The internet hasn’t been around for very long, so it’s not surprising still we have people trying to apply old media models to new media. Magazines and newspapers in the US, like over here, are getting hurt badly by declining ad revenues, as this blog has highlighted before. One original solution launched recently has been to create custom magazines, drawing on articles from across a publishing house. Toyota have sponsored this initiative, called MINE. You select mags you like, then the mag is compiled and printed and sent to your door.

Somewhat like this crazy but true plan to send newspapers through the radio in 1939…

Superficially MINE magazine is quite a cute idea, as a customer proposition and as an advertising vehicle (you know a lot more about your readers) it soon turns to ashes when you tease the logic out.

Rather than spend the time working this out, this article does the thinking for us:

* The price of reams of paper and printing cartridges will likely outstrip the consumer’s cost of a home delivered paper on newsprint.
* The system adds inconvenience at the consumer end in the form of printer management.
* It can already be done with FeedJournal, free, without a dedicated piece of equipment. Why would readers want to pay for a narrower service that requires another appliance in their house?
* This method eliminates or minimizes serendipity, which is one of the things print still does better than digital delivery; it’s something consumers like, for both news and advertising content.
* Newspaper companies should be getting out of the hardware business, not into it, and especially should avoid investing in proprietary, dedicated devices like this.

So where does that leave e-readers like Amazon’s Kindle, which puts books in digital format on a reader? Many people can’t see the point of these, preferring real books, but as this article explains, the Kindle may have more uses than the designers bargained for; it can double up as a snazzy netwook with awesome battery life as well as an e-book reader.

If these are all retrospective developments, a few other sites really take us beyond pages and into a more 3D internet experience:

Cooliris is a great looking image search engine, and multicolr helps you find a picture with exactly the tones you are looking for. These sites synthesise information in an original, techinically advances and visually impressive way, taking the user beyond a straightforward page of content, into an open and navigable space. ~Both were built by small organisations without affiliation to legacy infrastructure like lots of retained journalists and printing presses…