm offers: the ability to save interesting content!  I am one of those people who tears pages out of things I like – from fashion to recipes to editorial.  But, not being organized I don’t have a filing system other than “storing” the torn out pages in random locations, never findable when needed.  Being able to save content to my computer is totally different, and a concept I will embrace and keep organized!  Also, magazines are searchable, so you can skip directly to the content you want.

I already followed Mullen on Twitter (@empg) and was pleased to see she had tweeted during her time at NYU, which made me an even bigger fan.  I’ve already acted on her advice to try out www.goreadgreen.com and signed up a a FREE one-year subscription of Viv!  Go online and choose your subscription today, and take a look at Zinio.com for the latest and greatest digital magazines.  My new plan to fulfill my promise to get Dad an Esquire subscription is to do it through the digital medium; 12 digital issues only $7.99!

This is an offer primarily intended for Apple iPhone users which gives access to 20 famous digital magazines including US News, Popular Mechanics, PC Magazine, Pent House, MacWorld, iPhone Life and many others. But why should only iPhone users have this privilege. With a small hack even you can have access to these amazing magazines which would otherwise cost you around $30-40 per magazine.

This facility is provided to iPhone users courtesy of a website called Zinio. Zinio makes use of user agents to verify that incoming requests are from iPhone and not from any other PC or similar device. So, all we have to do is add an iPhone user agent into Firefox browser. First of all, install the User Agent Switcher add-on from firefox. After installing the add-on, restart Firefox and select Tools>User Agent Switcher>Options>Options. From the dialog box that appers, click User Agents tab from left panel and click “Add”. In the description, type “iPhone” (without quotes) and in the User Agents, type “Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419 (United States)” ….(without quotes) and click OK.

You are almost through now. Just switch the user agent to iPhone by clicking Tools>User Agent Switcher>iPhone and vistit the ZINIO site which was originally created for iPhone users only. Remeber, if you do not switch the user agent to iPhone and visit the zinio site, the magazines will not be displayed.

Now, you can click on any magazines of your choice and view its contents. The contents are image files, such that you can even save them to your hard disk. Once you are done, you can switch your user agent back to default for normal browsing.

Zinio bardzo lubię – pozwala mi czytać Macworld US w momencie wydania numeru, bez gromadzenia makulatury i taniej niż podano na okładce, o cenie w Empiku nie wspominając. Jeśli jeszcze nie znacie tej metody dystrybucji prasy (i nie tylko) – polecam. Tym bardziej, że poprawy doczekała się najsłabsza część całego systemu, czyli czytnik dla Mac OS. Nowa wersja mocno przypomina czytnik dostępny online i zdecydowanie bardziej mi odpowiada. Dobrym pomysłem jest widok całej biblioteki, w ujęciu chronologicznym lub podzielonej wg tytułów. Niestety, wciąż zdarzają się problemy z dostępem do ściągniętych czasopism po zainstalowaniu nowej wersji – producent zaleca najpierw odinstalowanie starego Readera. Użycie Zinio Uninstaller to chyba najprostsza metoda i u mnie po jej zastosowaniu 3-ka działa niezawodnie. W dodatku pojawiły się miniaturki plików w Finderze i choć są słabej jakości to mnie (jako wzrokowcowi) na pewno się przydadzą. Czytnik w wersji 3.0 można znaleźć tu.

I am quite a fan of digital magazines, for some time I have used Zinio. Today I found another service which by good fortune is offering free magazines as a taster for their service. MagazinesOnDemand.co.uk have most of the bases covered, men’s, women’s, gadgets etc. So for your chance to get 3 free magazines read the instructions here and enjoy!

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MaximumPC uses Coverleaf and PC Magazine uses Zinio. Zinio appears to have the larger library, but Coverleaf does have recognizable magazine names. One big difference is that Zinio allows you to use an optional desktop client whose use is obviously directed at offline reading. That’s a nice feature. The desktop client also has annotation features missing from the bare-bones web client. However, the web client has a feature sorely missing from the desktop and that is the ability to save and share links to pages. You can even send the link to one of the various social networks like Delicious. I use Delicious to save links to articles that I might want to refer to in the future.

The reading experience is much better on my slate tabletPC using the Zinio desktop client. I can move from page to page by clicking corners of the pages. I’ve rigged up a similar thing on Coverleaf by using a mouse gesture extension that emulates pageup/down keystrokes. Note that this only works in Internet Explorer. Firefox for some reason does not move you from page to page with keystrokes.

If it matters to you, Zinio is a Flash-based web app and Coverleaf is Ajax. Both are pretty good, but clearly Zinio “feels” a little smoother. That said, Coverleaf actually has a couple features that Zinio doesn’t. In particular, I like the Pages function which displays a page of thumbnails of all the pages in the issue.

Now obviously you don’t really need to pick one over the other. You can use them both. At least the hardware you need is the same…ie a PC and a web browser. It’s not like trying to decided between a Kindle and Sony Reader.

I suppose that while I’m at it, I should mention my other favorite electronic subscription service and that’s NewsStand.com. Here you’ll find lots of newspapers, like LA Times, NY Times and USA Today.

I’ve been seriously trying to decide between the Kindle and the Sony Reader, but I’ve just discovered that you can’t beat a slate-style tabletPC-I’ve got the Motion Computing LE1700.  Digital media consumers, like me, have long moved way beyond the one-dimensional black and white mediums and onto color-intensive things like magazines,  websites, etc. Even newspapers have embraced color. What would USA Today be without color.

This is why I see single-purpose devices like the Kindle and Sony Reader as great devices, but unnecessary in the grander/long-term scheme of things. Plus, they are relatively expensive. How much more use can you get out of a 32GB iPod Touch or netbook compared to a Kindle or Sony Reader?

More and more traditionally print publications are being offered in electronic versions, although you’d be often hard pressed to find them. I recently discovered the (well hidden) digital subscription to Maximum PC and LA Times, but PC Mag, being only offered in digital format, was not surprisingly easier to get. A digital version of PC World is also available, but at $19.97/yr, it’s a bit pricey. MaxPC and PC Mag are under $10/yr. PC Mag has a special 2-year subscriptions for $15!

Digital subscriptions are by no means limited to tech magazines either. Check out Zinio.com, the engine used by PC Mag, and you’ll probably be surprised at the strong catalog of offerings. Newsstand.com is also good. That’s where you’ll find a lot of the newspapers like the LA Times, NY Times, USA Today, etc.

I will fully admit that I envy the awesome ebook reader battery life and the crisp eInk display, but giving up a full PC experience is too much to ask. I was just relaxing reading an issue of PC Mag and decided to start blogging my experience. Try THAT on an eBook reader.

The big downside to electronic publications, as with any copyrighted electronic medium, is DRM. Zinio and Newsstand both rely on proprietary file formats. Sure you can download and archive them, but who knows when they will become obsolete.

In my opinion, however, do publications have that much value after a year or two? Maybe books do, but who really re-reads their books? Yeah, I now people like to save and collect their magazines and books into their own personal library, but how often do they look at them? How much is relegated to dusty cardboard boxes in the garage taking up valuable storage space? Now hopefully, electronic publishers will embrace and standardize on the ePub format, but I’m not holding my breath. For the most part, I think the usefulness of individual magazine and newspaper copies are transitory. Just re-buy them in the future if the desire arises.

For portability, I’ll rely on my iPod Touch and N95. Both support eReader ebooks. Guess I could even stoop to a good old fashion paperback. The battery lasts forever, but no built-in backlight…oh the Kindle doesn’t have that either 

POLITYKA już od półwiecza towarzyszy polskim przemianom i cieszy się niezmiennie lojalnością i poczytnością wśród czytelników. Pierwszy numer ukazał się w 1957 roku. W 1995 roku POLITYKA prowadzona przez Jerzego Baczyńskiego, redaktora naczelnego, zmieniła swój format i formułę. Siła marki POLITYKI tkwi w niepowtarzalnym zespole autorów, dziennikarzy i redaktorów. Pismo przez lata ugruntowało swoją mocną pozycję na rynku prasowym i czytelniczym wyważonymi komentarzami i obiektywnymi sądami. W opinii czytelników to marka ceniona za rzetelność i wiarygodność, fachowość i trafnośc w komentowaniu i analizowaniu polskiej rzeczywistości.

POLITYKA w wersji cyfrowej – taniej i wcześniej w Twoim komputerze.
Niezależnie od tego czy zdecydujesz się na zakup pojedynczego egzemplarza czy też na prenumeratę POLITYKI w wersji cyfrowej, oszczędzasz 30% w stosunku do ceny kioskowej. Bieżące wydania POLITYKI otrzymujesz poza tym wcześniej aniżeli w tradycyjnej sieci dystrybucyjnej. Już we wtorek wieczorem (20.00) możesz przeczytać najnowsze artykuły, komentarze i felietony autorów POLITYKI.

Jeśli podzielisz się swoją opinią z innymi Czytelnikami, w podziękowaniu od nas otrzymasz 100 punktów na swoje konto w Klubie Nexpresso. Punkty będą dostępne na zakupy kolejnych publikacji. Dodatkowo, co tydzień Autor/ka najlepszej recenzji otrzyma od nas dostęp Nexpresso Premium o wartości 25 zł!

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Tygodnik Komputerowy Elektro-Giełda – Twój doradca podczas zakupów

“Nie kupuj komputera zanim nie wgryziesz się w temat” – jest naszym przewodnim hasłem. W Tygodniku Komputerowym znajdziesz recenzje, które są nieocenione podczas zakupów sprzętu komputerowego. Nie zwlekaj i wspólnie z nami prześwietlaj nowości rynku elektroniki.

Tygodnik Komputerowy Elektro-Giełda jest pismem śledzącym trendy i nowości ukazujące się na rynku sprzętów elektronicznych i komputerowych. Na łamach tygodnika czytelnicy znajdą niezależne i często bardzo odważne recenzje powstające w wyniku rzetelnych testów naszej redakcji. Informacje te stają się bardzo przydatne podczas zakupu elektroniki.

Darmowe wydanie do pobrania:

http://e-ksiazka24.pl/e-prasa/tygodnik_komputerowy_elektro-gielda__p2935.xml

Den ursprünglichen offenen Brief, den Chefredakteur Lance Ulanoff am 19. November 2008 an seine Leser schrieb habe ich übersehen, die deutschen Blog-Reaktionen ebenso (Media-Blog: “PCMag: Go out of print or go out of business!”, UPLOAD: “‘PC Magazine’ stellt Print-Ausgabe ein”, blog-O-rama, sehr hübsch: “PC Magazine wirft das Papierhandtuch”).

Vielleicht bin ich ein kleines bisschen mit Schuld am Sterben der Print-Version des PC Magazine, die ich jahrelang abonniert hatte: Dass die Januar-Ausgabe 2009 nach 27 Jahren (!) die letzte gedruckte ist, erfuhr ich bezeichnenderweise, als ich bei Zinio mein digitales Abonnement verlängern wollte.

Vielleicht wird es allmählich Zeit, Wetten abzuschließen, welches deutsche Traditions-Printorgan als erstes von “Online First” auf “Online Only” umschwenkt. Vielleicht Chip? Schon im April 2008 meldete internetworld.de: “Chip: Online- überholt Print-Umsatz”
, Meedia legte am 11. November 2008 nach: “Chip Online: Schon mehr Erlöse als im Print!”.

So sehr ich weiteres Print-Sterben bedauern würde, muss ich gleichzeitig feststellen, dass das E-Paper von PC Magazine ein verdammt guter Ersatz ist. Ich habe es mit Unterbrechungen seit 2005 abonniert und bin dadurch seitdem auch ein extrem zufriedener Kunde des digitalen Zeitschriftenvertriebs Zinio, über den ich bei Qype Folgendes schrieb:

*** SCHNIPP ***

Selbst als Online-Fan bin ich, was genüssliches Lesen anbetrifft, eigentlich immer noch „Old School“. Ich liebe das haptische Erlebnis, mich durch bedrucktes Papier zu blättern und dabei auf Themen zu stoßen, die ich online wahrscheinlich eher nicht angeklickt hätte (wären sie mir denn überhaupt begegnet).

Deswegen hatte ich viele Jahre lang die gedruckte Ausgabe der US-Computerzeitschrift „PC Magazine“ abonniert. Bis mir ca. 2005 Zinio begegnete. Dort gab es ein Jahresabo des Magazins zum Schnäppchenpreis (der betrug zwischenzeitlich mal $9,99 für ein Jahresabo, im Moment kosten zwölf Digitalausgaben $14,97).

Der Vorteil: Die digitale Version war nicht immer günstiger als die gedruckte Ausgabe (US-Abos werden oft zu Ramschpreisen verhökert), dafür erreichte sie mich aber schneller – oft ca. ein, zwei Wochen vor der Print-Version.

Man registriert sich dafür bei Zinio.com und lädt den „Zinio Reader“ herunter – ein beispielhaft ausgeklügeltes Stück Software, das automatisch neue Ausgaben der abonnierten Zeitschrift herunterlädt und mit einer komfortablen Benutzeroberfläche zum Lesen anbietet (inklusive einem grafisch nett gestalteten Umblättereffekt).

Ladet dieses Programm einfach mal runter, und probiert es mit den zahlreichen kostenlos verfügbaren „Probeheften“ aus – vielleicht gefällt es euch ebenso gut wie mir.

Trotz meiner Begeisterung für Zinio.com erfüllte es mich eben gerade mit einer gewissen Wehmut, als ich auf der Website PCMagazine.com lesen musste, dass es die Zeitschrift ab der Ausgabe Februar 2009 ausschließlich digital geben wird.

Ich hoffe, dass das Blatt vor allem bei seinen Tests den gewohnten Qualitätsstandard halten kann …

Mein Beitrag zu Zinio, LLC – Ich bin PJebsen – auf Qype

*** SCHNAPP ***

Image via Wikipedia

Ok, I am not sure how they are able to do this but if you go to www.zinio.com/iphone in your iphone safari browser you can read perfect digital scans of tons of major magazines (even Playboy and Penthouse…).

Can’t tell is these are all the most recent newstand issues or if they are only letting you get a look at previous issues but either way this is pretty cool and the interface is neat to.

Looks like another nail in the coffin for Dead Tree Media.