Stuff (magazine)
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| Stuff | |
| Publisher: | Dennis Publishing, Inc. (U.S.) Haymarket (UK) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Country | U.S., Turkey, UK, Germany, Russia, Czech Republic, France, Holland, Ukraine, Spain, Romania, Lithuania, China, Philippines, Thailand, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Korea and Portugal |
Stuff is a men's magazine featuring interviews, pictorials, and other articles of interest to a male dominated audience.
Contents |
[edit] U.S. Magazine
Published by Dennis Publishing, it is the sister magazine to Maxim, and the two share a similar mission of providing entertainment targeted towards 18 to 30-year-old males whom it attracts with cheesecake pictorials and cover features, humor, trivia, and product reviews of goods such as computers, sports cars, video games, cell phones, etc. The American version of Stuff does not contain nudity, though the photo shoots generally try to get as close to nudity as possible, and at some locations, such as Wal-Mart stores in the U.S. Stuff and its sister men's magazine Maxim have been considered pornography, and therefore banned. The interviews tend to be with famous actresses, singers, and models and wrestling divas, some of whom have appeared several times over the life of the magazine.
[edit] UK Magazine
The UK version of the magazine, published by Haymarket Consumer Publications Ltd, is focused mainly on consumer electronics, gadgetry and lifestyle products, such as iPods and fast cars, to computers and men's clothing. Like its U.S. equivalent, Stuff UK contains a scantily clad woman on the front page, but inside there are only 3 or 4 more of her. Thus, in the UK it is not considered "pornography". There are multiple in depth features, such as product reviews of laptops, digital audio (MP3) players, digital cameras (compact and SLR), as well as advertising. Regular features include an "adrenaline junkie" article, and speculative pages about upcoming technology, such as the "rumour mill" and the "Next big thing?" on the last page.
"Hot Stuff" is the news section that features new or unreleased products. Top 10s of currently available items are featured toward the back of the magazine. These include products in the range of portable media players, phones, computers, laptops, digital cameras, televisions, video recorders, hi-fi, home cinema, gaming, home and sports. There are dedicated pages for opinions and readers mail and a "My gadget life" column in towards the front of the magazine that features an interview with a well known person about the technology that helps them.
The circulation of Stuff UK is around 92,000 copies a month[citation needed], placing it as one of the best-selling gadget magazine in the UK, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
[edit] Podcast
The producers of the UK version of the magazine also produce weekly 'podcasts' which are released every Friday morning. The content includes similar but more up to date content as the magazine. These are usually around 25-30 minutes in length and feature news about technology, the podline (where listeners questions are answered), reviews and comparisons of gadgets and an instant expert feature which provides the listener with five interesting points about the selected subject; past instant expert features include HSDPA, ISO and HDMI. Past episodes of the podcast can be found on their site. The podcast is free and is available via iTunes (the Apple site for downloading AAC and MP3 audio files) or can be downloaded via their website (www.stuffmag.co.uk) where older episodes are archived. The iTunes option provides higher sound quality, thumbnails and chapter points to provide the listener with easier navigation. Creative Zen owners can use the ZenCast organiser. Regular listeners can also subscribe to future episodes by pasting links into their Podcast software application or alternatively subscribe via iTunes.
[edit] Videos
Stuff.tv was a temporary secondary site for the UK magazine where short videos are uploaded to be played by visitors. Episodes are streamed as the user watches in a similar way to video broadcasting sites. The videos are edited together into short videos to a professional standard. The first episode is "Tested to Destruction" and is a deathmatch between the ever popular, ubiquitous iPod nano and a Sansa e250. Three tests are carried out involving a car, a toilet and rifle in order to simulate the effects of 'real life' damage to gadgets.
The site is a logical follow up to the success of the videos that the team posted on YouTube where videos of the team could be found demonstrating new gadgets such as the Sinclair C5, the human hydro-foil bike as well as technology related on products such as the Samsung X820 mobile phone, eye-Theatres and the Asus AI Guru S1 Skype phone.
Videos are now available as vidcasts on the website and can be viewed online in a similar way to before or subscribed to via iTunes. Chapters are placed in the short video clips for easy navigation and new player controls are used to play, scan through the video and to adjust the volume or size of the video.
[edit] Website
The website for Stuff was relaunched on Friday November 17 2006 after being previewed at the Best of Stuff Show between November 3 and 5th. It has a new look, layout and content. The new site combines the features of both the older sites into one. New features such as blog entries, reviews and galleries are included in the site as well as the news, forums podcasts and videos from the older sites.
[edit] External links
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