Blogger & Podcaster Magazine and Olive format

Blogger and Podcaster Magazine has been making the rounds of our office and blogs the last week. Joe Wikert interviewed the publisher. Chris Webb's got some ideas about it I think he'll be blogging soon. And not just for the cover story about Wiley author Robert Scoble, the feature article from Wiley author Shel Israel, but also for a look at the very interesting e-format from Olive these are presented in.

At first glance, I really liked this. It's browser based, and has a more natural UI than Acrobat, I think.

But, I've also immediately found something to hate: have you tried saving this for offline reading? It's got a file, save for offline, menu option but all it's doing is:

1. Loading a copy of each web page
2. Having you manually add this to your browser favorites
3. AND remember to check the "Make Available offline" box in the browser favorites
4. AND oh yeah, BTW if you clear the browser cache the saved magazine is gone.

Way too complex to make this appeal to anyone outside of the bleeding edge tech camp. Yuck.

And, plenty of more valid criticisms of the format gathering in Scoble's comments.

Still searching for the holy grail of a great ebook format. ;)

Comments

[Joe Wikert]

You guys laughed at me for printing it out, but after reading some of the comments on Scoble's blog about it, I'm glad I did! I had a very enjoyable reading experience with my simple, black-and-white printout.