idiomag

We have now launched what has been one of the most-requested features for idiomag - a personalised mp3 player to accompany the magazine. You will now receive a playlist of suggested tracks, based on the selection of articles that you are reading.

Previously, relevant music was targeted to each article, but there were few playback controls. This independent player now allows you to have complete control whilst reading the magazine, with integrated click-to-buy links, and optional intelligent-skip functionality: to fast forward the playlist to the relevant track when the page is turned.

Hope you like it as much as we do. Please let us know how we can improve it - and it goes without saying that we will be increasing coverage of artists and improving the quality of selected tracks over the next month or so.

Just realised that I never made a post about our redesign… It went live a while ago, and if you like or loathe it, please let us know so we can keep improving it. Based on feedback and traffic stats, we could see that the interaction buttons weren’t entirely useful or understandable previously, so we have cleaned everything up a bit. Hopefully it is easier to use now!

We also added in loads of new contributors, and more content types such as the funky photogalleries. idiomag is now running about 6000 articles a month!  And growing…

Well, a lot has happened since we last posted here. The big players have been buying up the online advertising market, Facebook has allowed external apps in its social network, and last.fm has finally been bought by CBS (last.fm: please don’t change - we love you as you are!).

We have some very exciting developments in the pipeline for this month. We have been working hard on tweaking idiomag’s algorithms and content-base, as well as making the magazine more readable. Also, at some point in the next month or so, we will jump on the (very appealing) bandwagon and create some groovy Facebook applications.

We have had a good range of new contributors come on board, including JunkMedia, Ground Up Hip Hop, Losing Today and Chronic Magazine. This will really help deepen our content-base, enabling us to deliver a more relevant and interesting magazine. In addition, we are now broadening the content beyond gig and album reviews, to include interactive competitions, feature articles and some podcast-style sections.

One major improvement that we are just completing, is that readers will soon be able to join idiomag using their last.fm, iLike, MOG, or MyStrands username. From this we can immediately create a very relevant magazine, from their past listening habits. Much simpler and quicker.

Its also nice to see that idiomag is still picking up some great press, with recent mentions in WebUser magazine and Precision Marketing magazine.

Well thats about it for the moment. As usual, let us know your thoughts and suggestions.

We’d just like to say a quick congratulations to Jon, for a brilliant feature of FormatPixel at TechCrunch. FormatPixel allows you to create your own online magazines, fanzines, brochures, catalogues, portfolios and much more. Jon does the development for FormatPixel in his spare time, but for his day job works as the main developer for our Flash magazine interface!

Techcrunch announced today that Condé Nast (who bought Reddit last year) have just released a social networking site for teenage girls built around “customizable, rich media blog/journals and include text, photos, music and videos”. This is obviously interesting news for us, since we have a very similar interface, and have been considering the best way to integrate a networking aspect into the site.

It appears that Flip provides a funky alternative to Myspace, a bit like an online doodle-pad/scrapbook/photoalbum, and will probably gain popularity with its target market - creative girls, therefore attracting boys (and unless they put in place some decent security/verification features, older men).

It would be easy for idiomag to include the same functionality as Flip, and create a basic social network - but we are trying to go beyond this. We want to use social networking to build a community around readers’ magazines and interests, rather than a basic user-generated-content site which creates a tangent from our focus of quality content. Let’s face it, if you want to browse through profiles of (potential) friends, there are plenty of other places to do it. Watch this space…

Since TechCrunch made it (much more widely) known that we were launching “tomorrow,” we have been inundated with people asking about the launch. So in the true spirit of procrastination, I set out to find the day that would give us the longest time to get ourselves together.

We could claim that we are in Niue (a Pacific Island), giving us 11 extra hours, but I have come up with an even better idea: we are on Venus. Here, one planetary day takes 243 Earth days… so keep waiting. Honestly though, Ed promises me it won’t be that long.

Also - if you have written quality design/music content that you would like to see in idiomag, get in touch.

We’re very much in the beta-stage so if you see a bug pop us an email: bug [at] idiomag.com and we’ll try and swat it!

- Ed

The idiomag system (beta) is looking great! And what’s more, it appears to be working! We are just conducting the final testing, and we should have a live system ready for you all by the 25th October.

Just as a heads up, our beta stage will be public - and everyone is welcome. We expect the beta audience to be limited by our initial focus on digital design and music content. But, we will be expanding out from these interest areas as soon as we have had a steady period of operation - and also when we have some feedback so that we can incorporate your thoughts in the next iteration.

Do register for the newsletter to get sent a reminder when we launch. You can also stay up-to-date with the blog by subscribing to the feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/idiomag.

Check out the user screencast, it should provide you with a reasonable idea of how it will all work for you. We’d appreciate any comments!

- Ed