Make your own magazine already

Hewlett-Packard’s print-on-demand magazine service, MagCloud, is worth a long look. We’re certainly studying it.

Starting at just 20 cents a page, you, too, could produce a full-color, glossy. Think promotional marketing materials that explain your goods and services. Or how about a catalog? Or a magazine you and hundreds of your wildly talented writer, editor, artist, photographer, programmer and videographer friends from around the world get together to produce in only 48 hours?

You see where we’re going with this. The possibilities are endless.

MagCloud users upload a PDF of their magazine, and let HP handle the rest. The company promises delivery in as little as three days. For additional fees, you can choose polished bindings and options for mailing around the world. MagCloud will even manage mailings and maintain your subscriber database. Magazines can also be made available in digital-only formats and purchased from the MagCloud site for review on desktops and mobile devices.

Hacks, Hackers dig each other – and Media Salad

Media Salad’s home base, Colorado, is filled with wildly creative and outrageously talented journalists and technologists. On April 27, our company will bring them together to talk about the global media revolution and how they can work together to shape it.

Media Salad will provide the (locally made!) beer and snacks for this inaugural meeting of Hacks/Hackers in Colorado. Track the group on Twitter: @HacksHackersCO and #hhco and on Facebook.

If you’re in the neighborhood, stop by. The meeting specifics:

When: 6:30 p.m., Wed., April 27, 2011

Where: WorkBrite @ Conference Edge – 4120 Brighton Blvd. A40 Denver, CO

Social media – curated and in context

We’re beta testing a new digital curation service called Storify.

Sure, there are some bugs to be worked out, but so far, so interesting. (more…)

Embrace the unconventional, and prosper

Letting go of conventional paradigms helped Media Salad’s founder and chief executive officer, Christine Tatum, see professional opportunities she probably would have missed — and even resisted — otherwise.

Today, her thoughts about how to achieve professional success are  featured in an outstanding blog devoted to helping modern, working mothers find greater happiness. (more…)

Improve business by mining public information

Companies and organizations could double their business opportunities in only a matter of weeks if they devoted more time and resources to inspecting public records.

Local, state, federal. Doesn’t matter. The information that springs from a city’s planning department is just as likely to yield millions of dollars in revenue as a much publicized federal contract.

We frequently scour public records for our clients, quickly alerting them when we think we’ve turned up something interesting. To aid our searches, we reach only for the best instruction — which is why we highly recommend these resources for professionals responsible for “business development:” (more…)

Not an optimist? Go away.

“The first step toward innovation is optimism,” writes Mark Briggs, a veteran journalist and author of a book we like, Journalism Next: A Practical Guide to Digital Reporting and Publishing.

Let’s just say Media Salad abounds with optimism. (more…)