Reading Material: NSFW Corp, The Magazine

Many publications focus on reviews and comparisons, or bring you as much news as quickly as possible. The Magazine will not serve those roles. Instead, it takes a measured approach to the big picture: rather than telling readers everything that happens in technology, The Magazine delivers meaningful editorial and big-picture articles.

– Marco Arment, The Magazine – Foreward

Like Marco Arment, I have always strived to write more about the big picture of things than little things to gain page views. Writing about the big picture is far easier than finding the big picture writers, however. It has been an ongoing battle for me to seek out these writers or sites that can capture my mind, making me want to read everything they publish.

Doing this with television shows is much easier, now that there are whole seasons of shows available on NetFlix or iTunes to purchase/rent. Magazines have always been limited to Harpers, The Atlantic, and the New Yorker for nearly ten years now. Online reading has been a struggle until one service was launched several months ago, and a new one launched yesterday.

NSFW Corp

If you have followed my Twitter stream for a while, you will have noticed now and then that I tweet out links to articles from Not Safe For Work Corp. NSFW Corp is a paid subscription service ($3.00 a month) churning out social commentary about the world’s events and has been doing so for several months now. The key word being commentary. This is not a news site publishing articles to gain advertising money. This site is about publishing quality articles to keep readers interested and sharing.

Like its name, the articles tend to be slightly not safe for work with their language and, at times, the topics. To me, the topics are not only interesting but also always current. There aren’t any long profiles about people from years past, nor stories that have taken years to research and write. They are entertaining, perhaps a bit blunt, and mildly crude. I would almost guess that the authors are drunk when writing, but not drunk enough that the articles are littered with errors. The good kind of drunk.

Here are some of the latest titles (links will expire by October 14th, so read now):

You don’t have to subcribe to NSFW, because I will continue to share links to the posts I find the most interesting (I can share 10 a month) through Twitter. I would still encourage you to give it a test-drive to see how you feel about it. It’s only 3 bucks. My daughter finds that much money picking up coins off the street in a month.

The Magazine

The Magazine has been hinted at by Marco through his podcast, Build and Analyze, for a month now. No one knew the scope of the project until Thursday when it was released. For those who don’t know, Marco is the creator of Instapaper, the read-it-later service that strips out advertisements, puts the content into a crisp font, and makes it available to read on your iPad, iPhone, Android, or the web. It really is a must-have app for people who do a lot of reading.

The Magazine is not an evolution of Instapaper or a replacement, but complements it. It is a digital magazine of only four articles each issue, published bi-weekly. The writers and articles are selected by Marco, with subjects that appeal to most people who love technology. There has only been one issue released so far. The authors were: Alex Payne, Guy English, Jason Snell, and Michael Lopp.

I quite enjoyed the four articles, and I suspect if you like technology, they will be of interest to you, as well. There is a 7 day trial period, so the first issue is free as long as you can cancel.

The Rest

I have been on a quest to pare down my reading this past summer. I wouldn’t say I am quite succeeding at it, but I am getting there. While I follow a lot of blogs, most don’t post daily or even weekly, so the amount of reading material is limited. Here are some other sources I read on a daily basis to keep me caught up in what is happening with technology, politics, and culture.

Between those three sites, NSFW Corp, and now The Magazine, I have a decent mix of reading material to keep me occupied during the quiet moments.