magazine

BookCAT provides all the tools necessary to track books for a professional or a home library. Its interesting options give you full control of your catalog and lending.

Although it performed a complicated task, the program's interface is surprisingly accessible. It has plenty to offer seasoned and novice librarians as well as beginning to advanced book collectors. The layout is professional and intuitive with its bright, well-labeled commands. We were instantly pleased with this program, since we were able to quickly populate our entire library by entering only each book's ISBN number. BookCAT instantly downloaded each volume's … Read more

The bittersweet jokes write themselves.

Ben Huh, the CEO of funny photo hub "I Can Has Cheezburger," who has been known to show up at black-tie events with a giant hamburger hat on his head, on Monday offered via Twitter to purchase Gourmet, the seven-decade-old, high-end cooking magazine that will be ceasing publication in November as part of budget cuts at parent company Conde Nast.

Huh was probably kidding. We think.

The recent ax job at Conde Nast, long a symbol of print media's most egregious of excesses and more recently the ultimate case of a postlapsarian … Read more

Several colleagues of mine are in London this week to unveil the special TEDGlobal issue of our design mind magazine in a very special TED Salon on Monday, with the title "More Substance of Things Not Seen." The event will be co-hosted by frog design and TED, and moderated by Sam Martin, editor-in-chief of design mind, and Bruno Giussani, European director of TED.

It comes in handy for the frog delegation that this is also the first week of the magnanimous London Design Festival, an eclectic assembly of design-related programs, exhibitions, and parties all over town.… Read more

Focal Audio, aka JM Lab, may not be a well-known name in the U.S., but it is France's largest speaker manufacturer. I had Focal Mini Utopia speakers in my reference two-channel system for years and the Focal Grande Utopia EM ($180,000 per pair) is the best sounding speaker I've ever heard.

Maybe that's why the Focal Dome 5.1 satellite/subwoofer system ($2,595 MSRP) review by Michael Trei in Sound & Vision magazine piqued my interest.

The Dome replaces the Sib and Cub 5.1 system I favorably reviewed a few years ago. Unlike the Asian-built Sib and Cub, the Domes are manufactured at Focal's factory in Saint-Etienne, France.

The Dome 5.1 package is Focal smallest home speaker system yet. Trei writes: "the Dome satellite's cast-aluminum enclosure feels solid enough to withstand being run over by a small car." Each satellite speaker has a 4-inch woofer and a 1-inch aluminum/magnesium inverted dome tweeter, similar to the one Focal uses in its upscale Profile and Electra S models. Optional stands are available for the sats.

The matching cylindrical, rounded-top subwoofer has a single downward-firing 8-inch woofer and a built-in 100-watt amplifier.… Read more

Jeff Jarvis, who’s admirably trying to prevent the news industry from becoming the next music industry, recently wrote an interesting blog post in which he heralded “hyper-distribution” as a valuable new business model for news organizations. Responding to some industry pundits who propose embracing shrinking audiences as an effective means of consolidation and audience loyalty, Jarvis argued:

“Since when did it become OK for media people to shrink their audiences? Since they gave up on the ad model, that’s when. But I am not ready to surrender to the idea that advertising, which has supported mass media since … Read more

IBM scientists have imaged the chemical structure of an individual molecule, increasing the possibility for creating electronic building blocks on the atomic and molecular scale.

Scientists In Zurich, Switzerland, have, for the first time, imaged the "anatomy," or chemical structure, of an individual molecule with "unprecedented" resolution, using noncontact atomic force microscopy (AFM), IBM said Thursday. Resolving individual atoms within a molecule has been a long-standing goal of surface microscopy, according to the computer company, which has a research and development program dating back to 1945.

This research will be essential for building computing elements at the atomic scale that are vastly smaller, faster and more energy-efficient than today's processors and memory devices, IBM said.

The research is reported in the August 28 issue of Science magazine.

Though in recent years progress has been made in research of nanostructures on the atomic scale with AFM, imaging the chemical structure of an entire molecule has never been achieved with atomic resolution, according to IBM.

The atomic force microscopy was done in an ultrahigh vacuum and at very low temperatures (5 Kelvin equals minus 268 degrees Centigrade or minus 451 Fahrenheit) to image the chemical structure of individual pentacene molecules. Pentacene has a crystal structure that gives it properties as an organic semiconductor.

Scientists were able "to look through the electron cloud and see the atomic backbone of an individual molecule for the first time." This is roughly analogous to X-rays that pass through soft tissue to enable clear images of bones, IBM said.

The Science magazine article follows another piece published two months ago in the June 12 issue of the magazine covering the "determination of atomic charge states." The results discussed in both of these articles will "open new possibilities for investigating how charge propagates through molecules or molecular networks," IBM said.

Understanding the charge distribution may lead to building computing elements… Read more

You might think that starting a brand-new, high-quality, full-glossy magazine in one of the worst publishing environments in years would be a suicidal business idea. After all, take a look at just about any magazine you can think of, and, thanks to the veritable collapse of advertising, odds are it's about as thin as can be.

But to the folks at Future--a leading games media publisher--the time couldn't be better to launch World of Warcraft: The Magazine, a new quarterly title that is expected to be unveiled at this weekend's BlizzCon event--the world's biggest World of Warcraft fanfest--in Anaheim, Calif. The magazine will be the "official" WoW magazine, and is both endorsed by and produced with the editorial cooperation of WoW publisher Activision Blizzard.

And, indeed, the timing for the forthcoming magazine is clever: The first issue is planned for sometime this fall, just as WoW celebrates its fifth anniversary. And with an astounding 11.5 million players of the game now spread out around the world, Future is hoping that by promising potential readers stunning artwork, behind-the-scenes looks at ongoing development, deep dives into the game's lore, and perhaps even occasional scoops about new features or other WoW elements, it will offer fans an invaluable experience. In fact, Future sees this magazine as something along the lines of a collectible coffee table book.

Still, Future has chosen a difficult business model for the new publication. Each issue is expected to be 148 pages long, with precisely zero ads, which means that the title is shut off from traditional magazine revenues, and therefore will rely entirely on subscription fees. On the other hand, that same dynamic also means that it should be shielded from the vagaries of the advertising market, something that is currently taking down one magazine after another.

According to Future, World of Warcraft: The magazine will be offered for subscription only--no single copy sales--with U.S. readers paying $40 annually, those in continental Europe 35 euros and the British 30 pounds. The magazine will be published in English, French, German, and Spanish.

"The magazine market is suffering a rough time," said John Gower, the international director of FuturePlus, the title's publisher, "but only those magazines that are based on advertising models. We've seen our magazines increasing across the board, especially the hobbyist" titles.

That may be true, but in order to support what the publishers say will be a costly blend of commissioned art, in-depth articles written by veteran journalists and behind-the-scenes access, Future will have to convince a great deal of its players that it's worth their while to pony up $40 on top of their $15 monthly game subscription fees, even as those same players can find an enormous amount of WoW-related information online.

And that proposition is clearly not for everyone, even some of the most passionate WoW players. … Read more

So far, Amazon's Kindle has been in a safe position as one of the dominant electronic readers on the market. However, this may be changing because its rival, the Plastic Logic e-Reader, has been busy gaining prelaunch partners.

Plastic Logic, the start-up maker of the possible Kindle "killer" e-reader, announced Thursday that Olive Software will be a key service provider and partner for the Plastic Logic Publishers Program. The partnership means the two companies will develop content-publishing solutions for newspapers, magazines, and Web content providers, as well as other publishers that distribute their content via Plastic Logic'… Read more

Bad news folks, TWITTER IS DOWN! Today, we report on the subsequent worldwide meltdown in addition to stories about Wal-Mart BlackBerries, the fall of gaming magazines, and more submissions for the "Choose Justin's new glasses" competition!

All hell has broken loose in the tech world with this morning's Twitter crash. The popular microblogging Web site suffered a denial-of-service attack earlier this morning around 6 a.m. PT, but has yet to give out details or an in-depth status update. The last update said it is "defending" itself from an ongoing attack, so good luck to all the frontline GIs fighting the good fight in the trenches so that Ashton Kutcher can continue telling us facts about technology that we already know.

Earth will continue to rotate on its axis despite Twitter soiling the bed, so we bring you more stories from the Internet, including the awful news that Wal-Mart is now selling the new BlackBerry Curve for $48. So now, in addition to supporting an evil dictatorship conglomerate and taking food from the mouths of independent business owners for a 50-cent discount on a box of Tide, consumers can now pick up a cheap mobile phone so that the Walton children can put one more Benz in the garage. Cool! /rant

Be sure to tune into the second half of the show to hear more rants from The 404, but we also lament the death of classic gaming magazines like GamePro, PSM, EGM, etc. While many of them are still available for print subscription, we can't help but reminisce about the old days when you had to subscribe to them in order to get the latest tips and tricks.

So, all that, PLUS we discover the true identity of Motherboard's wily sidekick, LaserJet (thanks Hayato!) and reveal some serious (and some not-so-serious) submissions to the "Choose Justin's new glasses" competition!