The perception we have regarding cost of magazines is that the cover price is the cost of the content within the magazine. The truth is that the cover price of a magazine these days reflects little more than the cost of printing and distribution. Few magazines actually make money from the cover price, they make money from selling advertising.

I detest having to pay for a magazine that is 80% advertising. Add to this the hassle of us having to go to the newsstand to purchase the mag and we have a very expensive product, much more expensive than is apparent. So here’s a model that covers all the bases. Free shareable magazines. All my favourite titles are here as well as some I would find very difficult to find at any local newsagent.

Advertisers can still advertise, adverts will still be seen. The internet and my browser takes care of the cost of distribution and the content creation is transferred solely to the advertiser. I pay for nothing but electricity and bandwidth. My end of the bargain is that I have to be exposed to the ads and if I like something, I might buy it.

I have all the choices in the world conveniently delivered to my browser. It’s social in that my friends can suggest content that might be interesting to me and I can in turn suggest stuff to my friends.

This is a great model and it’s truly a game changer. What do you think?

In this flat world we live in, you would think that Amazon.com would get it.

What I mean is that if Amazon knows where I live (and they do), they can keep all my profile info and credit card details across all sites (and they do), why can’t they  put my orders via the  closest  location  geographically?  I buy a lot of books based on recommendations from other sites who earn  commissions via Amazon Associates. These sites are mainly in the US. It makes no sense for me to buy from the US site because shipping is really high so I prefer to buy via Amazon.co.uk. It would probably make even more sense to buy from the French or German sites. What I’d love to see is when I place an order for a book or other item from Amazon.com, they process my order via the closest geographic location, thereby charging me less shipping but still giving the poor devil that recommended the book to me his commission.

Heres an interesting comparison:

Purchasing The World is Flat by Thomas Freidman from Amazon.de will cost €6.00 in shipping while buying the same book from Amazon.co.uk will cost €7.36 in shipping (£4.98 @ 1 GBP = 1.47764 EUR)

Makes sense since Germany is a little closer to Greece so why can’t Amazon ship from Germany when I order from the English or American site?

I’m currently reading “Beginning Python” and there’s a great paragraph right at the front that I wanted to share.

Pg 31. “The trend in personal computers has been away from reliability and toward software being built
on top of other, unreliable, software. The results that you live with might have you believing that
computers are malicious and arbitrary beasts, existing to taunt you with unbearable amounts of
extra work and various harassments while you’re already trying to accomplish something. If you
do feel this way, you already know that you’re not alone. However, after you’ve learned how to
program, you gain an understanding of how this situation has come to pass, and perhaps you’ll
find that you can do better than some of the programmers whose software you’ve used.”