| Product: |
Computers & Internet (General) |
| Date: |
14/11/00 (24 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Free
Disadvantages: Articles are a bit sketchy
Here's a new Internet magazine - I picked it up from the supermarket, in the racks where the freebie local magazines and AutoExchange are on display. Given this, I didn't have high expectations, but I have to say that Surfed magazine is certainly worth picking up.
First, it's not all advertising, no more than any other computing magazine anyway. In any case, I even found some of the adverts of interest - some of the ones for websites caught my eye and I did end up taking a look at them.
There are features on various subject areas - sport, music, finance, medical sites, travel, and so on - with short write ups on several relevant sites, usually fairly general ones, and if you're already used to surfing it's probably not going to alert you to a great deal that's new to you. But if you're fairly new to the Internet, or haven't much experience of a certain subject area, it'll give you a basic introduction.
As you might expect with a free magazine there is perhaps a little too much emphasis on on-line shopping sites and portals, but there you go. The Music section especially revolved around sites like jungle.com, hmv.co.uk, towerrecords.com (the ones trying to sell you stuff) rather than the more informative sites like allmusic.com.
The "Kids' stuff" pages are written by a 12 year old, an excellent idea, and it works very well - no patronising items there.
Although it says the sections are written by people who know their stuff in a particular area, each piece is so short you don't really get much sense of that, and overall, it reads like it's been written in a hurry.
But the main reason for a magazine like this is to get you to check the websites out for yourself, so in that it's successful, for me anyway.
There is a surfedmagazine.com website, but it looks like it's in its early stages, because there's only one mainpage with contact details - and that's
it, no links, nothing.
It says on the cover that it's "the first FREE Internet magazine that will change your life". Well, it probably won't change your life, but it is free, so don't expect momentous things from it. After all, you've nothing to lose.
Summary:
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