I’m always interested in seeing Second Life or virtual world related uses of media coming to light and a tip off from Saffia Widdershins has pointed me in the direction of Cultured The Magazine, AKA CTM.
The magazine is the brain child of Cali Karsin and Zephyr Windgate with contributions from a number of other writers, photographers and even a model. The magazine is published on ISSUU, which is a platform I like the look of because it works pretty damn well.
The first edition covers a wide range of features, such as breedable fashion .,… seriously, breedable shoes and bags are featured! There are features on regions, combat, music, machinima in the shape and form of a feature about The Blackened Mirror and much more. The magazine has some adverts but they blend in well as they do in normal magazines.
The plan is for this magazine to be published every two months, which emphasises that putting together something like this isn’t something that can be done overnight. What I particularly enjoyed was the range of subjects. Fashion is ideal for a publishing source such as this, but as I’ll never be a fashionista I’m glad to see more social avenues being covered too.
Magazines such as this aren’t easy to pull off inworld, they work better from a website but it’s a shame that in Second Life and other virtual worlds of their ilk we’re still stuck with notecards for communications instead of feature rich pages. An inworld version of something like ISSUU would have a lot of good use cases.
Hopefully this magazine gets a fair run, putting it together will be difficult and time consuming for the publishers but they’re certainly off to a decent start. I wish them well.
>> it’s a shame that in Second Life and other virtual worlds of their ilk we’re still stuck with notecards for communications instead of feature rich pages <<
Absolutely right. This is one of my favorite pet peeves.