Tag: HIP

Hinge-Inquirer Publications

a midsummer geek’s dream

Well, it’s here! A few days shy of Labor Day and right on schedule, this issue of m|PH will be the most memorable one in our collection. That’s because something really interesting is happening next month in time for the magazine’s third year in the business.

So if you do get to grab a copy, try to grab an extra one – and laminate it or something. Maybe even turn it into bronze. Because by June, big things will come in small packages.

m|PH, the most visible home-grown magazine on mobile technology is now available in newsstands for the month of May. The jaw-dropping Kelly Misa graces the cover, making her every midsummer geek’s dream.

Travel photography is this month’s focus feature so whip out those cameras and learn a thing or two from the country’s most talented photographers – the young and restless Jake Verzora, the eccentric Andy Maluche, the fabulous Dominque James, and other talented shutterbugs like Kai Huang, Toto Labrador and Chad Samaniego. This month’s issue is also jam-packed with information on understanding the rudiments of operating your professional camera to making a do-it-yourself lens cleaning lab.

Because summer travel is in, m|PH takes a look at the WiFi scene in Cebu. Gadget reviews are abundant as the editors and team of writers showcase the new Motorola RAZR V3i, the 3G capable Nokia 6280, the powerhouse Nokia N80, and the travel-friendly Siemens ME75. There are a lot of notebooks in season this summer including the Fujitsu C1321 and the Sony VAIO TX27GP. Some cameras featured in this issue include the BenQ DC C500 and the Sony Cybershot DSC R1.

m|PH, which stands for Mobile Philippines, is a monthly publication geared towards the Filipino who is always on the go. Faithful readers have always described m|PH as the most informative and engaging among all the technology magazines because of its tongue-in-cheek humor and three years of credibility. m|PH is available at all news stands and technology hubs for just P80.00 per issue.

You can check out the mag’s content here.

Categories
Mostly Everything

m|PH is sizzling this April

magazine featuring Phoem Baranda with a swimsuit. There’s an ongoing discussion in the advertising and magazine industry (mostly in the latter) of how putting sexy women on the cover becomes an effective marketing tool to sell. This comes from the notion that the largest demographic of mag readers are male.

Apparently, this formula seems to work because some statistics show that putting women in the cover of magazines contribute to better sales. The formula goes:

Increase in women’s cleavage = Increase in sales

The general question therefore is does sex really sell?

Though it may be a sweeping generalization, there actually may be a direct relationship between putting a an outrightly sensual image of a woman on the front cover of a magazine. However, my boss did once say that if this were the case, then why are the top five magazines in the world not sexy mags? Though there may be some differences, here are the top five mags according to the Chicago Tribune:

1. WIRED
2. Real Simple
3. The Economist
4. Cook’s Illustrated
5. Esquire (perhaps the “sexiest” you can get among the 5)

Other magazines that made it to the “top 5” survey include Wytch (a children’s mag), Reader’s Digest, TIME, and Men’s Health. Where is FHM? Where is Playboy?

But consider this point:

Outside creative director Hannah McCaughey says artistic inspiration rather than newsstand calculation is responsible for her magazine’s recent spate of scantily clad covers.

“We always meant to shoot [Carlson] with the garden variety rock climbing clothes on but … I was worried I’d come back with super bland film,” McCaughey says. “For whatever reason it just felt so pedestrian and not like a cover should feel. The

let the GAME! begin

By the time you’ve read this, GAME! would have prolly already been placed on the racks.

There were many people involved with the creation of the second local gaming title (the first is Games Master) in the Philippines. But it is also important to note that this is the first all-Filipino gaming magazine. This means that content isn’t syndicated from abroad (unlike Games Master that syndicates some of its content from the West).

Going back to the people involved, there are many many many of them who labored hard, enduring sleepless nights to get this thing conceptualized, laid-out, flattened, CMYK-ed, and printed. There’s Mitch, Aiza, Adel, Poch, Topper, and Joey to name a few, as well as the writers – I apologize if I forget to name all – Karl, Kiven, Ryu, Raphy, Jones, Karen … there’s just so many, I’m overwhelmed at the amount of support you’ve all given.

Now for the juicy part.

For those who’ve been paying attention to the gaming industry, there was a rumor back then that an Inquirer sister company (hi there!) was going to bring in a local franchise of Electronic Gaming Monthly, one of, if not the best magazine gamers my age (I’m 25) have grown up with. This wasn’t a rumor. In fact, it was highly possible for something like this to happen since this sister company (hello again!) was already publishing the local franchise of PC Magazine Philippines, which, like EGM is also a Ziff Davis title. There was a lot of emotion involved in this decision making process, whether to pursue EGM or not.

In the end, the following points were raised:

First. EGM’s target market was very different from the market we intended to reach. I grew up reading EGM. I can remember that since the 1980’s, there was a magazine that featured the very best of the 8-bit era. So that era has come and gone, and the gamers that we were before .. well a lot of us evolved to the online scene. Some of us have moved on and stopped playing altogether. A few have gone totally hardcore. But, truth be told, the market has changed. The gamers now aren’t the gamers of before. My generation has a nostalgic excitement for EGM. But the youth of today don’t really care (it showed in several of our studies). They grew up with Wytch, Anime, the Internet …

Second. The gaming culture here is very different from the States. Though we are also a console-playing country, we get most of our games from bootleg sources (aka piracy). That’s why the gaming industry here in the Philippines takes the online gaming model where a series of checks and controls are implemented to make sure that pirating a game is impossible. Thus you have Ragnarok, Khan, RAN Online, PangYa, O2 Jam and many many more. That brings in the bucks.

Third. We decided that it is much better to invest in the Philippines. With all the things going on now in this country, we do need a pep talk. One thing about GAME! that a lot of you prolly don’t know is that we have on board with us Joey Alarilla, a fellow gamer, the guy behind hackenslash, the founder of the Asian Gaming Journalists Association (AGJA), and a bunch of other embarassing things he’d rather not disclose.

So there you have it. P80.00 for a full glossy gaming magazine. 100% Filipino. Made by the publishing group of the nation’s biggest broadsheet. Oh, nice poster inside too 🙂

Philippine Magazine News stand Surveys

SUMMIT recently made public a TNS survey highlighting the most popular magazines for 2005 based on newsstand sales in over 100 (?) locations. Interesting to note is the tech section where HIP was able to place two of the titles in the top four. That’s PC Magazine in number 2 and m|PH at number 4.

From September 19 to October 3, TNS-Trends, the leading customized marketing research company in the Philippines, visited 150 newsstands in Metro Manila to determine “how many copies of the last issue of the magazine were sold in the last 30 days.”

T3 Philippines placed number 1 (and so did a whole bunch of their titles for other categories. Fishy? Well, I shall not comment). But what’s interesting to note is that regardless of who made it to number 1, SUMMIT has actually placed a mass market standard of measure (like T3’s technology in general theme) and applied it to niche publication titles like m|PH (portable technology) and PC Magazine (ultra geeky stuff like servers and all that AJAX shit).

What does this tell you?

A lot. That our niche tech titles are more widely read than other tech mass consumer mags. And that means a lot. Plus the notion that media buyers allocate advertising budgets for the top 4 publications per category.

Categories
Mostly Everything

The Blog Herald sale makes INQ7

This is so weird. Our sister company, INQ7 did an interview with Duncan Riley, who is part owner of b5media, another company I work for. Duncan is from Australia. INQ7 is in Makati.

So weird. It further proves the six degrees of separation thing.

Read it here!