Esquire magazine is leading the new digital revolution. Another digital revolution, not the 1985 one using Mac’s, or the 1994 one using the web, but an altogether better, uh, revolution. This latest revolution using E-In - the stuff that Powers the Kindle and similar to Sony’s Ebook reader (if not the same) means print magazines can finally jump 100 years ahead of where they were and display digital text on their pages. Although this version is a bit ropey - even the publisher is calling it 1.0 technology (I’d call it 0.5), it could lead the way to a true revolution - meaning the entire magazine is no longer printed on ink/paper but produced using a flexible screen. When that day comes, I’ll be the happiest guy in the media world.

The company that produced the cover, E Ink, has a track record of innovation — its technology is used in Amazon.com’s e-book device, the Kindle. E Ink, a private company based in Cambridge, Mass., counts Hearst, Esquire’s parent, as a major shareholder. “In 2000 or so, we went to Cambridge to see if they could demonstrate the technology,” Mr. Granger said. “They were doing store displays, so it was premature for a magazine.” Two years ago, at a Hearst management retreat, Mr. Granger again raised the idea. This time it would be possible, he was told, if Hearst invested seed money to create a battery small enough to fit in a magazine.

“This is really the 1.0 version,” said Kevin O’Malley, Esquire’s publisher. “Imagine when the consumer walks by a newsstand and sees that it is alive.”

Digital technology holds the promise of making the dissemination of information much easier and cheaper — no paper, no trucks — but this experiment by Esquire was the opposite. “The whole chain had to be reinvented,” said Peter Griffin, the deputy editor. “The interesting thing is it has almost nothing to do with the normal way of putting out a magazine.”

Esquire has exclusive use of E Ink’s technology for use in print through 2009, and Mr. Granger said he hopes to come up with new ideas for it. “This is probably just a limited view of its use,” he said. The electronic cover will be used in only 100,000 copies that go to newsstands — its overall circulation is about 720,000. - So, save a copy for me please!

Source: NY Times

Just when I thought I didn’t have enough work to do over at Penton Media, I’m working with a couple of New Media (I hate that term btw) experts on the definitive eMedia Wiki. This project is going to take up many hours, so I expect to be burning the midnight oil for at least, uh, the next 2 nights. Check out the New Media, sorry, eMedia Wiki. In fact, why don’t you check it out and contribute? Isn’t that the Web 2.0 way?

Nolan Bushnell, father of Atari and therein all electronic games, is still inventing and dreaming of new ways for people to use technology for fun. Now he’s forging a different direction from today’s shoot ‘em up, kill ‘em all, tear ‘em apart electronic diversions. He sees a generation of video games that foster fun, social interaction & education. Check out the inteverview over at Electronic Design and read what he has to say about uWink and the games he’s inventing (with his daughter) for his new company, uWink.

At some stage last year, before Google went on a $1.5 Billion purchasing spree, YouTube were claiming upwards of 100 million video streams per day. It was a pretty seismic number and surprised many people - including, no doubt, the meatwads over at ABC, NBC, Disney and Viacom. Within a couple of months, Google had not only risked a huge lawsuit and bought YouTube, but then integrated the videos into the Google machine pretty quickly. Since then, the quoted video streams from YouTube remains at 100 million per day. And then I read this report from ComScore.

Hmmm, Google was the top streaming video property in January, as measured by total unique streamers (54.7 million) and total video streams initiated (1.17 billion). The lion’s share of video streaming activity on Google property occurred on YouTube.com, which accounted for 992.0 million video streams initiated.

Don’t get me wrong, 992,000,000 video streams is a pretty big number. But if the number YouTube was shouting about last summer was true, 30 days x 100,000,000 then the streamed number for YouTube should’ve been at least 3,000,000,000 (all those numbers = 3 billion)- or is my math bad? So either ComScore is getting it wrong (that could easily be the problem, web metrics are pretty dang hard to get right) or YouTube is full of crap And I’m not talking about the content.

BTW, here’s my fave YouTube Clip:

There was once a heyday in which print magazines flew off the shelves when a new piece of hardware was released. These days, readers flock to their favorite websites, and instead gauging public interest in terms of the number of issues sold, we emedia rockstars measure it in page views.  One of the new editors at HConsumer Magazine, Josh Norem has written an ode to the good old days of print and how it’s all going the way of the thong - with Emedia, namely the web, taking center stage.

Why pay for a magazine, with its “old” content, when you can get similar content for free, as soon as its available? This is the crux of this entire issue, I believe, and this is why we’re seeing more and more people move to the Web for their news.

Interestingly, this very point was made by none other than Jonathan Simpson Bint, President of Future US, which owns Maximum PC, Official X-Box magazine, and PC Gamer. In a meeting with Jonathan Bint in the middle of 2006 to discuss the future of Maximum PC, he told us the magazine was doing great and was not in danger of being canned (unlike several other future titles which had recently been cancelled, including Future Music and Scrapbook Answers). But, Bint said, the future of publishing is on the Web.

In fact, Future US is so sure that the Web is the future it is pouring millions of dollars into an atrocious “gaming portal” named Games Radar. During this meeting, Bint also hinted that there may come a time in the future where Maximum PC would have to go online to compete with other tech hardware sites. A sort of “tech radar,” if you will. Clearly, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for magazines to stay relevant when there are so many disadvantages inherent in their business model.