I was pleased this week to find an envelope in the RL snail-mail labelled with the SLang Life logo. About a month ago it was brought to my attention by Ayumi Cassini. She told me it would be a RL magazine about SL. Subscription and delivery would be completely free! So I subscribed myself and the rest, as they say, is history.I didn't yet read the entire magazine, as it's 40 pages, including ads and front page, and I only have it since yesterday, but it looks to be really cool. On reading the editorial and reading easily over SL jargon (or slang ;) ), like the abbreviations SL and RL, and even seeing a smilie in the cover article, I was reminded by old-skool computer magazines back in the early 90s. Only so many people were subscribed, it dealt with matter only people really into computers knew enough about. Every few months a new issue, sometimes it took a bit longer, sometimes it had a diskette with cool software. Reading it felt like you belonged to a special elite group.
Then internet became more popular and people would say: "Oh, it's much easier to get info now. And it can be updated as soon as there is news, you don't have to wait 3 months to get it out. And it's so much cheaper!" To quote Zigi Bury in this 1st edition of SLang Life: "In RL media there are many discussions about whether or not paper media have a future." I think now the novelty of internet is getting old, people will want to see things on paper again and smell that ink. The arrival of this new magazine imho is the proof of that. Because it's not just a new magazine, it is one bridging the gap between something strictly online and our lives outside that.
I hope to see many more issues of this wonderful magazine. Do pay their site a visit and if you want, subscribe. It's completely free!
And to bridge the gap between SL and RL myself, see me reading SLang Life here :D
