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Fashionable food One of the online
'electric' magazines that I like is
Pages
Online, a mostly fashion & high culture magazine (that
even attracts advertisers, mostly music companies).
The Flash based magazine has the retro page turns of our
'electric' version and you have to watch for the extra pages
within each story (usually a bouncing Next) or you'll miss
the content.
This issue is their 50th, and they've an expats tribute to
Sydney by past editors Kate Atkinson and Ishil Ihtiyar. Both
of them mention the Sydney food scene and Ishil, who worked
for Maeve O'Meara on her
Food Safari TV and
Tours gives a
list of his favourite places. It's probably a perfect list
if you're visiting from out of town or from overseas. All
of them places with an emphasis on fresh Australian produce.
There's also a story on the Kino Sydney film movement, some
new art and some fashion articles (that you can tell me if
they're relevant or not). The photography is always
good and some stories have a smidgin of Flash animation so
you can tell that you're really reading an online magazine,
not a print one that is in an online format.
There are sister magazines to Pages, one music based called
Groupie, the other is Monkeysay a street/Xtreme sport mag.
We've thought about the print versus online magazines choice.
Creating print is cheaper, printing it isn't. Online the
question is how much audiovisual material you can
afford to create for an audience who want it for free. Both
still need good advertiser support. But you'd think that a
full tilt food multimedia website could be successful.
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I imagine it as a cross between a food TV channel, a photography gallery, audio streaming and
sharp text with editorial depth (and recipes). The ability to link and include influences and
great material outside in the web world is one true advantage of online vs.
print. I just don't know see it's a lean forward or sit back experience (computer
or TV), perhaps it's mobile.
My ideal would be that portable handheld reading nature of a book or magazine plus
the extra dimension of audio visual
and connectedness. I don't see it happening on tiny
mobile phone screens, but there may be a handheld 'slate' format that
will be a
winner. I know I'd eat that up.
Fred Harden 8 May 2008
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