Is Wired Getting Tired?

Wired Magazine, Feburary 2005

I’m loath to admit it, but I’m afraid that this mon­th’s Wired mag­a­zine that came sneak­ing through my mail slot this after­noon is not their best work. The cov­er arti­cle is on Fire­fox, and it’s ear­ly begin­nings with Blake Ross & Ben Goodger. I enjoyed get­ting to read about the two of them and the his­to­ry on my favorite open source soft­ware. How­ev­er, 1.0 came out in the Fall of last year. No one was stay­ing up late to get this sto­ry done for print. To point, the arti­cle clos­es with the “where are they now” bit on Ross and Goodger, explain­ing that Goodger plans to stay at the Mozil­la Foun­da­tion. Of course, this evening Slash­dot reports that Goodger plans to go work for Google, effec­tive two weeks ago.

In anoth­er arti­cle, the pro­lif­ic Lawrence Lessig writes how Wilco is the new mod­el for a rock band of the future. You should read his arti­cle (and pret­ty much any­thing else he writes), but again we’re not talk­ing about any recent hap­pen­ings here. Wilco broke record com­pa­ny hearts with Yan­kee Fox­trot Hotel way back in April of 2002. I was a new­ly-wed back then! And even then, they were about as big as bands get in the alt-coun­try scene. Just ask my broth­er, Dave. I enjoyed the piece none-the-less, but Jeff Tweedy must be just as oblique in per­son as he is as a songwriter.

Last­ly, one of the lit­tle tid­bits in Wired I always look for­ward to, oth­er than their FOUND: Arti­facts From the Future clos­er each month, is the Jar­gon Watch. This month, they gave me:

But­tnum­bat­hon — A painful­ly long and bor­ing movie. See: Oliv­er Stone’s Alexan­der. (Bet­ter yet, don’t.) Also the name of review­er Har­ry Knowles’ annu­al film marathon and birth­day bash.

Knowles of Ain’t It Cool News has been throw­ing these things togeth­er for the last six years run­ning! This is not the lat­est in jar­gon my friends.

I’m look­ing for­ward to next mon­th’s Wired. They’ve got two months now to find some new stuff. Since Mac­Ex­po S.F. and CES L.V., maybe they’ll have at least plen­ty of gad­gets to write about.

Published
Categorized as General

By Jason Coleman

Structural engineer and technical content manager Bentley Systems by day. Geeky father and husband all the rest of time.

2 comments

  1. Hmm. After all the good things I’ve heard about Wired, now, I’m start­ing to won­der. I’ve only actu­al­ly read one print ver­sion of this mag­a­zine. It was inter­est­ing. I’ll have to say, though, before I’ll sub­scribe to a cut­ting/bleed­ing-edge tech­nol­o­gy and news mag, I’d like to know if it’s real­ly going to keep on top of things. Thanks for the caveat.

  2. I sub­scribe to Wired and I don’t think this issue is going to make me change my mind about that. I real­ly do look for­ward to read­ing it each month, and that’s why when it’s not up to aver­age, I feel let down. I did enjoy read­ing the two arti­cles I men­tioned above, but I would­n’t con­sid­er them “cut­ting edge”. How­ev­er, I don’t read Men’s Health for the cut­ting edge in health news. I’d read a med­ical jour­nal for that. Nope, it’s all about the great writ­ing, which both mag­a­zines def­i­nite­ly have.
    I was just hop­ing to get Wired’s views on the Mac Mini, TiVo ToGo, and some oth­er news of the last month. For what it’s worth, they have some sto­ries online about some of that. Dif­fer­ent group at the web site, though.

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