I did a lot of magazine reading this weekend, and hereby I share what I've learnt :-
- Poverty is reducing in Asia and increasing in Africa
- Pakistan's ISI and Terrorist nexus is far thicker than we know
- The challenges Microsoft faces in the future has much to do with business processes than with technology.
- Attorney General Ashcroft's seat has become very hot. He might have to resign.
- An eminent Muslim is running for the President's office in India.
BTW, I know of two entrepreneurs who built a large empire based on what I just did (read magazines and summarize them for friends).
The Story of Jerry Seaman and Tim Collins
Gerald Seaman and Tim Collins of Topsfield Massachusetts were both magazine enthusiasts and used to read a lot of magazines. They shared the list of most interesting articles with friends and family and discovered that this compilation was very much appreciated. So in 1984 they started Popular Magazine Review (PMR) that published summaries of articles from periodicals such as Time, and National Geographic, which was an immediate hit. With PMR you no longer needed to weed through lots of stories -- the best stories were compiled and summarized for you by Seaman and Collins!
Seaman and Collins expanded the idea to include popular magazines, hobby magazines, and then to cover journals and scholarly publications. Their company, eventually merged with EBSCO, is the largest aggregator of content today and is the lifeline of reference content for libraries in the Western hemisphere.
Here's a hat tip to Jerry, Tim and EBSCO for the vision to see the need for intelligent aggregation.
