New Genii Website Now Live! Free Digital Issues!

[Richard Kaufman]

The new Genii website is now live.

If you go to www.geniimagazine.com and poke around, you'll find that we've made many changes to accommodate new media.

The one that will be of immediate interest is iGenii, where we've posted digitized versions of four out of print issues: Criss Angel, Steve Forte, Derek Dingle (from 1975, a group of great magic tricks written by Harry Lorayne), and the incredibly rare Steranko card issue from 1962 which contains the only material from his unpublished second book "The Ultimate Move" ever published.

http://geniimagazine.com/category/igenii/

Read them for free using our magazine viewer (just click, nothing to download). We've been working on this for about four months and hope you enjoy our new additions to the website. We will be adding a new digital issue about every two weeks. (This is not connected to the Genii Archive, which contains every issue going all the way back to 1936 and will be available, free, to all Genii subscribers starting this fall.)

[Jeff Eline]

Very cool!

[Magic Newswire]

Thanks Richard! Is there a download option to take them with me on my iPad or iPhone?

[Seuss]

One item glaringly absent from the FANTASTIC new site is an obvious link to my favourite magic book publisher.

Mind if I ask who does your site design? Very clean and minimal without feeling empty.

[Richard Kaufman]

There is no download option--read them online.

[Jim Martin]

That clicking you hear is the sound of new-subscribers signing up at their keypads.

Looks great!

[Richard Kaufman]

Thanks, Seuss! I knew we forgot something. Fixing it right now.
I'm actually riding up the west coast with our webmaster, Brad, and we're doing website work wirelessly on Amtrak. Electronic life at its best.

[CraigMitchell]

Very cool !

[Fredrick]

I concur with Craig. This is very cool. It is easy to navigate and read compared to a simple PDF.

Thanks!

[Frank Dudgeon]

Very spiffy indeed. I agree it's easy to navigate, and a quick glance at the Stete Forte article looked great. Dang, now I have to get back to work.

[Scott M.]

Very nice -- glad to see all these changes.

[David Alexander]

Well done and easy to access. Congratulations!

[mrgoat]

POW! What a redesign! Clean, simple, crisp, delicious. Congrats. Love the addition of the video clips.

And iGenii is a brilliant idea for a name.

[Jerry Harrell]

Congratulations on a great design and thanks for access to those issues! Bravo.

[Earle Oakes]

Good job, Brad,and thanks for a great plus to the Genii Forum, Richard.

[Robert Meisch]

Site looks awesome. Can't wait to read the other back issues...

What ever happened that the 2nd Steranko book never got published?

Someone should put that out...

-robert

[John Carney]

looks great.

And great to see these old issues!

[J-Mac]

Very nice! I like that format for the magazine. Thanks Richard!

Jim

[naquada]

nice redesign... well done!

I assume in the old copies of the magazine are hosted through the CARC then in answer to previous questions, yes they'd be viewable on the iPad and iPhone in a page by page view, as CARC support that currently..

[Richard Kaufman]

That is correct.

[Magic Randy]

This is very cool.

[Ted M]

Genii Archive [...] contains every issue going all the way back to 1936 and will be available, free, to all Genii subscribers starting this fall.)

Whoa, I missed this the first time around!

Complete Genii archive? Available to all subscribers?

This is rocking stupendous!

Many many thanks, O Chief Genii!!

[Richard Kaufman]

The Genii grants all wishes.

[Bill Mullins]

The Genii grants all wishes.

I would like a pony.

[Richard Kaufman]

POOF ... done. Look in your backyard. Make sure you get out there before it disappears again, because you didn't say how long you wanted it for.

[Richard Perrin]

Richard, Bill WOULD LIKE a pony... he didn't made his wish.

Uh oh see ya later! ;-)

[Richard Kaufman]

Too late now.

[Richard Perrin]

ROFL! Yep! It's too late!

[Richard Kaufman]

Oh, Damian, thanks very much for the "iGenii" idea.

[mrgoat]

Oh, Damian, thanks very much for the "iGenii" idea.

A pleasure, Sir.

[CardioloJest]

INCREDIBLE -- Thank you, Richard

[espermachine]

I've been perusing the Genii Archive for a few years now and to those of you who haven't had the opportunity so far you are in for a real treat ... an incredible amount of top notch material available.

[mrgoat]

Is anyone able to read the articles on their iPhones? All I see are the little icons you get when a website uses Flash (Apple refuses to support Flash on the iPhone or ipad).

Frank

The iPhone and iPad doesn't support Flash. So no, sadly you'll not be able to read them as there was a decision to use that (imho awful) flash 'fake magazine' software.

I don't want a poncy page turn effect. I just want to READ the CONTENT.

I hope that iGenii chose the Flash route as a quick way to get to market and might be secretly working on an HTML5 version...

http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/19/sports ... ted-html5/

[mrgoat]

Sorry I sound like a whiney bitch. It is GREAT the stuff is online, I just have a strong dislike for those Zinio like flash based "fake magazine" services.

[Richard Kaufman]

Well, Goat, fortunately you're not the editor. Most people seem to like it a lot.

At the moment our system uses Flash and cannot be read on an iPhone or iPad (note that this restriction is only for the four articles currently on the iGenii portion of our website, and NOT the case for the Genii Archive of all back issues to which all subscribers will have access beginning in the fall--the latter are straight pdfs which you can read on an iPad).

The company which we use to produce the magazine-like files for iGenii has produced an iPhone/iPad app and is waiting for the boneheads at Apple to approve it! We hope to be able to introduce that soon.

[mrgoat]

Ah, good old 'most people'. Love them. They are so useful when you want to prove a point. ;)

As an online marketer, I'd be interested in seeing how long people spend "playing" with it versus the time people that want to read the content in the archives. Average page view, time on each page, bounce rate, etc. You should have that info in your analytics. I imagine people have a quick look at the flash thing, get a bit annoyed at how hard it is to actually navigate and read content, then move to the archive to read stuff.

It's a really cool tech demo for a few minutes. Well, it was 10 years ago when it came out. But I can't see many people spending hours with it. I repeat, it is awesome you've put it all up there, I just don't like what I perceive to be poncy page turn animations and a lack of usabilty. I'd prefer to have a epub or PDF doc. However, I am sure partnering with a company sped up your time to market and that is obviously A Good Thing.

PS The archive has just prompted me to resubscribe to the physical magazine.

[Bob Cunningham]

Thanks Richard!

I recently subscribed mainly for the access to past issues on my iPad. I am glad to hear that that when you go "live" we will be able to acces past issues on the iPad.

[Joe Mckay]

Just a suggestion for the new access to back issues of GENII for subscribers...

Do you think it might be possible to set up a digital file containing all of the editions of MAGICANA? I dunno' if this is possible or not. Perhaps it might be an idea if we all chipped in and helped compile such a file ourselves? It would be great to have a pdf copy which could be printed off at a print shop (I reckon it might run to about 1500 pages?).

Just wanted to ask this question to see if it is something that others have thought about as well...

Joe

PS Of course the best thing of all would be the MAGICANA book you are compiling, Richard! Good luck with that...

[mountaineer]

I very much like the new website and it is definitely a step in the right direction for the magazine as a whole.