At Business 2.0 we are trying out a new technology, and as part of the effort we are basically putting the whole magazine online. You can read, it flip through it and if possible crash-test this little effort of ours. Here is the link to get the magazine. My colleague, Damon Darlin’ has this to say:
We got a lot of flak for putting much of the content on our Web site “behind the curtain.” Only subscribers and people who buy the magazine off the newstand can get access. Whether we argued that our content was worth paying for ($4.99 for six months. Cheap!) or that we had a lot of mouths to feed at home, we never got a sympathetic hearing. We aren’t changing our policy. But guess what, folks? You can see the entire October issue of Business 2.0 by clicking on those magic words. It’s a fabulous issue from Om Malik’s piece on how people are getting rich in Silicon Valley to the gallery of the latest gadgets for your car. You even get to see the ads, including those heavy-stock inserts done by Virgin Atlantic. Just promise me you won’t look at page 24. That will just spoil it for everyone.
8 comments so far
4:15 PM PT
As I said in a previous comment, “BlackBerry Season” is a must read. Even though it is ahead of the Treo in sales now, I think the concept has hit the general public and the Treo will eventually outpace the BB because of its better functionality.
7:13 PM PT
This seems like a smart way to get people on board, without making the whole thing free. The new issue looks great.
7:41 PM PT
amardeep, glad to hear you say that. as they say, we aim to please
6:55 AM PT
Very nice interface. I actually like reading magazines on screen. Easy to use. Preferable to, say, Zinio-type publication.
I’ve posted on this today. I hope the experiment’s a success!
9:16 AM PT
This is brilliant! I never thought I’d actually enjoy reading a bitmapped magazine (guess we had to wait for PNG and some inteligent layering).
Do you think you could let us know what the software behind it is, or who makes it? I guess not, but I can’t help myself from asking.
Congrats to B2.0 for the “early-adoption”. I’ve been a loyal Wired magazine reader for almost 6 years. Guess it’s time to add Business 2.0 to my mailbox.
9:20 AM PT
Stupid me. :-P
Texterity is their name and (link) is their domain.
8:02 AM PT
Is this a one-shot or a continuing effort? If it’s continuing, does that mean I can now jettison my AOL account that I kept for the TW magazines?
The magazine looked great - the only downside is when you print, the print-size is very small.
1:50 PM PT
This thing is tremendous. I tried it on numerous browsers, including my Mac at home, my PC at work, and others, and it worked flawlessly. Very fast. It looks like there is some type of layering going on, when you zoom in big the “images” are in the background (or something) and the text is overlayed. In any case, it’s quite fast. You guys have something pretty cool. With regards to Zinio, it is painful — the download is huge, and I can’t install it at work because of XP. But once you use it, it’s very annoying and I still had mysterious crashes and “hangs”. I finally removed it… How can I subscribe to this magazine in this format? I didn’t see any place to do this on your site. Only could see the snail mail subscription. Pleeze get rid of Zinio and get this instead!