Binding: Magazine First Issue Lead Time: 6-10 weeks Format: Magazine Subscription, Print Issues Per Year: 12 Label: Conde Nast Publications Magazine Type: Consumer magazine Product Manufacturer: Conde Nast Publications Number Of Issues: 12 Publisher: Conde Nast Publications Ranking: 4 Studio: Conde Nast Publications Subscription Length: 365 days
Editorial Product Review:
Item Description: WIRED uncovers the most surprising and resonant stories about the people, companies, technologies and ideas that are transforming our lives. Whether it's technology...business...global politics...new media...arts and culture...the environment...or the best new products, WIRED is there, on the front lines of the 21st Century. Find out what's next with WIRED!
Amazon.com:
Who Reads Wired? Wired readers want to know how technology is changing the world, and they’re interested in big, relevant ideas, even if those ideas challenge their assumptions—or blow their minds. Wired readers are generally familiar with computers and the Internet, but this is definitely not a computer magazine—Wired won’t teach you how to upgrade your RAM. Instead, it’s a magazine about science, art, adventure, online culture, business, philosophy … and bright shiny beautiful gadgets. Each month, more than 2 million smart, savvy readers come to Wired for clean, clear writing with a wry twist.
What You Can Expect in Each Issue:
Start: In Start, readers are treated to quick bites of information on everything from provocative innovations (in-flight Wi-Fi, anyone?) and new technologies (who won the DVD format wars?) to cultural shifts (why are Korean schoolgirls buying mini refrigerators?). Looking for tips on touching up your digital pictures or resetting a dislocated shoulder? Start has those, too. The stories are presented in smart, irreverent language with Wired’s signature visual flair.
Test:Wired has covered gear and gadgets since its very first issue. Every month, Test gives readers the definitive take on the hottest products on the market, from the newest HDTVs to the slimmest notebook computers. The best tech writers in the business put the gear through a rigorous review and rate it from 1 to 10. Mix in Wired's trademark visuals and humor and you've got the most useful, entertaining coverage of products anywhere.
Play: Now that popular culture is Wired culture, this is the best place to turn for the skinny on what’s cool, quirky, and fun. The section kicks off with Playlist: the top 10 newest, coolest things in the Wired world. In the rest of Play, editors delve deeper into movies, art, books, games, design, and online entertainment. Plus, it delivers the big picture so readers understand why these things matter. Wondering about cognitive science behind Halo 3? Curious about the cutting-edge engineering that goes into making a Top 40 single? The answers are in Play every month.
Endgame: Part contest, part game, and totally engrossing, the Endgame puzzle challenges Wired readers to think deeply, both on and off the page.
Features: Each month, the editors open a window to the future of technology, business, entertainment, science, and culture. We recently devoted 22 pages to the thorny questions to which scientists still don't have answers: Why do we sleep? What causes ice ages? Do forests actually speed up global warming? Other recent topics: How Apple does so well by behaving so badly; the race to build the 100-mile-per-gallon car; 12 ways to supercharge your brain; and how personal genomics could change the way you live.
Magazine Layout: Outstanding print design is about the seamless integration of compelling stories and fresh ideas with expert typography, arresting photography, and sharp illustration. Inventive visual architecture has been part of the magazine’s DNA from the beginning. Fifteen years on, Wired is still the place to turn for eye-popping images and a style that sets the pace for the rest of the magazine design world. .
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Contributors: Wired editor in chief Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, writes regularly for the magazine. Among our other writers are Steven Levy, Joshua Davis, Steven Johnson, Jeff Howe, Lawrence Lessig, Daniel H. Pink, Bruce Sterling, Clive Thompson, and Gary Wolf. Contributing photographers and artists include Dan Winters, Platon, Nigel Parry, Andrew Zuckerman, Robert Maxwell, Bryan Christie, Tobias Frere-Jones, Jonathan Hoeffler, and Jason Lee.
Past Issues:
Awards: Under the leadership of editor in chief Chris Anderson, Wired has been nominated an unprecedented six consecutive times for the National Magazine Award for General Excellence, winning the industry's top prize in 2005 and 2007. In 2008 Wired was nominated for three NMAs, for General Excellence, Design, and Best Section. In 2008 the magazine was nominated for 18 of the top awards from the Society of Publication Designers.
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Customer Rating: - A confusing magazine; not what it used to be
I used to subscribe to this magazine back in the internet heyday around the turn of the millennium. It was great, really different but more important, really RELEVANT. I saw this great offer for $1/issue and figured what the heck I'll try it again. This magazine is nowhere near what it used to be, and it's just chock full of glossy, irrelevant ads. They even include other magazine clips and advertising inserts inside the plastic wrap it comes with. It reminds me of my wife's Glamour magazine now.
Yes, some of the articles are still trendy and forward looking from a technology standpoint, and it's a great value at $1/issue, which is why I'm still rating it 3 stars, but it's so all over the place in terms of content now as to be confusing. It has lost its identity. I am not going to renew it.
Customer Rating: - Its exciting but dont expect great! Only GOOD!
The magazine is good, but not great. It is something good to have lying around. I was expecting electronic and gadgets reviews and test but this magazine barely touch the subject.
Customer Rating: - Loosing its edge.......
For many years wired was THE magazine of a technological future, presenting technologically driven material as a world changing force. This was nerdiness without submission, and one could be interested in technology without retreating from the world. The world was becoming technology.
There was plenty of technocratic bombast, many things that were written about died in the cradle, and Wired was as closely linked to the dot-com boom as any publication, but few magazines could grasp the present, and grasp ideas of the future so well as Wired.
Wired also had a countercultural edge because it, simply because the people involved with it were willing to play with, or at least touch, any interesting and new idea that fell within Wired's orbit. This was not a magazine for everyone, but it fit its niche well.
Lately something in the tone of the magazine seems to be changing. Rather than reporting from the inside of the technologically driven world, it seems as if Wired is increasingly chasing celebrities, and involving itself with things that are trendy in the media world.
Wired is not gone, per se, but frankly, when you see Martha Stewart on the cover, apparently because she is famous, and has hired people to integrate, in no novel or overwhelming way, a website with her other media activities, it is safe to say that Wired is becoming disconnected with its audience. While many articles are still interesting, the number of good ones is declining, and the tone of the magazine has shifted. One gets a strong feeling reading it that many of the staffers used to work at Cosmopolitan or Time, and are really more interested in faddish popular crisis and fashion than they are in technology. I can't yet say that Wired is bad, and there is no good substitute for it that I know about, but unfortunately, it seems as if the magazine is heading downhill.
Customer Rating: - Best Price for an Excellent Magazine
I am an older geek (demographically I am probably very OLD compared to the average WIRED reader) who enjoys staying informed about emerging and fast-evolving technology of every type/sort/ilk. Unlike other hard-tech magazines I read, WIRED is unique in that it places a "human" face on technology, no matter how razor-edged it might be. How many tech and/or hard science magazines even pretend to present the "big picture"? Humans are developing tech at a furious rate, and WIRED helps me ponder tech's implications/impact on society, the environment, finance, etc. Yes, I am interested not only in tech, but in hard and soft sciences, socio-economics, politics and other arenas which impact our world. WIRED satisfies all these interests.
Alienware's flagship gaming laptop, the Area-51 m9750, has plenty of appeal for high-end gamers, but the alien head aesthetic seems dated, and newer components are right around the corner.
The rise and fall of muni-Fi (and rise again): Clearly, the largest story involving Wi-Fi in 2007 was the at-first continued growth in cities awarding contracts with no money involved on their part to have service providers build Wi-Fi networks--and the subsequent failure of these networks to be built. Starting quietly in late 2006, the market shifted for metro-scale Wi-Fi. During 2007, providers decided that bearing the full cost of a city-wide network without city contracts wasn't financially sensible.
The full scope of the low uptake rates in cities that had large portions of the network built out also became clear: rather than 15 to 35 percent of residents subscribing, just a few percentage points would put a network in the top tier. Revenue is apparently also pretty minimal even in cities like Taipei, Taiwan, the network provider for which was predicting 250,000 subscribers by the end of 2006, and had just 30,000 regular users each month at last public report in early 2007.
MetroFi started to tell cities that without an advance service commitment at a minimum level -- an anchor tenancy -- the company couldn't proceed on networks. In 2007, MetroFi lost half a dozen bids or saw contracts canceled due to this change. Its work in Portland, Ore., the biggest network it was building, won't be extended beyond current limited dimensions until additional capital or a city commitment is obtained; the city has said it won't commit to service fees, however.
In a smaller bit of news, Kite Networks, formerly known by various names, was sold by parent MobilePro to Gobility with conditions that according to SEC filings by MobilePro weren't met. Kite was once high flying, in the company of EarthLink and MetroFi as one of the major U.S. Wi-Fi network builders. Now it's still in that company, with work on its Arizona networks apparently halted. A suitor has emerged in the form of a regional telecom that specializes in the Hispanophone market (double entendre intended), and which thinks it could boost Tempe subscriptions from the current several hundred to about 300 times that number. Hope springs eternal.
County-wide Wi-Fi was also hit again and again by providers who pulled out--CenturyTel in Pierce County, Wash., for instance--or problems with technology or utility poles. In a few scattered areas, Wi-Fi across counties has been built out, but it's not an idea whose time has yet come.
Muni-Fi isn't down for the count. While these high-profile networks in large cities and county-wide networks have mostly hit the skids, more modest networks with well-defined goals continue to be built with a focus on public safety and municipal uses in hundreds of small and medium-sized towns. Brookline, Mass., may be a good example, in which a public safety/public access network was built relatively quickly and with no reported problems.
And there's one big city success story: Minneapolis, Minn. While local provider US Internet wound up spending more than they'd intended, reports from the ground indicate that service works quite well, and subscriptions and interest are quite high. The company was able to respond almost instantly to the bridge collapse a few months ago by deploying additional mesh infrastructure to add network capacity in the area. And it says that it could reach positive cash flow in early 2008. One of their advantages? They secured a substantial commitment from the city for the services they built.
Other trends of the year gone by: Music and Wi-Fi are clearly more aligned, with the new Zune models and firmware from Microsoft allowing wireless sync (but not yet Wi-Fi purchases), and the introduction of both the Apple iPhone and iTunes touch, which allow music purchases over Wi-Fi but not synchronization. (While the MusicGremlin preceded both the Zune and iPhone/iPod options, it didn't seem to gain any market traction in 2007.)
Security continues to be a concern in 2007, although less of one as home users have clearly accepted WPA Personal, at long last, and networks are increasingly encrypted through better software from major hardware manufacturers. Wizards make encryption a no-brainer, when they work. Corporations stung by reports and by requirements from credit card issuers are also clearly protecting their networks better, although I'm sure we'll still see breaches at those firms that didn't cross every "t."
The 802.11n standard's emergence into an interim certified Wi-Fi state was also a significant milestone for faster wireless networking. Shipments of Draft 802.11n products in 2007 increased significantly, while prices dropped so much that it makes perfect sense to purchase a $50 to $80 Draft N router than a comparable G unit. Manufacturers made it clear as the year progressed that hardware sold today should generally be firmware upgradable to whatever the final, not much changed 802.11n standard is when approved in 2008.
Gadget-Fi continued on the rise, as an increasing array of devices included Wi-Fi as a connectivity option. Most notably, T-Mobile launched its HotSpot@Home service, the largest scale offering of converged cell/Wi-Fi calling. By year's end, they had four handsets for sale--two plain, a BlackBerry, and a clamshell--but subscriber numbers are unknown.
What's coming in 2008?
In-flight Internet (over Wi-Fi): 2008 is finally the year. It was supposed to be 2005. Or maybe 2002. But we should see a number of planes, mostly flying over the U.S., equipped with either in-flight Internet access or in-flight text messaging and text email. Connexion by Boeing's failure fortunately didn't discourage a half a dozen competitors who were in the R&D phase when Boeing wrote off its satellite-based Internet access venture.
AirCell, Row 44, OnAir, Aeromobile, Panasonic Avionics, and a T-Mobile consortium are among the announced or nearly announced firms with commitments or trials underway. AirCell and Row 44, focused on the U.S. market, plan to deliver Internet not voice to fuselages; OnAir and Aeromobile are working on mobile-based services, including voice, via existing cell phones and devices.
In 2008, American, Alaska, and Virgin America will launch trials over the U.S., and potentially move into production. OnAir should be expanding in Europe beyond the single French aircraft that's equipped in a trial now to RyanAir's fleet. And Aeromobile's Qantas trial could turn into real usage. There's likely action that will happen in Asia and the Middle East, too, that's not yet disclosed.
Other trends to watch
Wi-Fi in every smartphone with better integration. The iPhone was the leading edge, pun intended, offering 2.5G EDGE cell networking as part of the subscription price, along with seamless roaming to Wi-Fi networks. With RIM finally offering BlackBerry models with Wi-Fi, it's unlikely that any future smartphone model intended for serious users would lack the option.
Wi-Fi everywhere. Despite the setbacks in municipal Wi-Fi, wireless networks continue to expand, with better and better coverage found across larger areas and more locations. 2008 might be the year of hotspot saturation.
WiMax arrives. In 2008, we'll finally see production mobile WiMax in action in the U.S., and the questions about whether it works well enough and fast enough at the right price to beat current generation cell data networks, and make money for the disorganized Sprint Nextel will be answered. More certainly, Clearwire, with WiMax as its only option, will push aggressively to steal customers away from fixed, wired broadband, especially in markets with little competition.
Gadget-Fi a go-go. Wi-Fi will become an expected part of gaming consoles (already found in a few), cameras (found in crippled form in just a handful), regular cell phones (in dozens and dozens now), and music players (with more full functionality).
- A confusing magazine; not what it used to be
- Best Price for an Excellent Magazine
