first of all, wired rocks. and after I receive the latest edition in my mailbox, tear away the plastic wrapper, give the magazine a good shake, and watch the 32 subscription postcards inside fall like snowflakes onto my bathroom floor, I'm more than willing to live with the abundance of glossy ads which justify the 83 cents the issue cost me as I devour the exceptionally cool contents within. however, your recent redesign in 15.02 has made the advertisements virtually indistinguishable from the content readers like me are looking for. take, for example, the transition from page 60 through page 66 - it's almost impossible to figure out that the sony media center review isn't an ad for the latest shower walkman, or that the page facing it isn't another cool rotoscoping movie adventure in the works. at least with the old design I could skip over the advertisements like they were banners on a webpage, quickly filtering out the content from the cruft. so, in that sense, the great redesign of 2007 is looking less like something good for readers than a bit of clever (and, perhaps, quite savvy) marketing aimed at eeking out a bit more profit. but I'd gladly pay more for my subscription if it meant my dead-tree spam filters would be more accurate.
Geoff Young
