I think I picked up some of Hammersley's ridiculous, positive, absolute refusal to get miserable optimism reading Wired UK this morning, hence the below.
...and you know what. It's not bad. It's madly London oriented, as you'd expect, but it has a satisfyingly charming British (English) slightly cynical, slightly obsessional geekiness about it. The other thing I like is that it suspects you actually know alot of this shit anyway, so it doesn't want to treat you like an idiot. Things that are bad - silly, tabloidy Wired touches (Wired/Tired/Expired... no, Twitter in tired? How rad!) and purely the delay in writing articles /going to print etc which makes the Hulu reference in the iPlayer article slightly out of date. That wouldn't be so bad, but mentioning hulu confidently is part of the mission to be informed and smart. I am smart! I know about hulu just like you, so you should read my opinion. Hmmm, well I know more about Hulu than you, purely by dint of the fact that there's a bunch of news about it on Silicon Alley that you didn't know about when you wrote the article. No disrespect.
The big question is - when travelling, would I pick it up to read first, from the pile of those available. would I buy it *before* Word magazine? The answer is yes, for all its failings (stuffing itself full of free glossy brand ads smells a little desperate if you ask me, but then that's because I've worked in print - but then, one suspects that a vast number of its potential readers will be similarly smart enough to realise that the debut issue is stuffed full of freebies).
It has good content. It is worth a read. Give it your support, then recycle the fucker. Don't have it hanging around your house in a growing pile because you suspect that the pile will max out at 10 issues and will then be a collectors' item (Phil ;).
