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Followers of the nerderati have been looking forward to the release of Make for months. Hardware hacking, scavenging, and general nerdy nuttiness all in one journal -- oh boy!
My local Barnes and Noble purchased lots of copies. Compare this to Servo which I can no longer find at B&N. Make has a neat format with a National Geographic-like dimensions. The cover is confused, but acceptable. The back page has a totally tasteless ad by Antec, but who needs good taste on a back cover of a nerdzine?
I believe a magazine should be judged by its contents as well as the cover. The articles are sometimes pretty good, but not good enough. They have to be better than "pretty good" because there are good DIY websites available for free, while Make costs $14.99. That's worth repeating . . . $14.99. That's lots of money for a magazine like Make.
I see two possible choices for Make's success. Lower the price to about $5.50, or make the magazine better. Some of the articles really felt like filler. There was an incredibly mediocre review of two digital cameras. Many things just look like print versions of web pages. I'm surprised by the amount of coverage of propriety software and fairly little coverage of open source software; the magazine is put out my O'Rielly for heaven's sake! In short, make Make better, or cheaper.
Posted by Nica @ 12:15 AM PST [Link]
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