Last week, Rex Sorgatz reviewed the 15-year-old first issue of Wired; lo and behold, Wired founding editor Louis Rossetto sent him a lengthy response that's a whole lot more interesting than the original review (sorry, Rex).
This beta was a full-on 120 page prototype, with actual stories re-purposed from other places, actual art, actual ads (someone quipped that it was the ultimate editor's wet dream to be able to pick their own ads), and then all the sections and pacing that was to go into the actual magazine. The cover was lifted from McLuhan's The Medium is the Massage; it was the startling black and white image of a guy's head with a big ear where his eyes should have been. The whole thing got printed and laminated in a copy shop in Berkeley that had just got a new Kodak color copier and rip. Jane, Eugene, and I went in when the shop closed on Friday evening and worked round the clock through the weekend. Took 45 minutes to print out one color page! We emerged Monday morning with the prototype, which we had spiral-bound in a shop in South San Francisco, before we boarded a plane for Amsterdam to present it to Origin's founder and CEO Eckart Wintzen, to see if he would approve the concept, agree to advertise in the magazine, and then give us the advance we crucially needed to keep the project alive.
Wired's cover feature for the March 2007 issue is Snack Culture. "Movies, TV, songs, games. Pop culture now comes packaged like cookies or chips, in bite-size bits for high-speed munching. It's instant entertainment - and boy, is it tasty." Even though kottke.org is a part of this culture, I still prefer a full meal.
Caught the first episode of Wired Science on PBS last night and it wasn't so bad. It's like Wired magazine, but on TV. If you missed it, the entire show is available online.
Conde Nast buys Wired News (and the wired.com domain name), reuniting it with Wired magazine after 8 years apart. Chris Anderson must be beside himself with joy; under the agreement with Lycos, Wired magazine couldn't do much of anything on the web in the past eight years (which, in my mind, hurt their credibility in the eyes of anyone who was interested in online media). (via bb)
Update: Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson on the acquisition. "The result was an agreement between the two, by which Wired News (wired.com) would host our content on their site (under wired.com/wired) next to their own content, but we, the magazine, were prohibited from doing anything in the digital realm. Aside from being somewhat ironic that Wired Magazine wasn't really wired, it was frustrating for us to be unable to walk the talk, since we didn't control the site."
New Yorker review of Chris Anderson's new book, The Long Tail. Oddly, there's no disclaimer that Anderson works for the same company that publishes The New Yorker. Not that the review is all synergistic sunshine; the last half pokes a couple of holes in Anderson's arguments.
The Chicago Tribune has published their list of the 50 best magazines of 2006. Top fiving it for you: The Economist, Dwell, Wired, The New Yorker, and ESPN the Magazine.
Wired Magazine profiles Josh Davis. Davis typically gets too much credit for being controversial and too little for his work. His speeches/appearances are well worth seeking out; they're entertaining, informative, and inspiring.
Steven Levy profiles Tim O'Reilly for Wired. Kind of ironic since O'Reilly Media has put itself in the middle of what's happening on the web, a position that perhaps should have been occupied by Wired, had they not sold all their online properties several years ago.
Long Tail poster boy Amazon's tail isn't as long as first reported. Oops. (But a good oops...Chris is after the truth here, not just a good story.)
WiReD magazine on the Mosaic WWW browser and how it is "well on its way to becoming the world's standard interface". "Mosaic is the celebrated graphical 'browser' that allows users to travel through the world of electronic information using a point-and-click interface. Mosaic's charming appearance encourages users to load their own documents onto the Net, including color photos, sound bites, video clips, and hypertext 'links' to other documents. By following the links -- click, and the linked document appears -- you can travel through the online world along paths of whim and intuition."
