"Design In-Flight" In, "MSDN Magazine" Out

For four years I’ve been an MSDN Magazine subscriber. For four years I’ve recommended it to others as the best publication on Microsoft’s technologies. Either they took a wrong turn somewhere, or I grew up and got fed up with too much irrelevant content it prints these days.

I’m bummed out, but my patience with them ran out. First you have to wade through a gazillion ads and then search for content that still has touch with reality. In its present incarnation MSDN Magazine has become useless to me.

What I hate in particular is their issues dedicated mostly to Yukon, then mostly to Avalon, then mostly to “security” (yes, in quotes), and so forth. Month after month I waited for this marketing wave to die out, but it didn’t.

I don’t want to offend contributors to the magazine; I enjoy some content very much. Dino Esposito, Keith Brown, Duncan Mackenzie, John Papa, Jeff Prosise, Rob Howard and many others—I read your blogs (those of you who have them) and find it more beneficial! Told ya: blog publishing will transform mainstream publishing. All these people toil over their content, but I think the magazine blows it by packaging it wrong.

What I’m replacing it with is Design In-Flight with the same usual suspects contributing to its publishing. It wasn’t until Veerle mentioned her article in the April issue that I got sold on it.

Design In-Flight is distributed in PDF format, and it’s quite concise, but I love the content. And… it’s ad free! Granted, these two publications are from different universes, but a change was begging to occur. So far I’m luvin’ it.