Tag Archives: magazines

Free inaugural issue of Wired

Posted on by at 8:46 am
Image representing Wired Magazine as depicted ...

If you download the free Wired app for iPad, you can view the inaugural issue of the magazine from January, 1993, for free. (All other issues require a subscription to either the paper magazine or in the app).  There is also a new editor’s note about the beginnings of the magazine.

When it launched, Wired was a terrific magazine, with great writers and great design.

Related articles

The worst magazine…ever

Posted on by at 11:58 am

You can tell it is the worst magazine ever based on a number of factors. First, the name of this magazine is The Conservative Teen.  [Note: at the time I wrote this, the site had already been taken down.]

Second, take a look at the cover.

Don’t those kids look all wholesome and Aryan? Why sure they do. Too bad that the photo is a stock photo from … wait for it … Denmark, not even the US.

Three: The headlines alone are offensive enough to turn off readers. Here is my favorite:

Fourth, the magazine assumes its readers cannot understand the simplest of words, and therefore it offers parenthetical definitions of such brain teasers as:

It is best to turn to Stephen Colbert for the straight scoop:

Finally, check out this essay by Harry Cheadle of Vice. It is too good to pass up.

A three screen strategy

Posted on by at 10:05 am
Image representing Robert Scoble as depicted i...

Robert Scoble

Robert Scoble writes that one of the most important parts of Apple’s announcement today will be the unveiling of an advance “three screen strategy,” relying on a convergence of the iPhone, iPad and Apple TV using Apple’s AirPlay technology. You can read his post, which I highly recommend, here, but you will need to scroll down a bit to get to the meat of his description of the “three screen strategy.”

While I doubt that Apple is calling this plan the “three screen strategy,” I do think that Scoble is right on in predicting the criticality to Apple of successfully deploying both its AirPlay technology and licensing deals with content providers.  Apple needs to conquer the living room and the mobile space and iCloud plus AirPlay is the path to victory.

Apple has worked for years on its Apple TV “hobby” and, given the big moves in media distribution over the past few months by Netflix, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Spotify and others, now is the time for Apple to bring the pieces together in a compelling way. They have the talent and the reputation to do it. The only question is whether the media giants will play along or will block it despite their long-term best interests in wider paid distribution.

Related articles

In the beginning was Feed

Posted on by at 5:39 pm

Can you remember the beginnings of the Internet? Or at least the beginnings of the popularization of the Internet. Way back then, in the mid-90s, there were a few new publications called “webzines”.  The term reflected the underlying assumption that writing on the Net was different, yet the same. Magazines were familiar and webzine were the same, but very very different because they were “published” on the web.  This was bad terminology in that writing is writing, whatever the medium, be it chiseling in granite, pressing ink on paper or using a pen.

Anyway, one of my very favorite “webzines” was called Feed. I loved it and read it without fail. But then it fell off the interwebs. But rejoice: the full archives of Feed are back. And some of its writers continue to be very well known, including the novelist Sam Lipsyte, Wonkette’s Ana Marie Cox, media theorist Clay Shirky, New Yorker music critic Alex Ross, Talkingpointmemo’s Josh Marshall, and many others. For example, here is an early post from Josh Marshall.