WayCool new Food & Dining online! Help us test it

[Robin Garr]

I think everyone is going to be extremely impressed with a new digital version of Food & Dining we're beta testing, which basically puts the entire copy of the current edition (and eventually all the archives) online in a high-tech format that lets you turn pages and read it just like a magazine, while also having access to links and E-mail forwarding and all sorts of interactive Web tools.

This will eventually be available only to subscribers, but during testing we're opening access for 30 days to anyone who'd like to look at it and ideally help us with comments and bug reports.

I should tell you that this is a large, graphics-heavy application. I can run it on my older writing computer with 512 megs RAM, but it's slow and jerky. It runs great on my newer graphics/video computer with 2 megs of RAM. High screen resolution is also a plus. I can't run it on my iPhone, and I suspect if you have an older computer it may not make you happy ... but that's the kind of thing we want to find out.

To get started, click the link below. You'll be prompted for your Email and zip code (don't worry, we won't give it to spammers), and then you're in. Poke around, play with it, and take note in particular of the cool page-turning routine when you mouse over the upper right corner of the screen.

Food & Dining Winter 2008 Issue online

Once you've looked it over, let us know what you think! Post comments, quirks, bug reports in this thread or, if you prefer, by PM to me or Email at rgarr@louisvillehotbytes.com .

the search function seems like a very useful feature, though after waiting for forever (i'm running a pretty top-notch machine), it either wouldn't load, or just never got there.

i will add though, there's nothing like having a hard copy of the print version in your hands to pass around.
(plus, it's easier to skip the full page ads)

Wow! Really slick setup there. That is really nice. Jay's fish sandwich has me really hungry right now. Nice piece of work. Luckily I am at Derby City Espresso right now so I might have to make a little journey down there and try one out. When was this published because I thought that Carley Rae's was still open. Was that in reference to their little time out that they took?

Prost!

[Robin Garr]

I thought that Carley Rae's was still open. Was that in reference to their little time out that they took?

Egg-zackly! Reporter Michael Jones called, was told they were closed. Editors followed up with calls: Phone disconnected. Drove by. Building dark. Apparently they reopened after a week or two with a new telephone number, but the timing really worked out rotten for them.

It's not really an error, just bad luck, but we're going to try to give them a little extra publicity to help with the bounce-back.

Robin,

First, congratulation to the team on a very cool app! I found it very user -friendly for navagation, easy to read with the quick pop to large print and for me on DSL, response time was impressively quick.

The only negative was the start-up. When the app loads for the first time you are left with a black screen for quite some time, and unsure if anything is happening. Adding a "loading application" notice would be very helpful here (I almost clicked back to the previous page, not beliving that it was doing anything).

Deb

Not being all that "Tech-savvy" I think it's a pretty slick application!!!! Kudos to you...I hope you can post the archived issues. I lost my copy of the issue with the neat article about Casa Grisanti's and it's influence on our current dining scene with all of the current chef/proprietors that came out of that kitchen.

My computer must be better than I thought- downloaded in seconds and looks fantastick. Thanks for the heads up.

Not being all that "Tech-savvy" I think it's a pretty slick application!!!! Kudos to you...I hope you can post the archived issues. I lost my copy of the issue with the neat article about Casa Grisanti's and it's influence on our current dining scene with all of the current chef/proprietors that came out of that kitchen.

that was a really cool issue!

Robin, very nice and so timely as I'm headed to Chicago for the weekend in couple of weeks and needed some dining ideas.

I made reservations at Topolamapo several months ago but, that's only one night.

Thanks,