

The Pragmatic Programmers release an online magazine - steilpass
http://media.pragprog.com/newsletters/2009-07-01.html

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marksutherland
I don't think I get this. They could have put together a blog or similar
website which they pushed articles of this type out to once a month, with all
the convenience of linking and being able to view the content (there's very
little imagery in this edition) in whatever platform you already use. Instead
they've chosen a digital imitation of a physical magazine, which you need some
kind of specialised reader to read, wont be indexed by google and will make it
hard to reference. Am I missing something?

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dantheman
It will make it easier to cite, Issue X, pages 1 - 3, and since they chose pdf
there is less of a chance that they'll update/change it. I agree it breaks the
web a little, you can't comment on articles or link directly to them, but
that's a trade off I'm sure they thought through.

Google indexes pdf's so I don't know where you go the idea that they didn't.

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danw
A link to a permanent URL for each article would also be easy to 'cite'.

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omouse
It would also be easier to have conversations about. Instead of forcing
everyone who wants to talk about a particular article to download the _whole_
PDF, you can link them directly to the article (and with a better Web, you
could link them to the exact sentence and paragraph you want to draw their
attention to).

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fgimenez
I love the idea, especially since the magazine reading experience is somewhat
diminished on the web. Unfortunately, the only way they achieve this is by
using a pdf, which isn't terrible, I would just prefer to navigate some sort
of html in my browser.

Are there any projects out there that attempt to make reading on the web more
"print like"? Typogridphy (<http://csswizardry.com/typogridphy/>) is a good
example of making a website less like website and more like a well styled
magazine, but I have only seen one site use it (<http://hacker-
newspaper.gilesb.com/>). Obviously this is more likely due to my ignorance of
other such sites, but the point still stands that there isn't much development
in this area.

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scscsc
I've read it all; it contains good content, but nothing extraordinarily
interesting, like a good computer magazine used to do in the 90s.

I think the funniest thing is them bashing ebook publishers for trying to
imitate the worst parts of books (i.e. turning pages) and then have them
publish the magazine in pdf format.

Otherwise, I like their approach. I think their vision of e-publishing is one
of the best in the industry; when I get some more free time, I'll go and see
which of their non-DRM-ed books I could use.

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projectileboy
Maybe I'm just nostalgic for the good old days when DDJ was good, but I think
it's fabulous that they got Michael Swaine as editor.

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rbanffy
Now, if only someone could ressurect BYTE as it was in the late 80's and early
90's...

Yes. I never said I was not nostalgic.

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dugmartin
Yeah, or better yet bring back Micro Cornucopia.

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rbanffy
Or Creative Computing.

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haasted
Entertaining easter egg at the bottom of the quiz section :

"Answer to last month's quiz : 42" :)

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timmaah
Looks good.. I'll take a longer read after work..

Only complaint so far.. The RSS feed for the magazine page is in fact for
their entire site. I'd like one just for the magazine. (Though since they
don't update the feed that often it shouldn't be an issue for me)

