Wall-to-wall Wal-Mart magazines: Paul Colford reports that another Wal-Mart-only magazine from Time Inc. is on sale, this one a special issue of People. People Extra, priced at $3.95, is an 80-page issue that features cover girl Faith Ford, Clay Aiken and other stars in holiday celebrations and family gatherings. Kraft Foods is the sole advertiser in the issue, which was also sent to 925,000 subscribers.

(via: iwantmedia.com)

Friday frolic: I guess Eddie Rider remembers me blogging how Karl Lagerfeld had 60,000 CDs he was loading onto iPods, because he just e-mailed me a link to this story about a really, uh, unique individual who has downloaded 900,000 tunes (pirated) to several Mac G-5s so the music will be preserved beyond the terrorist nuke attack he’s expecting. Eddie also e-mailed me a link to a story about knit 1 (site “under construction”), “a mini magazine by Vogue Knitting.” I’m sure if I thought about it, I could come up with a way these two stories are related, but I’m outta here.

Brand (r)extension: The global empire of rex-branded products continues to grow. And to think, it all started out as a humble lard company (see photo at the top of the page). For instance, there’s that commuter airline in Australia and, of course, the photo agency in the UK. And now from Gizmodo, I learn that the rex brand is now carried on Japanese wireless thingees. You can read all about it here (if you know Japanese). One of these days, I’ll post pictures of my collection of rex-branded merchandise ranging from cigarettes and beer to wall paper sizing.

Travel update: I’m going to be several places next week (and will miss two other events in Chicago, unfortunately). Here are a couple of places where a random reader of this weblog may also be. If so, please look me up.

In New York:

On Monday night, I’m attending the Ozzie & Eddie Awards. (Okay, we’re finalists in a couple of three categories.)

On Tuesday night, I hope to drop by a reunion gathering of the Stanford Professional Publishing Course. (I attended it back in the 1920s — or was it the ’30s?) Here are the details.

On Wednesday morning at the Folio: Show, I’m on a panel at the 9 a.m. session called, “Custom Publishing: Building A Profitable Custom Publishing Business”

Update - these magazines are still dead: Pamela Parker Caird has been cleaning our her desk and has discovered some final copies of defunct dot.com magazines. Final? You never know. I’m sure someone, somewhere is planning some more dejazines.

Free the media: Under a generous and enlightened Creative Commons license, Dan Gilmore’s book, We the Media, has been available free and online from the publisher since July. It’s now available at authorama.com and in audiobook form (two options), as well, as listed on the Open Source Audio directory at Archive.org.Of course, my favorite chapter in Dan’s book is Chapter 7 where you can read about, well, this weblog.

(via: Hypergene MediaBlog)

Georgia on their mind: Have I not mentioned the new magazine Georgia Lifestyles before? Well, it apparently has launched and apparently is in a familiar category.

Doing the tighten up: According to the NYT, “the leaders of the Audit Bureau of Circulations outlined steps Thursday to bolster confidence in the circulation figures reported by newspapers and magazines, saying that they will hire dozens more auditors to root out fraud and that they will tighten rules enacted three years ago that liberalized the definitions of a paid copy.”

(via: iwantmedia.com)

blogs, magazines & journalism
<b>Magazine links of the week:</b> Now <i>here</i> is a great idea. The <a href=”http://www.magazine.org”>MPA and ASME</a> that, according to <a href=”http://www.mediapost.com/dtls_dsp_news.cfm?newsId=278474 “>MediaPost.com</a>, “instead of talking up readership research, circulation figures, or the medium’s high level of involvement with consumers…displays the medium’s best asset–its best examples of editorial content.”

Beginning this week, a page on magazine.org will feature <a href=”http://www.magazine.org/editorial/8596.cfm”>”Magazine Article Links of the Week”</a>. Great idea (I’ve added it to my blogroll at left). Hey, MPA, add an RSS feed for the page.