Who reads magazines these days? Plenty of people, I would say. My mother is one of them because the digital world is still like a mystic’s ball to her. Me? For me the differentiation doesn’t really exist because what I read is mostly spewed out by the search engines, RSS feeds and bookmarked portals and blogs. Content rules, and the web we all would agree, is full of it.
But I do pick up the occasional magazine at the airport or while on a long drive. Some memories die hard and knowledge picked up from old favorites like Reader’s Digest (upfront) and Cosmopolitan (on the sly) still holds good.
Magazine articles are written by top-notchers, usually with weeks of research and editorial pen drills. Rich in content and relevancy, there’s a lot that goes into making those articles grab our eyeballs. It is only the cost factor and decreasing advertising revenues that’s pushing magazine publishing off the racks. But the digital juggernaut still hasn’t achieved world dominance.
Maggwire (beta) is an online destination for those who are interested in free online magazines. You may subscribe to a few, but it’s impossible that you can read them all. Maggwire brings to you popular content from 650 magazines around the world. Articles from these many magazines are arranged according to the categories they represent and it is across the board. From world news to bridal stories you will find it all.
Maggwire doesn’t ask you to register; you can start browsing the free online magazine list from the homepage itself. But a simple user account gives you some control features over the articles you read. More about that later, first let’s meander through the site for a look.
Discover articles with Maggwire
Let’s say I like reading about technology-related stuff.
- I click on the Tech category dropdown to select one of the subcategories like Computers & Internet. The navigation is easy to understand and arranged around what’s really popular with the readers. Maggwire says it uses a kind of social intelligence gathered through reader ratings to arrange the most popular articles on the top.You can again get the articles according to time horizon by clicking on Latest, Today, This Week, This Month or This Year. As is wont of all sites, you can also directly check out what’s hot and what’s been most talked about from the corner placed What’s Hot on Maggwire.
- The articles are ‘discovered’ from some of the most popular publications out there. A sampling for Computers & Internet gives you – PC World, Wired, PC Magazine etc.
- You can click on the article headline and it opens up at the magazine’s online page on a separate tab or window. With the reading done, you can choose to read what others think about it (via Comments), share it through the bookmarking and sharing services or you can hide the magazine. Hiding the magazine lets you tailor your reading according to the magazines you prefer. Commenting, rating and hiding articles requires a log-in.
Between the covers
This is one of the simpler reviews I have written because the site itself is simple. The real deal is with the articles you get to go to and read from Maggwire’s rated links. Admittedly, this feedback is the result of a few days of browsing. The articles are all free content that’s been aggregated by Maggwire. I doubt if premium content is being covered without a penny being charged. Maggwire does have a premium service in the offing which will take care of that.
Some categories are still not covered with well known publications but we can agree that all good things take time. Maggwire is a beta service. We can access free content even without Maggwire but the site does the good job of shoveling the good stuff onto a common screen.
Check out Maggwire and tell us whether your newsstand guy is going to be shy of a few dollars or if there’s still more to be done for your dough.
Image Credit: Mannobhai
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