In an unprecedented move, Yoga Journal has gone one step further to protect Mother Earth and go green.

It published its May 2008 issue in digital form in cooperation with Zinio, a company that sells and distributes popular magazines in digital form.

 

I believe it is a wonderful move, a timely one, what with everyone concerned about the greenhouse effect all over the world.

Yoga Journal made their maiden digital issue available for free and I was able to get a copy. After previewing my copy earlier this is what I have to say — this is NOT just a digital copy like a PDF file that you read via Adobe Reader!

– you can flip through the pages by clicking the corners of the magazine (just like you would with a printed mag)

– multimedia is embedded into selected pages. For example, when you go to the editorial page, hover your cursor over the bottom of the editorial page, where you may see a tiny arrow. Click that and a tiny screen opens at the bottom and a video of Kaitlin Quistgaard, editor-in-chief, comes on with Kaitlin explaining what you can expect to find in their first digital edition.

– hyperlinks are available everywhere! Anything underlined is a link to another part of the magazine. In fact, advertisements have hyperlinks back to their websites (now, isn’t that NEAT?)

– a scroll bar at the bottom of the online Zinio reader allows you to drag it to fast forward or double back to any page, just like flipping through the pages of the magazine. As you are dragging the scroll bar, thumbnails of the pages are shown so you know exactly when to stop “thumbing” through it.

And after previewing this, if you feel that you want to subscribe to digital issues, you can head over to Zinio, create your own account, and order online (NOTE: I have not yet personally tried subscribing via Zinio so here is a caveat for all readers to exercise all prudent care and practice internet safety for online transactions). However, Zinio says on their site that they are “hacker safe” and that their site is secured by digital certificates. Zinio comes with its own downloadable offline reader so you can download your subscription magazines and read offline at your leisure.

A yogi friend, in an earlier online chat, commented that he still liked to read his magazines in print and said it was still convenient to bring to the toilet “so as not to get bored“. J, you can always bring your laptop to the toilet! 🙂

Yoga Journal allows this maiden digital issue to be forwarded via email to friends so if you want your own digital copy, post in the comment section below and I will try to have it emailed to you.

Thank you, Yoga Journal, for your wonderful contribution to Earth Day!

And to you all…

Namaste.