Did you hear that there’s a new magazine specifically for us bloggers (and podcasters)? Yeah, that’s right. Blogger & Podcaster officially launched its first issue a few days back.
I’ve poked throught the first issue, which features our good friend Robert Scoble talking about podcasting (nice article, by the way). There’s also excerpts from a pretty nice discussion between Chris Pirillo, Technorati’s David Sifry and Tim Bourquin, founder of the Podcast and New Media Expo on the social media’s influence on our modern lives.
I found a bunch of other good articles as well from people like Leo Laporte, Rob Walch and Shel Israel, among others. I enjoyed the magazine very much.
But I really enjoyed the technology.
The eletronic version of Blogger & Podcaster uses Olive Software’s Active Magazine technology. The experience is amazing. When you first view Blogger & Podcaster your brought to the front cover, just as you were holding the magazine in your hand. Active Magazine simulates turning pages – so you get to experiences pages turning as though you’re holding the ‘real thing.’
But Blogger & Podcaster goes further than your print magazine can, yet. Some ads in the magazine include audio – and I found one video. Can you imagine being able to promote your business, service, book, product with not only your traditional print ad, but with interactive video as well? Really amazing.
The simulated page turning along with the audio/video features and live links to websites really made Blogger & Podcaster a fun and enjoyable experience for me. And, the articles were pretty good.
The electronic subscription is free (at least for now). The print version is $79 in the U.S. ($99 outside the U.S.). The print subscriptions seems a bit steep, especially when you consider the first issue was only 48 pages. Though publisher Larry Genkin said on BloggingPro,
I made the decision to charge for the print subscription to allow as many people as possible to have access to the magazine. If we would have given the print edition away for free like many trade publishers do, we would have had to cap circulation at around 10,000 before our printing and mailing costs would force us to have to charge advertising rates that would be to steep for what the industry can afford at this time. By offering the digital and podcast editions for free we can literally allow millions to have access to the content without having to significantly raise our advertising rates. Hope you understand.
Dave Taylor seems to think Blogger & Podcaster is doomed to certain failure. What do you think? Is it something you would read regularly?
I know I will sadly.
Cute! Pretty!
Didn’t like the autosound on adverts.
Content looks promising.
Would rather read a real magazine. I rarely read from front to back, in order. And, often never finish an article at one sitting.
Thanks for the link. Neat to see the technology.
Lyle
Amanda,
Why sadly?
Lyle,
I agree on all counts.
I thought the media ads were a bit obstrusive. And I’d like to read a paper version. But not for $79 a year.
I’d pick up a copy if it were sitting on the newsstand just out of curiosity. Content looks good.
I don’t care for that electronic simulated page turning thing though. Seems really inconvenient to read online, something that is designed for print, when it could just be in HTML pages like every other magazine website out there.
Webomatica,
I would too. I actually enjoyed the simluated page turning. Though it’s a novelty and something that could get annoying, I’m sure. I’m really interested to see if this takes off.