It Looks Like FWW has been Busy

[Rich Konopka]

Has anyone noticed the new premium service called the Fine Wood Working Network at http://www.taunton.com/FWN/

It looks pretty interesting. Has anyone signed up for this premium content service? It looks like they have put all of their tool reviews, furnitures gallery, articles, and etc... in a member Portal. It looks like they are using some of the cool technologies like AJAX ( Asynchronous Javascript And XML) on the eb site.

They also have plans available for download which may make the annual subscription pay for itself.

Has anyone signed up for it? Anyone know of free trial?

[Frank Pellow]

Thanks Rich, that does look interesting. I don't subscribe to the magazine, but I might give this a try.

[Tyler Howell]

They have been chatting about this for a while. Sounds interesting.

[Rob Blaustein]

Well it's a little pricey but it does look better than my current technique of using their website's index (which I find so so) to find which issue an article was published, then rifling through my back issues--or just rifling through the back issues without using the index. And it seems like there's a lot more content than in the mag itself. As a beginner, access to good video clips is great since I'm frequently confused by written descriptions of how to do things. Might have to give it a whirl, thanks for pointing it out.

[Todd Tolhurst]

I didn't see anything that looked like AJAX... did I miss something?

[Lee DeRaud]

Will they have the video of the cage match between the sales reps for the 8" jointer manufacturers?

[Gredo Goldenstein]

The Executive Editor of FWW, Anatole Burkin, was at one of our Central MN Woodworker Assoc. meetings a few months back. He had mentioned the start of a premium woodworking site that would cost "X" amount to access. He asked how many in the club would be willing to pay for it. A handful of us raised our hands. Fine Woodworking Network is the result. I think I will start with paying for 1 month to begin with and see how it goes. I would like to hear other Creekers comments on it as well.

Happy Thanksgiving to All!!!

[Rich Konopka]

I didn't see anything that looked like AJAX... did I miss something?

Yeah your right. it isn't AJAX. It's more like Comet

[Rob Blaustein]

OK, I took the plunge and dropped $60 (it's 75 if you don't have a subscription to FWW). So far it looks OK, but I haven't put it through its paces. I hope that this gives access to all of the past articles, but I don't know yet if that's the case--that should be possible since they have them all on CD already, if I recall. I also am assuming that they will give access to all of the past video clips that they've been putting on the site--I think those stay available for general access for only several months. One minor gripe--if you have a subscription to FWW and want to sign up at the discounted rate of $60, you need to have your customer number which seems to only be on that paper page that has your address--I usually rip that page right off and toss in the recycle bin, but still had it around.

[Gary Herrmann]

My wife got me the FWW CD last year for Christmas, and it included a one year unlimited membership to their site. I like it. The content of the CD and the site at first seemed to be all but identical, but they've continued to add content to the site. I may even rejoin when mine runs out.

The CD is good for when I travel or visit relatives that don't have web access and I want to do a little reading.

[Mike Henderson]

I bought the FWW CD a year or so ago and got the web access with it. One thing I noticed was that not all the articles that had been in the earlier issues were on the CD nor on the web. I contacted FWW and received a very nice reply from Anatole Burkin, who explained that in the early days of the magazine they had not obtained rights for electronic publishing and now, could not find some of the authors to obtain those rights. Since heirs inherit copyright rights, they couldn’t publish old articles without taking the risk that an author or heir would sue them.

So unless they have changed their position, not all of the older articles will be on the CD or on the web. What I did, over time, was to buy old copies of FWW on EBay and now have a complete set. While the index feature on the FWW web site is not very good, I have been able to find articles about things I’m searching for.
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One new feature I see in this version is access to videos.
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Mike