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24 Mar 2011 10:58

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Tech: Think Quarterly: Google has a spiffy magazine for UK advertisers

  • Google has a spiffy new magazine. They say it’s for advertisers and partners in the UK, but we bet people would actually buy this thing in an app store. “Think Quarterly” has a better set of table of contents pages than many mags have feature spreads. We don’t even care what it’s about. It’s Google. It involves graphic design and thinking. And it’s awesome.  source

11 Jan 2011 20:33

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U.S.: Gun control advocates in Congress get their legislation ready

  • 30+ number of rounds of ammo gunman Jared Lee Loughner was able to hold in the magazine he used in Saturday’s shooting
  • 10 maximum number of rounds magazines could have if a bill from Rep. Carolyn McCarthy and Sen. Frank Lautenberg passed source
  • » A personal cause: Carolyn McCarthy has first-hand experience with what gun violence can do. She entered politics in 1993 after her husband was killed and her son injured during a shooting on Long Island. Even considering her own personal feelings on the matter, even she’s not sure what can pass. “I have to look at … what can actually pass in Congress and have it signed by the president,” she said Tuesday. “The House and the Senate are pro-gun houses.”

10 Jan 2011 10:32

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Biz: Hugh Hefner takes Playboy private: Insert (heh heh) dirty joke here

  • $207 million for Hefner to take Playboy private again source
  • » Why’s he doing this? Simply put, the magazine business is not what it once was, especially in the soft-core sexiness department. And the publisher of Penthouse tried to buy Playboy away for $210 million. But the 84-year-old Hef wasn’t having that.

01 Sep 2010 23:29

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Culture: Longshot Magazine: Quick turnover, surprising results

  • Cool stuff in two days or less. Longshot Magazine just celebrated the launch of its second issue (Issue One, after Issue Zero), and it looks pretty sweet. The idea, created entirely by a staff of volunteers over a long weekend (with a little help from their friends, this time in the offices of Good Magazine), is applied publishing – super-experimental, based on a theme, ultra-stressful, but fun and interesting nonetheless. Produced using MagCloud, the mag will set you back a solid $11, but when the concept is this cool, why not splurge? source

08 Apr 2010 22:39

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Politics: Glenn Beck isn’t just a blabbermouth. He’s a business.

  • $32M the amount Beck made last year alone
  • $13Mthe amount Beck makes from publishing, including books and his own magazine
  • $10Mthe amount Beck makes from his radio show, one of the most popular on the air
  • $9Mthe amount Beck makes elsewhere, including the Web, speaking and TV source

05 Mar 2010 12:39

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Biz: Dear copyright-hounds Attributor: Are you reading our site?

  • Apparently, Attributor plans to go after blogs for copyright usage. Does our blog use more than 80 percent of your average news article? No. In fact, we go to great lengths to rewrite the content and link to everywhere we post about. Which is why we’re curious as to how Attributor plans to tackle ShortFormBlog.
  • What is it? Attributor, if you’re not aware, is a Silicon Valley startup whose entire business model is based around going after Web sites posting news or eBook content, forcing them to take it down or pay for a license, pushing ad providers to remove advertising from the site, or even forcing hosts to shut down a site.
  • Sound familiar? If these tactics sound familiar, it’s because the exact same kind of tactics were used by the RIAA for years when handling copyright violators. Jammie Thomas-Rasset could tell you a thing or two about how this shakedown model works, and it’s not pretty. The only difference is that they aren’t suing.
  • wrong approach We feel that Attributor is a bad harbinger for this industry of news. What we’d rather see is a version of the AP and other wire services designed specifically for small-to-mid-sized blogs, with a reasonable cost. Bloggers like us would pay $20 a month for Reuters or AP. Just an idea, dudes. source

01 Mar 2010 11:19

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Biz, Tech: Conde Nast trying this iPad publishing thing, with a big caveat

  • They won’t do titles other than their most popular unless Adobe and Apple get along. Later this year, you can expect issues of Wired, GQ, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Glamour to hit the iPad in an “experimental” format. But it won’t go beyond that unless Apple can reach an accord with Adobe, because two development tracks is kind of a pain. They do have some encouraging numbers working in their favor. 22,000 people paid $2.99 for an iPhone-formatted version of GQ. source
 

02 Oct 2009 19:11

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Biz: A Hulu for publishing: Will media finally get its act together online?


About time someone noticed. We're not going to give the publishing industry a full pass here, but it's great to see they're finally attempting to cobble together a plan for magazines to have a life outside of glossy paper.
  • The plan Time Inc. is pushing to create a Hulu-style app for magazines, and other publishers (such as Wired publisher Condé Nast) are getting on board. The idea is to focus strictly on the content and the distribution system instead of where the content might show up. (Good idea, because you guys know nothing about devices.) source
  • The plan Time Inc. is pushing to create a Hulu-style app for magazines, and other publishers (such as Wired publisher Condé Nast) are getting on board. The idea is to focus strictly on the content and the distribution system instead of where the content might show up. (Good idea, because you guys know nothing about devices.)
  • Why it might work Let’s say Apple releases a tablet. Or Microsoft does something with its Courier prototype. The media industry could totally do some awesome things with it, such as multimedia, interactive graphics, or contextual stuff like Apture (used above). If they do it right, they finally – finally! – have a unique product that people would pay for again. source
  • The plan Time Inc. is pushing to create a Hulu-style app for magazines, and other publishers (such as Wired publisher Condé Nast) are getting on board. The idea is to focus strictly on the content and the distribution system instead of where the content might show up. (Good idea, because you guys know nothing about devices.)
  • Why it might work Let’s say Apple releases a tablet. Or Microsoft does something with its Courier prototype. The media industry could totally do some awesome things with it, such as multimedia, interactive graphics, or contextual stuff like Apture (used above). If they do it right, they finally – finally! – have a unique product that people would pay for again.
  • Why it might not To this, we defer to Fake Steve Jobs (a.k.a. Daniel Lyons), who made some really interesting points a couple of days ago. His argument is that content manufacturers completely lack imagination, and as a result, tech companies are eating their lunch. He nails it. If they just recycle the same crap from print, nobody will want it. source

08 Jan 2009 09:35

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Tech: This was my favorite magazine when I was a kid

  • EGM is shutting down Electronic Gaming Monthly was a long-running magazine about video games. They’ve published since 1989, in the days of Megaman and Sonic the Hedgehog. Their last issue will be the January 2009 one. source
  • EGM is shutting down Electronic Gaming Monthly was a long-running magazine about video games. They’ve published since 1989, in the days of Megaman and Sonic the Hedgehog. Their last issue will be the January 2009 one.
  • The Web site remains EGM’s web destination, 1UP.com, is pretty popular itself and will stick around. Ziff-Davis, the magazine’s publisher, will sell the site to competitor UGO. 30 jobs will be lost from the EGM divestment. Game over. source