Zinio and Laptop Magazine - Maybe the Obvious Isn't

Anyone who hangs around me (all three of you) knows that I'm a huge fan on Zinio.  If I switch to a Mac Laptop next year, it will be the primary reason I purchase a copy of Parallels as the first software buy.  Between Zinio on my laptop, the Sony E-Book reader and my Kindle, I'm in the high 60% of all what I read being digital.

Laptop Magazine got picked up by me because there was an article mentioned on the cover of the February issue.  Something about how to properly waste time when you are stuck in an airport.  As I flipped through this magazine, I thought not bad, not bad at all.  Next stop was Zinio as I thought, it is an obvious one and I must have missed it the last time I was there.  No Laptop Magazine.

Laptop Magazine, like most print publications, has a web site that tries to straddle the world of free content with the paid content.  You get some of the stories in full with others just showing the title but no link.  I'm not going to debate the wisdom of this, Doc Searls has been speaking about this battle of content behind, around, up and over, the firewall for years. 

I'm thinking to myself: "Self, what a no brainer.  Zinio is on almost every Tablet PC out there.  A Tablet PC is a Laptop so you'd think this is a perfect gig."

I call up one of the "executives" at Bedford Communications (using the I'm a VC and have some questions intro) and ask how come Laptop Magazine isn't digital and on Zinio or any digital entity, yer a mobile magazine fer cryin out loud.

The answer:

"Most of the people around here don't think digital, they are print people.  Messing with the cash cow is not on the agenda.  The irony, however,  is not lost on some of us, I'll log your request."

Silly. Not surprising but silly.

Some bonus geek notes:

• I called the Bedford Communications folks via Skype from St. Maarten where I currently am. Perfect call, 41 cents.
• Subsequent to my typing this, I took another look at the Editor's Letter page and Mark Spoonauer, the Editor in Chief, has his email address right on the page.  Good on him, I'll see if a little match making between he and the Zinio CEO can help.

Comments

[Iain Delaney]

You won't need Parallels for Zinio, at least, because they have a native Mac client. I used it a couple of years ago and it was quite good. It's probably much better now.

[Rick Segal]

Hi Ian,
Thanks for stopping by. See all the learning I still have to do!

>R<

[Dub Dublin]

You're one of the few people I've seen really excited about Zinio. I think the reason Zinio hasn't taken off more widely is the requirement for YADPC (yet another damn proprietary client).

On several occasions, I've flirted with Zinio - and they still send me e-mail trying to get me to use the Zinio clients I've downloaded and never installed. Not that I'm really *that* philosophically opposed to a reader program, but there are obviously enough negatives that Zinio has never gotten me over the hump to actually install their client and try their system: It's proprietary, not good for anything else, has the potential to be nasty (although to be honest, I can't imagine anything much nastier than QuickTime, which inexplicably, but extremely inconveniently (especially for anybody looking at Patents) insists on taking over as your TIFF viewer in Windows), and well, it's just one more damn thing I don't want to have to deal with. Add that to the fact that I actually *hate* reading on a screen (even though, like you, I probably do most of my reading there), and Zinio's gone begging.

Now, the "if-onlys": If I had a large-screen (15") tablet PC that was thin, light, and had a 20 to 24-hour battery life, I might reconsider, but the technology needed for something like Zinio to really work and be compelling just isn't here yet. I really don't want to have to boot anything to read a magazine, so I'll stick with dead-tree editions, thanks. If I could search across all of Zinio's magazines and read what I'm interested in for a reasonable fee that did not require me to subscribe to each magazine, *then* they'd have something compelling...

[Trish Connolly]

Thanks for the comments Rick. We are a Canadian based digital edition service provider and certaily believe that the future of reading is in digital format across many wireless devices. We do believe, however that there are issues with proprietary based reading systems like Zinio, that are download only. We use a cross browser platform, created with Microsoft Silverlight to provide a rich web based viewing experience. I think that Laptop magazine does currently have a digital version available with Newsstand.com. www.advancedpublishing.com