• What a magazine cover would look like if designers had their ways | Mr. Magazine
  Samir Husni is the only person I know who posts side-by-side covers of newsstand and subscriber versions of the same issue of a magazine. At some point, I’ll blog why I think their should be little difference.
  (tags: magazines)
• AT&T says original iPhones can be deactivated and used as WiFi iPods | AppleInsider.com
  I guess that’s better than having it deactivated and used as a little hunk of plastic.
  (tags: apple iphone ipod wifi)

• The Mother of All Online Magazine Games | FolioMag.com
  Good magazine sites start with the basic idea (”online games drive traffic”) and then build on it in a way that fits and reinforces their brands.
  (tags: magazines gaming)
• Sinclair dreams of ‘flying cars’ | BBC
  Personal flying machines will be a reality, home computer and electric car pioneer Sir Clive Sinclair has said. [On RexBlog.com, 2008 is ‘The Year of Links to More Articles About Flying Cars.’
  (tags: flyingcar)

• Twitter or FriendFeed? There can be more than one. | VentureBeat
  Link #1 on the topic of Twitter vs. FriendFeed.
  (tags: twitter friendfeed)
• I Love FriendFeed, But… | Patrick Ruffini (Engage)
  Link #2 on the topic of Twitter vs. FriendFeed
  (tags: twitter friendfeed)
• State of the Twitter, June 2008 | Scripting News
  Link #3 on the topic of Twitter vs. FriendFeed
  (tags: twitter friendfeed)

• Time Inc.’s Maghound Set to Debut in September | FolioMag.com
  I can think of ways the “Netflix for magazines” does not work as a good analogy, but I’m greatly supportive of any new model for fixing the broken-from-the-start U.S. mag subscription model.
  (tags: magazines circulation maghound)
• Can A New Netflix-Like Service Save Magazine Industry? | Media Money
  I can answer that. The magazine industry generates $30 billion in advertising revenue plus many tens of billions in subscriptions, books, data, research, events and, yes, online ad dollars. Maghound won’t save it.
  (tags: magazines)

• Where to run the One Machine? | The Long Tail
  Differences in privacy laws, censorship, and national security fears may restrict places where data can flow freely. In that case computation will have to hopscotch around the world following the law.
  (tags: onemachine regulation freedom competition internet)
• Using the Psychology of Free in Publishing | Tools of Change
  Quote - If you extend free psychology into the publishing realm … a publisher can use free, no-frills content to build buzz around a particular author, title or topic.
  (tags: free publishing content)
• Bloggers: Big Media Is Watching | BusinessWeek.com
  Quote - As content recognition software gets more sophisticated, expect more copyright-related battles online like the recent AP-blogger flap
  (tags: copyright AP IP journalism blogging)

• Over 30,000 books to read on your iPhone. Free.
  TextOnPhone.com is beginning to alter my heretofore belief that I could not read a book on an iPhone screen. Handy text-size-setting makes it readable for my far-sighted eyes. Still waiting for bigger format iPod, however.
  (tags: ebooks ipod iphone ebookreader)
• E-Ink Newspapers? When Car’s Fly | Technology Blog/Portfolio.com
  Quote - And while it’s true that E-Ink, specifically, has brought the technology a long way, there’s little sign that newspapers will be on leading the way with this stuff. [Wow, and I get to tag it flyingcar.]
  (tags: epaper, kindle, flyingcar)

• At Google, Slow Growth in News Site | NYTimes.com
  Quote - Google News appears to be stuck in neutral and struggling to keep up with rivals.
  (tags: google)
• Google is ‘user-generating’ more of the world on Google Maps | Google LatLong
  Google Map Maker, a new feature that allows users to contribute and edit Maps data for regions around the world. Note: It’s moderated so pranksters beware.
  (tags: google googlemaps maps mapmaker)
• The Patient as the Platform | Linux Journal
  Doc Searls uses lessons learned during his past week’s hospital stay to ponder where some solutions could be found to the complexity and competitiveness of treatment management records and data.
  (tags: VRM data health)

• Entertainment Weekly is not a celebrity magazine, its publisher jokes(?) | Advertising Age
  Surely Scott Donaton was winking when he said : “We’re a category of one. When we cover a celebrity, it’s about what they do for a living; it’s not about who they’re sleeping with.”
  (tags: magazines, humor)
• It’s 2008. Why hasn’t Internet advertising surpassed magazine advertising? | rexblog.com
  Four years ago, an article in the Wall Street Journal suggested Internet advertising would match magazine advertising by 2007 and blow past it in 2008. What happened?
  (tags: magazine, advertising, Internet)

• Hacks divided by an (un)common jargon | Martin Stabe
  Martin explains what a lede is called in the UK - It’s the intro. Makes more sense to me than ‘lede.’ Actually, it’s the intro par — as in paragraph.
  (tags: journalism)
• Wordle - del.icio.us/rexblog | wordle.net
  A tag cloud representation of the links I’ve bookmarked on del.icio.us/rexblog. From the looks of it, I guess “magazines” is a tag I use a lot.
  (tags: wordle tagcloud)
• Do what the Doc orders | Doc Searls
  From the cardiac ward (from which he checks out today), Doc shares his wisdom: If I can influence one young person to quit smoking or drinking heavily — for the duration — I’ll be happy.
  (tags: wisdom)

• Interview with Alan Taylor, Creator of Boston Globe’s The Big Picture | Waxy.org
  Great interview about the development of what’s being called ‘The Best New Blog of the Year’ - And it’s from a newspaper. http://boston.com/bigpicture/
  (tags: photography boston blogging)
• The Big Picture - Boston.com
  Prepare to be challenged on your current perception of what a newspaper weblog should look like. After being blown away, I’m guessing your second thought will be, “But where are all the ads”? Here’s where: http://tinyurl.com/4n4q7c
  (tags: newspapers blogging)

• VIDEO: Social media mistakes of five big marketers | Advertising Age
  Quote - Nothing aggravates blogger Joseph Jaffe more than marketers that employ fakery, manipulation and heavy-handed lawyers in their social-media interactions with consumers.
  (tags: advertising blogging marketing socialmedia cluetrain)
• Random thoughts about the Kindle | Seth Godin
  Geez. Seth Godin’s “random” thoughts make a lot more sense that most people’s organized ones. (And my favorite Kindle fan boy, Aaron Pressman, responds. I definitely agree with Aaron’s push-back on the Kindle being a “female” product.)
  (tags: amazon kindle books ebooks)
• A war on un-audited magazines is stupid, says Bosacks
  Quote - It is attacks and stupidity like this that will tear down the very industry that they are attempting to prop up with self-serving dogma.
  (tags: advertising magazines publishing)

• Future Ad - Wanted: CMO for Startup - Must Have a Good PageRank
  Quote - “Candidate must have a blog with a PageRank of at least 5 and/or at least 800 followers on Twitter and/or 1500 friends on FaceBook or LinkedIn.”
  (tags: marketing web+culture)
• Ways to stalk, I mean follow, your friends on the Web | WSJ.com
  A round-up of current ways you can aggregate what all your friends are doing using different social media services. My personal favorites: The Flock web browser and FriendFeed.com. (Oh, and a newsreader.)
  (tags: socialmedia conversationalmedia)
• Connecting The Dots Of The Web Revolution | Publishing 2.0
  Quote - …The thought processes, assumptions, and standards that governed analogue media, information, and thought are increasingly going to get us into trouble in a digital media world.
  (tags: blogging copyright journalism media publishing)

• If you’re curious about the future of magazines, HP Lab’s MagCloud may offer a clue | rexblog.com
  JPG magazine founder Derek Powazek has been working with HP Labs for the past year on a short-run Print-on-Demand magazine service called MagCloud.
  (tags: publishing powazek jpgmagazine magcloud magazines)

Yesterday, I pointed to the Nick Carr article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”* I think by “stupid,” he meant we can no longer read past a sentence or two anywhere without feeling the need to click away (on that we agree, so I haven’t read his entire article). Today, however, I’m reading that a Pew report indicates that the Internet is causing adults to get involved more in political conversation and to contribute to the politicians of their choice. So, in that way, perhaps the Internet is making us smarter. Of course, this is similar to a post I made earlier this month in which I pointed to a story about studies suggesting blogging is healthy for some people, while other studies suggest it’s harmful in certain ways.

Conclusion: The Internet is like red wine. Despite all the studies proving it’s good for you, drinking too much of it constantly can make you stupid and addicted.

*A recurring rant: Whenever an editor puts a “?” at the end of a headline, I wonder why I’m reading the article. Are they asking the reader for the answer? Are they hedging their bets? Hey, you sold me the magazine — you’re the writer. You tell me, don’t ask me.

[Photo credit: robsmith-qld via Flickr.]

• Merlin Mann on the e-mail monster | 43 Folders
  Quote - “28% of a typical worker’s day is spent on interruptions by things that aren’t urgent or important, like unnecessary e-mail messages — and the time it takes to get back on track.”
  (tags: e-mail orginazation)
• Small Publishers Feel Power of Amazon’s ‘Buy’ Button | NYTimes.com
  An update on some controversial ways in which Amazon is exerting its power over smaller book publishers. I blogged on the topic back in March: http://www.rexblog.com/2008/03/31/17572/
  (tags: amazon.com)