iMportant iPod iNformation: Engadget shows how-to turn your iPod into a universal remote. Speaking of iPods, after a whole three days of using one, I have decided the Griffin iTrip is an essential device. It is a tiny FM transmitter that allows you to wirelessly play your iPod through any FM radio. (via BoingBoing)

QuadLife: As I know one or two residents of the Quad Nation tune into the rexblog, congratulations on the contract to print 6.6 million (of 12 million) copies per week of the new Friday-newspaper-insert reincarnation of Life Magazine. (Note to LIfe: Update your website. You still have “about us” copy announcing the last reincarnation in 2002.) (Side note: A search of the rexblog for previous mentions of Quad led me to this long-ago and long-forgotten post that includes two publisher-flags flying at a Quad plant, a tradition they have when a customer’s magazine is printing. The flags are Hammock Publishing and Martha Stewart Living.)

How magazines get started (continued): Occasionally, the Google News grid will reveal a business article in a local newspaper that profiles the founders of a new magazine in the area. For example, here’s one about the women behind the “children’s fashion” magazine, Boutique in today’s Newton (Bucks Co., Pa.) Advance.

After three years of maintaining this weblog, I’ve decided all these stories reveal the same basic process of starting a magazine. It goes something like this (illustrated with quotes from the linked-to story):

1. Be sitting around and come up with an idea for a magazine:

“Erinn and I were sitting in a playground talking about a need for something for ourselves…We wanted to work in a way that we could still be home with our children, and we started conjuring up what our dream jobs would be.

2. Do research and discover “there’s nothing out there like this idea.”

The concept of a children’s fashion magazine was a gaping hole in the publishing world…The more things she told me about it, about how it doesn’t exist and we’re going to do this, I began getting really excited about it…”

3. Convince yourself someone else is going to do it, so you’d better act fast.

…the next obstacle was to get the magazine out before any publishing company developed their own concept, especially after they came across an article in the Wall Street Journal about the success of Lucky Magazine…”This article…was saying how the new trend is magazines like Boutique that are not just fashion magazines but also shopping guides….They also mentioned a new one for men called Cargo. I read the whole article holding my breath that they wouldn’t talk about a baby shopping guide. They didn’t and…we thought it was the perfect time to introduce this.”

4. Get financing.

Personal funding out of their own pockets also played a large role in being able to get the magazine off and running.

5. Produce the first issue.

…”until we got the first issue out there, we were selling an idea that wasn’t there. But now that it’s out there, it’s very encouraging.”

6. Look for “success” markers.

It’s distribution is already reaching homes in eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York. They’ve also heard responses from readers on the west coast and overseas in Europe who received the magazine as gifts from their tri-state readership….they’ve already accomplished their first-tier goal by getting their first two issues out. “For the first issue, I think we had four or five advertisers…For the next issue, we’re up to eight…We’ve actually seen a large increase for the holiday issue. We’re probably going to have double, at least 15 have already committed. Each issue has almost doubled which people have said is amazing…”

7. Have big dreams and long-range goals to get you there.

Their next concern was establishing longevity, which is a constant challenge in the competitive market of publishing where advertising dollars and a loyal subscriber base dictate the ability to fund a magazine for long periods of time…In five years, they hope to gain a national distribution like their New York counterparts in Lucky, Town and Country and In Style. In ten years, they hope to be a regular fixture on newsstands….They all love Oprah and want to one day appear on her show.

Window gallery: Doc Searls’ shot of Mt. Shasta reminded me that he has inspired me to take window photos when I fly. While it’s a lot more hazy where I fly than where Doc flies, I’m still surprised at what shows up when I download the photos later. Here are some shots I took earlier this month from the window during a flight on the new Independence Air somewhere west of Dulles airport during a weather-related holding pattern. And here is a late-day hazy shot of either Old Hickory Lake or Percy Priest Lake (please comment below if you know) during an approach to Nashville’s airport (BNA).

n+1=0 Gary Shapiro of the NY Sun covers the launch party for a new magazine described by one of its founders as being “like Partisan Review, except not dead…That’s all I’ve got for you.” The twice-yearly n+1 (link?) (a mathmatical title that invokes “a series that doesn’t come to an end), the magazine is described by Shapiro as having, “reached back to an earlier era for a kind of mid-century seriousness and style, saying, in effect, ‘why settle for Harry Connick Jr. when one can have Sinatra?’”

Quote:

“It’s time to say what you mean,” one page says, abjuring the contemporary fascination with irony and confession….The magazine may herald a rebirth not unlike the BAM neighborhood in which the party was held, amid a newly vibrant Brooklyn cultural district.

Or not.

Right-branding: The 16-year-old magazine Syllabus is changing its name to Campus Technology magazine. The audience is IT and communications people at educational institutions. One question: Why did it take 16 years to figure this out?

Dubious: Look, the Internet is great and I love web advertising, but do I think dollars spent on online advertising will match dollars spent on magazines by 2007, then surpass them in 2008? No. But that’s what JupiterResearch predicts, according to a story in the WSJ today (subscribers only).

Quote:

Magazine publishers often set out to woo advertising dollars from television, but they might want to focus on a different sort of screen. A new report from Jupitermedia’s JupiterResearch predicts that dollars spent on online advertising — defined as a paid message featured on a Web site, online service or other interactive medium, such as instant message or e-mail — will match dollars spent on magazines by 2007, then surpass them in 2008.

Sorry. This research just doesn’t pass the smell test. (That won’t keep it from being plugged into business-plan spread sheets in real-time, however.) Actually, a more interesting story would be “the history of online advertising predictions from JupiterResearch” that goes into a little bit more detail on this point the story raises:

Of course, Jupiter has been a longtime supporter of the Internet — and can get ahead of itself. In 1999, for example, Jupiter said it expected online advertising in 2003 to total $11.5 billion, but the economic downturn got in the way. According to the company’s current report, 2003 online advertising came to $6.6 billion.

Maybe they should have learned: Unlike when you predict the future, in real-life stuff gets in the way of the future. Stuff happens.

(via BuzzMachine.com)