Thinkcorps

I am a bit slow and just noticed the NYTimes pop-up contextual search. When you double-click on an item in the text, a pop-up search window appears.

Problem is, we already have a well-defined context for selecting text using double and triple clicks, which this feature breaks rather dramatically with the sudden appearance of a pop-up window.

My other problem is that it seems dubiously useful to be able to search on only one word—and that’s all a double click can possibly get you. I suppose there’s some other hidden methods that also activate this feature, but I’m not going to stumble around blindly for them.

When you’re the paper of record, don’t you think the breadth and depth of your coverage might necessitate readers using something more advanced than single word search queries?

Does Khoi Vinh know about this, has he mentioned it already I wonder?

So Conde Nast has finally launched its new business magazine, Portfolio, which you can see at www.portfoliomag.com—oops, I mean www.portfolio.com.

The mag’s introduced with the tagline, “We see the big picture.”

I am not making any statements about viability, since CN has deep pockets and a powerful ad sales dept. But I do wonder how relevant Portfolio thinks it can be in today’s world.

It’s well-known that for any real insider-y information, you need to hit up B2B titles or, better yet, join an association or pick up a telephone. This is even more true today, with cellphone messaging and online forums. The information that really drives business never makes it to a business magazine, at least not before it’s completely stale.

A natural corollary is that “business” magazines aren’t actually targeted at “business” people—at least not the people on the front lines. The biz mag audience is the hundreds of thousands of middle managers, who are now finding themselves increasingly disintermediated as their companies struggle to compete on a faster global playing field.

Now that I think of it, Portfolio could be a stroke of utter genius.

The magazine (quietly, desperately) tries to evoke that 1980s high of noblesse oblige, though tempered by 20 years of pop-ified reality. I’m weirdly reminded of Charlie Sheen’s Wall Street, as if some shadowy half-demon from the Buffyverse were trying to conjure him out of the imaginary past and into the world of flesh and blood.

Save us Charlie! Save our jobs, our corner offices, our condos, our cars ... and maybe that last twinge of self-worth, if you get around to it.