[ale] Baking Pi

[Jeff Layton]

  Good morning,

I just wanted to quickly comment  on the magazine part of
the discussion. I have written for Linux magazines both
in print and the web. The US environment for these is pretty
harsh. Many of the magazines have faced some hard times
because advertisers aren't spending money any more because
they don't see the impact of sales due to the advertising.
The marketing arms of these companies are being pushed
to tie sales to marketing $$ and they need to be somehow
measured. So magazines started to rely on subscriptions so
prices have gone up.

It's a tough environment right now. The European publishers
have some interesting approaches to surviving but a reasonable
size chunk of their income is subscription based. I'm writing
for one of them now and their strategy, from what I can tell,
follows this.

I've ridden 2 print magazines into oblivion and things have
really changed in the last 6 years. I really miss seeing lots
magazines around Linux and computing in the airports. But
I try to buy Linux magazines when I can to support them :)

Enjoy!

Jeff

> Hi Rich,
>
> I know what you're saying about the magazines. Actually, I'd like both 
> Linux Format and Linux User and Developer. However, $200 / year is a 
> LOT of $$. It's a shame that the US publishers have essentially 
> abandoned this market and all that's available for the most part is 
> the nice but expensive European publications.
>
> Regarding the tablet, I find mine tremendously handy. I take it 
> everywhere. It has a 10" screen. Having said that, it's really good 
> for reading ebooks which can reflow the text. Reading PDF's in 
> landscape mode is OK when you scroll up and down the page. Reading 
> PDF's in portrait mode without zooming strains my eyes. A magazine as 
> large as the ones we're discussing wouldn't work well on this screen 
> unless the file can reflow the text and images for this screen. I 
> don't know if they do that or not. The tablet works well for audio 
> bible, audio podcasts, and audio books. Having the big screen 
> (relative to an mp3 player or phone) is helpful to control and access 
> the content.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Ron
>
>

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