Digital editions of Model Engineer and Model Engineers’ Workshop.

[David Clark 13Participant @davidclark13]

[David Clark 13Participant @davidclark13]

Hi there

If you click on the extras link at the top of the website you can try out a free digital version of Model Engineer and Model Engineers’ Workshop magazines.

 

If you have slow broadband it may take a little while to appear. Also you may have to wait a few seconds to get the high resolution magazine.

It initially loads as a low resoution page.

regards David

 

[Paul BoscottParticipant @paulboscott25817]

Very good a step forward

 

Though How I will get any work done?

 

Paul

[Michael GrayParticipant @michaelgray16785]

Hi, I’m running Firefox 3.0.12 under Ubuntu 8.04 and pretty sure I’ve finally got Flash 10 as my plugin.  When I try to view the digital edition a new page opens and the Flexpage eventually gets there, but is stuck with a red page on the left and blank white page on the right with a circle in the middle.  Even after many clicks on the circle there’s nothing.

 

 

What am I doing wrong?

 

Help me,  Mike

[Philip RoweParticipant @philiprowe13116]

Runs a little slow on my home broadband (my normal speed is around 3.2) but on my super fast broadband at work it ia absolutely brilliant.

As Paul says, how will I get any work done?

 

Phil

[John HinkleyParticipant @johnhinkley26699]

What a splendid addition to the site.  Just printed out a load of articles from back issues no longer available.  Thanks a million!

John

 

[Michael GrayParticipant @michaelgray16785]

Got it sorted!!

Bad loading of FlashPlayer 10.

Whoo! that comes up fast.

regards, Mike in BC

[Apostolos BourousisParticipant @apostolosbourousis64808]

Hello

This is really a nice addition to the site but why this slow Flexipage system ?

I think if someone have the chance to download them and read them with Acrobat format in his own computer will be much better than to this Flexipage format .

Anyway good for first time , i hope to improve .

Anybody knows how many back issues will be uploaded ?

Regards

Apostolos

 

[David Clark 13Participant @davidclark13]

Hi There

If members can download them as PDF’s they can give them to non subscribers and sell them on Ebay.

regards David

[Apostolos BourousisParticipant @apostolosbourousis64808]

Hello David , thanks for your reply .

I suppose that if someone wish to give them to non subscribers or even worst to sell them,  can do it even with flexi page . Print to file -convert to PDF – Done . If someone really wish to make the damage the flexi will not stop them . The matter is that we can save lot of bandwith if we can have them as PDF .

Anyway maybe some people knows better than me about it.

 

Do you have any idea how many back issues will be posted there ?

 

Again my best regards

Your friend

Apostolos

 

[David Clark 13Participant @davidclark13]

Hi There

About 3 years worth are online.

I doubt that will increas back, just forward.

regards David

 

[TrevorhParticipant @trevorh]

Cracking idea to be able to see them on screen

saves me getting my copies dirty or damaged

 

well done

[Dougie SwanParticipant @dougieswan43463]

Pity they wont go all the way back, that really would be a font of knowledge, still, pretty good all the same

Dougie

[Jim NolanParticipant @jimnolan76764]

Well after I got this week’s mag finally found out what my subscriber number was and logged in. Big disappointment to me, what is the point of posting the magazines I already have? Where is the added value in that, I already paid to get them?

 

The archive is where the gold is buying yourself a few more servers and get the history available. It might be an additional source of revenue for you, you cold perhaps ask an additional subscription to access the ME archive. Oops did I say that out loud?

Jim

Edited By Jim Nolan on 28/08/2009 21:01:33

[Martin CottrellParticipant @martincottrell21329]

Posted by Jim Nolan on 28/08/2009 21:01:11:

 

The archive is where the gold is buying yourself a few more servers and get the history available. It might be an additional source of revenue for you, you cold perhaps ask an additional subscription to access the ME archive. Oops did I say that out loud?

Jim

 

 Hi,

 

I have to agree with Jim on this one. I would imagine that most people who take a subscription keep their copies to build up a personal archive so making the last 3 years worth of issues available online gratis to subscribers is of minimal benefit. It has also been noted elsewhere on the site that regular readers of ME & MEW who choose not to receive their copies by way of subscription are feeling penalised purely for the manner in which they obtain their magazine which to me seems unfair.

 

I understand the business benefits from selling via subscription and the need to make  purchasing in this way attractive to the punter. However I feel that benefits should be awarded at the point of sale, ie cheaper magazine rates and perhaps some incentive to continue subscribing when renewal is due and not be extended into this site which should give free access to all areas to all members. 

 

Jim is right, you have a valuable resource in the ME & MEW archives and I for one would be prepared to pay a nominal fee to access said archives and retreive articles of interest to me.

 

Regards, Martin.

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

duplicated post.

Edited By John Stevenson on 28/08/2009 22:17:27

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Sorry but I get a bit pi$$ed off with everyone expecting everything on the internet to be for free.

 

Jim asked “what is the point of posting the magazines I already have? ” more to the point do you expect magazines you don’t have and so therefore haven’t paid for ?

Perhaps a trawl on Ebay will get loads of magazines free to a good home, postage paid ? 

ME and MEW do have a valuable resource in their back issues, they are called assets.

It’s now been proven in the the law courts that it’s possible to reproduce the magazines in their entirety and resold. However taking these ‘assets’ and converting onto a readable medium like a CD will take a lot of time and effort hence more expense. This has to be out weighed against projected sales, copying and illegal sales  before a price can be put on these.

Perhaps we ought to be looking at what a realistic price will be for a set of these DVD’s or whatever and I wouldn’t think a ‘nominal’ fee would come close.

John S.

[Martin CottrellParticipant @martincottrell21329]

Hi John,

 

I wasn’t expecting something for nothing nor was that what I said. I understand what you say regarding costs involved etc but  I also know that this archive data is not solely under the ownership of the owners of ME/MEW. Archive issues are widely available to the Model Engineering fraternity through club & public libraries and available for purchase from individuals and businesses advertising in the various ME magazines as well as via the internet from sites such as Ebay. As such I would expect release of archive data from ME to be competitive with these other forms of acqusition. Perhaps I should have substituted the word “nominal” with “competitive” so as not to imply “minimal”!

 

I am sure that the technology exists now, as Jim pointed out, for ME/MEW to provide a service selling, say, specific articles on a particular locomotive construction series to people like myself who might not not have access to a free club library and do not want to source & pay for perhaps several volumes of magazines to get the required issues. 

 

Sitting on the archive and doing nothing with it in case someone attempts to copy & sell it illegally seems pointless to me when such people can relatively easily get the information from elsewhere anyway.

 

Regards, Martin. 

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Martin.

I wasn’t having a pop at you in particular just views in general.

True archive issues are available elsewhere, Ebay Tee etc but only ME / MEW  / My hobby store or whatever they are calling themselves this week, own the digital rights . So although as you say the information can be got it can only be got in past issue format, not digital.

 

Also sitting on it and doing nothing is pointless but unless there is a demand to convert these at a reasonable profit then that is what will happen.

 

Copying complete years is doable given time and sales but copying set pieces may not be as easy given the current copyright laws. 

 

ME / MEW has the legal right to copy complete magazines but not construction articles by certain authors who they do not have permissions from.

 

Incidentally the web site is broken in that when you post it says there was an error and you post again only to get the same error but the post has gone thru, hece the spate of double postings.

 

John s.

[Peter TuckerParticipant @petertucker86088]

David,

 

If you think people would sell copys of back isue PDFs then why dont you chaps sell them, it could be a nice little earner for My Hobby.  We all like something for free however if you offered them, at a reasonable rate per download, I’m sure there would be plenty of tackers subscribers or not.  I would rather buy a legitermate publication than a dodgy pirated copy.  Second hand is fine but there dosn’t seem to be enough to go around.

 

Peter.

[mgjParticipant @mgj]

I don’t think you do have full copyright to the full magazine do you. Authors, or their executors if dead retain copyright. Unless its a condition of publication that authority passes in whole or in part to the publishers.

 

Typically if you publish, the agreement is for once only reproduction.

 

Anyway, I would welcome the ability to search an archive electronically and then pay for a down load.  I have a whole steamer trunk full of MEs going back to I don’t know when. I was ill some years ago and laid up for 10 days, and I still couldn’t get through them all. So whoever does sort scan and keyword the whole load deseres some sort of recompense IMO.

 

Quite a lot of sites in the engineering and reference world, (refence libraries) have a summary of articles, – steel specifications or whatever. That sort of thing.  So you click on it to download, and there is an invitation to stick a credit card number in there. I don’t see that as being unreasonable.

 

(You want Young’s Modulus for TP304L stainless and you ain’t going to get it for free!)

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

There is legal precedence that if the magazine is scanned in it’s entirety, adverts, covers etc then it can be distributed buy the current magazines owners.

National Geographic went to court over this and won.

 

However the problem is not one of ownership but one of time versus sales.

MEW wouldn’t be that hard to do , they are up to issue # 154 and possible have going back to 100 as PDF’s which would have been sent to the printer.

 

What format the previous ones are in is no ones guess, possibly they don’t exist and have to be scanned in from good copies.

So you are looking at scanning 100 magazines in to get a compilation.

Modern copies run to 11 Meg, I guess earlier copies will run to 20 Meg as they are thicker.

so say 15 Meg on average that’s 2.4 Gig

 

I dare say that although this will fit on a DVD Model Engineer will not.

 

Add to this if all the copies of  MEW are available on this site who pays for the bandwidth for the download. Every time someone downloads from this site MYHobbystore has to pay.

So I dares say that the whole of MEW would tax the site as regards download quantity and hosting costs.

 

 

Now take ME, how many copies are there,  ? 4348 is on the cover of the sample.

Who fancies scanning 4348 copies in and remember a large number of these will be on poor paper with poor graphics and will have to be done as graphical PDF’s so not searchable.

 

Perhaps MEW will happen, I hope so even though I have the full set, it’s nice to be able to scan thru quickly without having to hunt for copies but they will have to be available at a practical cost to cover the time involved in getting these to market.

 

It’s next to impossible to get MEW for £1.00 per issue secondhand but as a set it often is, so the set so far would cost £154

Now granted it’s not the paper issue which is worth more but at even 50p per copy that’s £77

 

I’d like to see more input on what people think the value of a CD is.

 

 

John S.

[Peter TuckerParticipant @petertucker86088]

John,

 

A MEW CD with from isue 1 to 100 I would pay about £50.  I would scan them if you got them to me.

 

Peter.

[AdrianParticipant @adrian83959]

This is an excellent development – a shame of course that it will not go back furhter than 3 years.  Now have the tricky question of whether to free up shelf space of 3 years magazines and rely on the website or keep my copies!

 

I believe there may be a teething problems with the website though as if  I try a search from the page displaying the frontpages it does not return any results whereas when I searched within the magazine viewer it did.  I searched for McOnie (as I am building it!) if anyone wants to try replicating the problem.

 

Also tried printing a page only to find the right hand side went off the page -no obvious printer settings to rectify.

Adrian

[Jim KParticipant @jimk]

Dave,

are you considering having a digital subscription to MEW and ME where you only get access to the mag’s online, nothing posted to the home. I would be very interested in this subscription.

Jim K

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