So back from the woods of New Hampshire and into the hot humid fire that is New York with nary a lake in sight. But tomorrow night I'm going to hear Richard Thompson play for free at the World Financial Center which is something that just doesn't happen in the woods.

List - Time.com's 50 Coolest sites.  It also points to Food411 which was started by the woman who runs 101 Cookbooks, a really nice food blog. They alerted me to their mention in the article and I'm really impressed with the way she's added this great index to her small empire.

Susan Mernit has a very good recap of remarks by Fran Hauser the GM of Time Interactive, on magazines and brands, from a conference at The Media Center. She also disagrees with them. In a rare instance I actually find myself disagreeing with her to a point. I think that Hauser's challenge to the magazines to justify why a new technology is important to the brand makes for more interesting use of tools. Why for example is video important for parenting when articles and photos can accomplish the same thing. Also Hauser by raising the bar prevents a "me too"syndrome from starting. If brand A gets video without making a good case then all of the others can make a case for it. On the other hand she goes a bit far in making generalizations that RSS is a male thing, somewhat overlooking the way RSS can be used for syndication.  Final words from Fran were lessons learned:

• Be judicious about using new technology platforms
• Does it fit the brand to extend to this platform?
• Is there a hole in the market for this new extension?

But Susan writes "...If I were the person dealing with these issues, I would approach it completely differently--I think the best questions for media brands are to ask--what tools and technologies are your current audience using and are you on par with those?-- and then, most importantly--what tools and technologies are new audiences I want to acquire using--and shouldn't I look at how those tools can help me get this new audience?" She would be correct if the editors of the magazines or the people making the decisions were thinking "what kind of content can I create to use these tools well in a unique  way that would get me a new audience. Then also how am I going to market this new thing to a broad audience? If these questions are answered or a use can be justified then I agree with her but in my past experience too often they hear something is hot and they need it without making any commitments to making something good and without staffing the resources or in the case of certain user generated things to enable the content to morph in to something interesting. Just having the platforms doesn't mean that they will come.