In article , Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Fri, 02 Aug 2013 19:27:26 -0400, Joe Gwinn
wrote:

In article , Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Fri, 02 Aug 2013 17:16:31 -0400, Joe Gwinn
wrote:

In article , Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Fri, 02 Aug 2013 13:16:23 -0400, Joe Gwinn
wrote:

In article , Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Fri, 02 Aug 2013 09:20:56 -0700, wrote:

On Fri, 02 Aug 2013 10:56:21 -0400, Ed Huntress
wrote:

SAE's online operations produce some good videos of mechanical
operation of car parts. Here's a video on contemporary manual
transmissions (conventional) that they link to at
DriveLineNews.com.
If detents, synchronizers, blocking rings and clutch cones are a
little vague in your mind and you want to see them in action, take
a
look at this.

http://drivelinenews.com/videos/manual-transmissions/
Thanks for the link Ed. Even though I already knew how manual
transmissions work, and have rebuilt a few, I still like looking at
animations of them working. In fact, I like to watch just about any
type of mechanical system working. I still get fascinated watching
my
CNC machines make a part even though I am the one who programs and
sets up the machines and can see in my mind's eye what the machine
is
doing as I write the program.
Eric

I love those things, too. I'll bet that most of the people here, at
least the mechanical types, enjoy it as well.

I have some great videos that I'm planning to use as the cover
"photographs" for the online magazine I'm working on. You go to the
magazine home page, and the video starts right up.

People on dialup will not be happy with this. (No, I'm on cable.)

If they're on dialup, they probably won't be reading our issues. We're
"direct": we send out 71,000 copies by e-mail.

And we're on the Web with the same material. But it's a byte-heavy
online-reader format, and I think what's left of my hair would fall
out before I paged through an issue with dialup. g

A lot of the trade mags are going this way, and it's a problem. I've
stopped reading a number of old standbys because the interface is just
too awkward.

Yes, they have been awkward. The latest ones are a lot better.

I haven't stumbled on any just yet.

My latest adventure is with PCWorld, a paid-subscription magazine that
just went all-digital using Zinio. It has not been smooth. And I
still cannot print an article. I'm working with Zinio tech support,
but this should not be necessary, and will deflect many potential
readers. Actually, pdf would work far better.



In a number of cases, the content also became insipid. I think the
core problem is that the magazine isn't profitable enough, so the
editorial staff is a bit thin. This could easily become a death
spiral.

Some have already augered in.

The online magazine business is still evolving, and some models have
already been abandoned. And you're right, many of them are little more
than cut-and-paste press releases. That's what's happened to the
greatest of them all, _American Machinist_. When I was there, we had 7
full-time editors, of which 3 or 4 were degreed engineers. Today, it
has one editor, and it's an empty shell.

Magazines are "push" communications. The Web is inherently a "pull"
medium for people who are looking for something. Most of the models
try to emulate the push model. Ours is halfway in between, but I'm
sure it will become more "pull" as it evolves.

The problem with pull is that I have to know what to ask for.

The core advantage of a magazine is the hordes of editors toiling to
find interesting things for me to read, things that I never knew
existed, and pushing them to me.

Yes, that's the "push" model, and that's the traditional idea behind a
"magazine." That's what it's meant since the 19th century. _American
Machinist_, for example -- one of the oldest continuously-published
magaines in North America -- was founded in 1877. It was a "magazine"
of things you didn't know you wanted to know. g

Until it hollowed out ...

Though I must admit that was struggling with the proper handling of the
Editors of the Horde -- should they be described as sweaty,
smoke-stained, ink-stained, or all of the above?

My image is a 1930s big-city newsroom. Quart of whisky in the bottom
drawer, just in case. What brand did the editors of _American
Machinist_ prefer?


With a paper magazine, it's random-access and thus easy to skim and
find the stuff I care about without having to plow slowly through
everything.

With an online magazine, it's slow and clumsy to achieve reasonable
random-access. It's also harder to read if your eyes are not perfect,
and the reader (a desktop in my case) is clumsy.

Yes, and that's why I was skeptical of online magazines since the
beginning.

But I was a circulation manager before I was a writer and editor, and
I've compared what I know about readership of print magazines with the
statistics I've been catching up on with online magazines. The "time
spent reading" is longer for print magazines. But the raw readership
-- the number who open it up, and the number who respond to ads -- is
slightly higher with direct e-mailed online magazines.

Hmm. Based on personal experience, I'd doubt that emailed magazines
get slightly higher ad responses than print, if only because I rarely
get through most of the email magazines.

One possible confounding issue is that when I'm searching for
something, I will usually find a bunch of online articles or ads, and
I'll click through some of them. So these could have never been
emailed, and still I'd find them, once I knew I was interested. Which
brings us back to the need for a usable digital push model.


As Tim (I think?) said,
we expect a good search engine, and the push models don't have that.
They need to.

Most websites that have a search function don't have a very good search
function, and what usually works better is to search via google using
the "site" qualifier. For instance, enter:

"plasma cutting site:fsmdirect.com" (omitting the quotes).

Yes, that's what I often do.

IMO, the best online trade magazine, in terms of functionality, is
_Modern Machine Shop_. They were pioneers online, and the publishers,
with their own staff, have developed a highly functional website. It
has searchability from several directions.

It's a little different because they also have a print version. But
they use the website to expand what they do in print. It's a fine job.


So one cheap dodge is the ensure that your site is accessible "from the
side" (deep-linking not prevented), and tell your readers of the site
trick, or decorate incoming requests with the site qualifier and pass
them on to Google.com.

The company that handles FSMD's online operations is one of the
leaders, and very sophisticated. I'm looking forward to talking with
them. They're in PA, so I intend to drive over one day soon.


Another trick is to buy from Google a search engine appliance (a piece
of computer network hardware) and install it in your web server
architecture, and aim it at the stuff you want to be publicly
searchable. While this costs money, it's immediate and guaranteed to
work.

http://www.google.com/enterprise/search/

I've used those quite a bit and I think they're very good. I'll keep
that one in mind.

I've heard only good things about these boxes. One box can be shared
over multiple magazine titles.


Joe Gwinn