Users will be able to swipe across the screen to flip pages as though it's a print product. They can also create their own version of the magazine, by arranging sections and stories in their preferred order. Along with the magazine articles, there's video, bonus photo shoot shots, live sports scores and stats from favorite teams and athletes (useful for the fantasy football types!). There's also game alerts, betting games, social networking capabilities and more.

Sports Illustrated worked with David Link, the founder of Wonderfactory, to help design the product. He told The New York Times that he was not sure whether the new digital magazine would be distributed through iTunes or other e-commerce stores. But he's certainly ready for an Apple tablet, if it ever comes out (a bunch of other publishers are too!). Certainly, the iTunes-like store that John Squires of Time Inc., Hearst and Conde Nast have in mind, and is expected to be revealed early next week, will be in the running. There's also news that Hearst is working on another mag platform called Skiff, which will allow them to sell digital versions of newspapers and magazines on e-readers and other mobile devices, according to today's Wall Street Journal.

But it remains to be seen whether ad revenue and charging for these tablet mags will be successful. Perhaps numbers from GQ's iPhone app sales, slapped with a $2.99 per issue price, will be an indictation. It was just released in stores on Nov. 25.

Taxi Driver on Hulu — Taxi Driver needs no introduction. Put one of Martin Scorsese's best in your Hulu queue for one of those dark, wintery nights.

21 Jump Street on Hulu — If you're looking for something a little lighter, there's three seasons of baby-faced Johnny Depp and a gaggle of young rookies playing undercover cops at high schools and sometimes colleges to fight crime. Look for bonus cameos from Brad Pitt, Christina Applegate, Vince Vaughn, Rosie Perez, Jason Priestley, Josh Brolin, Blair Underwood and more!

Path Lights — Path Lights, based on Tom Drury's 2005 New Yorker short story, is a plucky, thoughtful film that remixes the classic detective hero movie. John Hawkes (of Eastbound & Down and Me and You and Everyone We Know fame) plays Bobby, a guy who does voiceovers for an audio detective series. When a beer bottle falls from the sky, just missing his noggin, he decides to find out where it came from. David Lynch Foundation Television is hosting the 22-minute film for one week only, Dec. 2 through Dec. 9, before it makes the film festival rounds in 2010.

Can you throw a no-hitter on LSD? Dock Ellis did — As our sister from the same mister newsletter Very Short List points out, in 1970 "one major leaguer threw a no-hitter while high on acid and Benzedrine." Dock Ellis & the LSD No-No is the hilarious animated short that tells this truly incredible tale. Check it out.

Here Come The Waves: The Hazards Of Love Visualized — The Decemberists, that twee band that sometimes makes good, poppy rock music, just released a full-length "video album" called Here Come The Waves: The Hazards Of Love Visualized. It's available on iTunes and it's the first of this new breed of digital art for Apple's retailer. Four filmmakers—Peter Sluszka, Julia Pott, Guilherme Marcondes and Santa Maria—created original animated shorts with a section of the album as the soundtrack. Check out the official trailer.

Here's a peek inside some of the Times' most popular blogs, as offered by the editors:

Wendell Jamieson, deputy metropolitan editor for the Web who oversees City Room, the blog about New York for New Yorkers:

"Blog is a funny word to describe it, right?" Mr. Jamieson told the Observer. "It's really just a daily news report. We use the word 'blog' for lack of another term."

City Room debuted in June 2007 to provide breaking news, feature articles and reader conversations. Some of its reports include emergency landing of Flight 1549 in the Hudson River; M.T.A. fare hikes; popular baby names; bicycle racks; the history of Jewish delis; and the city's dog-scooping law.

Sewell Chan, City Room's bureau chief, wrote in his recent Talk to the Newsroom feature, that "[t]he tone of a blog post might often seem more conversational and less comprehensive than most traditional news articles, but we don't put anything on the blog that we would not be comfortable seeing in print. (Admittedly, we have experimented with first-person accounts, contests and even poetry.) We do avoid the opinion and mean-spirited snark associated with some blogs; snark isn't our thing."

But if City Room has one of the most unique voices among NYTimes.com blogs--it's one editors hope readers want to hear.

"City Room allows you to be very parochial in your coverage of New York City," Mr. Jamieson said. "We believe in covering New York for New Yorkers and going deep on things that only a New Yorker would really be fascinated by." Like, say, studies on architecture or neon signs with burned-out letters that "take on new (and unintended) meanings." "We do all sorts of stunt-type things," said Mr. Jamieson, like asking readers to get in on the rivalry between Montreal bagels and New York bagels.

Mr. Jamieson said City Room will be rolling out new columns and features in January, although he wouldn't go into detail. "We'll leverage metropolitan staff's deep knowledge of New York City institutions," is all he'd say.

As far as other fancy multi-media type stuff, Mr. Jamieson isn't concerned about keeping up with the latest blog gadgets. "Look, it's good stories--whether they're read the on the computer or a good newspaper. No matter how many slideshows you do, who cares? It has to be a good story, a strong one for City Room. That's what matters to us."

Vindu Goel, deputy technology editor of Bits, the tech news blog:

Bits launched in June 2007 among an increasingly crowded technology news market, but took a long-view reporting style in contrast to the quick-paced, casual tone at other tech sites.

"We don't cover all the breaking news in the blog the way that, say, TechCrunch does," Mr. Goel said. "We use [Bits] for some analysis that goes more in depth, with additional information about a story."

Bits has 12 contributors, including four editors. Mr. Goel said e-readers, the Google Books settlement and even the Netflix competition prize were popular subjects for the blog. Covering news like the Microsoft-Yahoo partnership deal, were also important milestones for Bits. Several posts about the subject worked better on the Web because by they fed news-hungry readers from the niche tech crowd.

Mr. Goel said Bits "is constantly working on" the voice of the blog. How can they make tech jargon accessible to the Times' broad readership without making tech nerds feel like they're reading a toaster's manual? Readers will usually tell them when they go wrong in the comments section, Mr. Goel said. "The interactivity is the best thing about the blog," he said. "We will get legions of comments, sometimes hundreds of comments, from all kinds of broad, general interest types of folks, asking how do I upgrade Windows Vista to people who will have a very heated about LED lighting."

Commentors have to register for NYTimes.com and Bits editors monitor posts to weed out the YouTube-like junk--no cursing or spam allowed. "We want to try to provide the readers with a better discussion," he explained. "People are expecting a little bit more from the comments."

Nick Bilton, a former user interface specialist for the Times, recently returned from working on a book to become Bits' new lead writer. He wrote in an introductory blog post that he hopes to open the discussion between readers and reporters even more. "The beauty of a blog is that it allows for conversation, not just oration, and I'll do my best to be part of the discussion," he wrote.

"I also hope to bring a new style of telling stories to the blog," he continued. "I don't believe storytelling is an art form of words alone. It's ocular, auditory, interactive and asynchronous. As I settle in and take off my training wheels, you can expect more graphics, audio slide shows, videos and data visualization on Bits."

Mr. Goel said, along with more multimedia features, he also hopes to include more "light and fun" posts between breaking news items.

"People take the Times so seriously sometimes," he told the Observer. "But I think it's okay for us have have a little fun too."

Tara Parker-Pope, lead writer for Well, a blog with the latest medical research and societal trends affecting personal health:

"It's difficult to compare blogs because we all have different goals," Ms. Parker-Pope told the Observer. The Lede might be gathering the most crucial daily news and helping Times readers understand it, while City Room is live-blogging breaking news. "For Well, we want to put readers' daily health conversation at the heart of the blog."

Ms. Parker-Pope "sifts through medical research and expert opinions for practical advice to help readers take control of their health and live well every day," according to the blog's description. But Well has also become a gathering place for readers to connect with Ms. Parker-Pope and the handful of running, nutrition, and other experts who occasionally contribute to the blog.

"On some days, my posts are based on my interests as an individual, as a single parent or a person who is trying to start exercising again," Ms. Parker-Pope said. "Those things are often reflected in the blog, but it's really to reflect what other people," she said.

"Well has a specific journalistic mission which is to really tell readers about their own lives," she continued. "Readers really like to learn about themselves and talk about themselves--we all do."

They also like to comment--a lot--and send Ms. Parker-Pope tips for stories. One of her favorite articles came from a readers' question, asking whether doctors and nurses should wear scrubs on the subway. Some commenters have become contributors. Kairol Rosenthal, a regular commentor on the blog, eventually wrote about cancer for Well.

Ms. Parker-Pope left The Wall Street Journal in 2007 to write about consumer health for The Times and she said she has never been closer to her readers.

She even trained for a marathon with them, and shared her experience, with a Web-based application called Run Well. 

Ms. Parker-Pope expects to expand on more running and recipe coverage. As far as multimedia features, she'd like to do more--if only there was more time.

"The limits to the blog are always about time as a resource," she said. "My goal is to continue serving this audience, engage them and interest them and surprise every now and then."

Here's an outline of the info, gathered by Pingdom, a digital service that alerts businesses when their Web site is out of order.

- The social news sites Digg, Reddit and Slashdot have significantly more male users than female. The standout here is Slashdot. 82% of their users are male.
- Twitter and Facebook have almost the same male-female ratio; Twitter with 59% female users and Facebook with 57%.
- The most female-dominated site? Bebo (66% female users), closely followed by MySpace and Classmates.com (64%).
- The average ratio of all 19 sites was 47% male, 53% female.

So why are so many women connecting on social networks, but not as involved in social news sites like Digg and Reddit?

The Wall Street Journal reported on a study with similar results in early October, and spoke with Aaron Smith, a research specialist at the Pew Internet and American Life Project. "Men are more likely to use transactional types of tools, like online banking," he told WSJ. "Not to say that men don't like to talk, and that women don't need to get information, but in general when we look at the overall picture, we see women gravitating toward those applications that allow them to connect with friends and share information with people they know."

But perhaps the question is whether there truly are more women conversing on sites like Twitter, or if they are just spambots registering as females. Don Synstelien, a strategist for social networks who worked in research and development at MySpace, wrote on Pingdom's comment page that "possibly 25% of every 'female' profile that I viewed was a spam page."

A Thanksgiving survival guide on Hulu - Admit it: You'll probably be spending at least some of your Thanksgiving vacation hiding away from family members in your bedroom or at least firing up the laptop to watch some movies on the plane. Let Hulu be your window for escape. Here's a few suggestions from their "recently added" section:

So I Married an Axe Murderer - Woman. Woe-man. Whooooooooa-man. Here's a Mike Myers, post-Wayne's World classic where he plays a beat poet who falls in love with a mysterious butcher.

Pieces of April - Katie Holmes, somewhere between Dawson and Mrs. Cruise, played April Burns, a girl living in the Lower East Side trying to make her first Thanksgiving dinner for her dysfunctional family--with a broken stove.

Addams Family Values - Kind of the perfect movie for any holiday because the Addams are probably way more messed up than your family.

A cooking survival guide (for the kitchen) on the Food Network - Here's a bunch of videos in case you're looking for last minute recipes or need to figure out how to tell if a turkey is done or would like visuals on how to carve that bird.

Picking up where The L Word left off: Anyone But Me - From the executive producer team of award-winning playwright Susan Miller (The L Word and Thirtysomething) and Tina Cesa Ward (In Their Absence) comes this lovely Web show called Anyone But Me. The series follows New York City teenagers grappling with awakening sexuality and all kinds of identity crises. The show was created for StrikeTV.com, a site that launched during the writer's strike to draw attention to original programming on the Web--and it actually succeeds in showing us the potential of the medium. Catch up on the first season before the new episodes debut in December.

Biking Rules PSA winners - Transportation Alternatives recently hosted a PSA competition, asking the city's filmmakers to make Web-friendly clips that explain biking rules. The results were true, creative works of art. Check out this top prize winner, which displayed beautiful animation to show how wearing bike lights are not only safe but eye-catching. Or how it's important to make eye contact with drivers. We also like this old-school style Gear Up: Safety 'N' You video. Wear a helmet, people!

Beatles 3000: The mockumentary of the future - What if PBS did a documentary on The Beatles 1,000 years after John, Paul, Greg, and Scottie (yeah, you read that right--the lineup has changed!) died? Here's what it might look like (hilarity within).

One in 8 Million series on NYTimes.com - How many times have you walked around the city streets wondering about the people who pass you by every day--the pretty girl who sits next to you on the subway or the scruffy guy who orders an Americano at your coffee shop ? The New York Times' One in 8 Million series is one way to get to know them. "This is a collection of a few of their passions and problems, relationships and routines, vocations and obsessions." A new profile is posted every week. Don't miss Maggie Nescuir, who walks up to 90 miles a week in New York; Nancy Bunche, who has been the maid of four city mayors; Christian Hubert, who suffers from vertigo but still rides his bike across NYC bridges; or Mark Mocha, the ex-bank robber. We love them all.

Funny Business at the New Yorker on Big Think - Ever wonder why The New Yorker keeps publishing those old-fashioned looking cartoons? Big Think, a high-quality video site of pundits bloviating on lofty subjects, takes a look behind the line drawings in this series of videos. Editor David Remnick explains how the process works and why it's easier to get a reporter to dodge bullets in Afghanistan than to find a genuinely funny humor writer for those cartoons. Cartoon editor Robert Mankoff recounts his path to humor and the magazine. And you'll want to check out Josh Lieb, the executive producer of The Daily Show, saying "big deal"--those cartoons are cake for talented comedy writers.

92nd Street Y's Fridges - Last week, the 92nd Street Y debuted a new video series called Fridges. They're peeking inside well-known New Yorkers' pantries and freezer boxes to find their snack addictions, dietary restrictions and how long they keep takeout iaround. New York Times reporter Jennifer 8. Lee, author of The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, is the first subject (she'll be at 92Y on Dec. 20 to talk about it). And yes, they realize they're biting off another reality TV show that airs on MTV.

Germans in the Woods - A StoryCorps animation - Since 2003, StoryCorps has been collecting audio recordings of people's stories:  conversations between sons and daughters, immigrants and natives, neighbors and strangers. Each participant received a free CD to share, and stories are also gets preserved at the Library of Congress. It's one of the largest oral history projects of its kind. Rauch Bros., a Brooklyn animation studio, is bringing some of these stories to life in beautiful videos. Here's one about an 86-year-old World War II veteran who, more than 60 years later, can't forget one soldier he killed in the Battle of the Bulge.

Before he left New York to visit the small western Orissa village, the Obama administration had launched a redesign of WhiteHouse.gov with—of course—a blog.

“It was one of the few things in my career where my family understood what I did,” Mr. Dash told The Observer. “‘Oh, you helped make software that ran Barack Obama’s blog and that’s what you do.’ Between that and Britney Spears, they had the examples they needed.” (My.BarackObama.com and BritneySpears.com use software by Six Apart called Moveable Type.)

“That felt like a validation of all this work,” Mr. Dash continued. He was sitting at the 71 Irving Place coffee shop, just a few blocks from his home, his eyes bleary from overdosing on computer screen time.  “From then on out, I had this feeling that was going to be the trend.”

During the summer, Mr. Dash’s personal blog had its 10th anniversary. In August, he wrote a post titled “The Most Interesting New Tech Startup of 2009.” According to Mr. Dash, it was the executive branch of the federal government of the United States.

“[T]he current administration is comprised in great part of digital natives,” he wrote, “and it’s remarkable how quickly they’ve remade the .gov world into not just a number of compelling websites, but into a broad set of platforms that are going to inspire as much technological innovation as Twitter, Facebook or the iPhone did when they unveiled their technology platforms.”

Mr. Dash wondered: Could WhiteHouse.gov be the next iPhone? Could developers get just as giddy over coding software to serve their country as they are over creating an app for the Apple store?

He’s about to find out.

Soon after he wrote his post, Mr. Dash received emails and calls from those “digital natives” in the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy, asking him if he’d like to help. They eventually approached him with an opportunity to lead a new Washington, D.C., incubator called Expert Labs. He got the job in early October.

With support from a $500,000 grant from the MacArthur Foundation, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and their Policy Innovation Network has launched Expert Labs as a nonpartisan, independent project that aims to improve the policy-making process by engaging experts and technologists.

“The government is already using technology to talk to citizens,” Mr. Dash told The Observer. “But we’re going to make technology that helps government listen to them.”

Expert Labs will borrow developers from the hallways of Google in Silicon Valley or start-ups like Foursquare and Kickstarter in New York to build government applications and social media tools in exchange for grants—and the chance to connect with some of the most powerful people in the country.

Mr. Dash plans to lure participants with a periodic, competitive model, similar to the Knight Foundation’s Knight News Challenge. He’ll ask government agencies about their policy initiatives (say, fighting childhood obesity) as well as operating issues (like expensive, licensed billing software) and then host competitions, asking developers to code social media platforms so specialists can provide innovative solutions. 

As director of Expert Labs, Mr. Dash, with his buddy list of powerful geeks, will serve as a government 2.0 switchboard—connecting the policy makers with technology innovators and experts to reinvent the way government works.

“Candidly, the name scared the hell out of me,” Mr. Dash said about the Policy Innovation Network. “This sounds like some scary think tank where you know a bunch of old dudes in suits are choosing how the world happens. I was like, this doesn’t sound like me.

“But, actually, this was really interesting; it’s just being marketed like it’s medicine, not candy. It needs more cherry flavor. I know how to present this as compelling as it is.”

Instead of the government dictating what kind of technology they need, Mr. Dash was providing the general public the opportunity to help them invent it.

Other good-for-government coding programs, like Code for America or N.Y.C.’s Big Apps competition, have similar models. But Mr. Dash said this is the first time there has been neutral ground for private developers to connect with their government in a big way.

“If people are skeptical about the ability of government to execute, then by all means, support our little entrepreneurial effort to do so,” Mr. Dash said.

Vivek Kundra, the administration’s chief information officer, and Katie Stanton, the director of citizen organization, wrote in a post on the White House’s Open Government blog that they are open to the public’s ideas on improving Web 2.0 technologies. “The National Weather Service does a great job of taking complex satellite data and making it widely accessible to people via new and traditional channels,” they wrote. “When you wake up, you can reach for your i-Phone, radio or newspaper and know whether it’s going to rain. How can we do this with other important government information, such as Medicaid and Medicare benefits, the state of the power grid or the Federal budget?”

Mr. Dash hopes to get answers for these types of questions—ready for review by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy—by spring 2010.

“To know that the White House read what I said, and was actually listening, that in itself is much more motivating than a million other things—like money or building something really cool,” Mr. Dash said. He hopes that developers and experts will feel the same way.

"This is the promise they all made in November," to contribute to change by getting more involved in the political process, he said. "I can't wait to pull that trigger on them."

greagan@observer.com

In January 2007, Lev Grossman started a blog called Nerd World for Time.com. He wrote about one or two posts a week his various nerdy interests (from snuggies to Mafia Wars). "It was a different time then," Mr. Grossman wrote in a blog post. "A time when I would actually write a 700-word post, instead of just pasting in a YouTube video plus three words of commentary, italicized for humorous effect."

Techland will cover similar subjects... with a faster metabolism. The site relaunched this weekend with a few writers contributing, including Matt Selman, a writer and producer who has worked on Seinfeld and eleven seasons of The Simpsons. There are, of course, several verticals, including gadgets, gaming, culture, news and video.

Here's Mr. Ha, a former CrunchGear news editor, and Mr. Grossman giving a little preview of the site, between clicks of their video game controllers:

Techland will have fierce competition from tons of other tech-y blogs that already have news scoops--from TechCrunch to Mashable to News Corp's All Things D. (Although, McKinsey is sharpening its knives to review Dow Jones, which runs All Things D, we'll see if it makes it through or goes to the Gourmet grave).

However, the editors warn that the site will be much less "tech news" focused and more about nerd culture--which is ever-so quickly becoming mainstream culture. Mr. Ha explained:

You might not consider yourself to be a nerd, but step back for a moment and consider the things you enjoy the most in life. I can guarantee that one of those things falls under the realm of nerd. It doesn't matter whether your favorite game is Wii Sports or Modern Warfare 2. Perhaps you enjoy reading Robert Kirkman's Invincible or Harry Potter or even The Magicians. Maybe you still rock a Motorola RAZR but long for an iPhone 3GS, DROID or BlackBerry. Are you into How I Met Your Mother, LOST, BSG or Myth Busters? The point is that we all have varying interests but we cross paths at one point or another. We're all nerds one way or another.

In other words, it's kind of cool to be a nerd these days, Poindexter.

How to draw a New Yorker cover - Speaking of the last magazine standing, artist Jorge Colombo sketched another one of his New Yorker covers with the iPhone Brushes application.

Lou Dobbs' most scandalous moments on HuffPo - Now that he's fleeing from CNN, let's review Mr. Dobbs' most jaw-dropping moments on air. How about the time he called Condi a "cotton picker?" or called Rachel Maddow a "tea-bagging queen?" Lest we forget his signature anti-immigration rhetoric.

Maria Schneider's reality show on ArtistShare - The gorgeous band leader-composer was one of the first jazz musicians to harness the power of the Internet, as the Observer told you this week. On ArtistShare, Ms. Schneider has been recording videos, giving her fans an inside look into her writing process and offering them the chance to give her feedback as she creates a piece. Check out this video of Ms. Schneider explaining The Commission Project.

Telescope's A Talk With Alfred Hitchcock on Hulu - Hulu recently added this lovely, two-part archive piece that originally aired on the 1960s CBC program Telescope, with director Fletcher Markle sitting down with the Master of Suspense during the prime of his career. Mr. Hitchcock discusses insider-y stories about gathering 28,000 birds for The Birds and shooting the shower scene from Psycho with 78 separate camera shots in 45 seconds. But he also delves into fascinating discussions about the film language and theory and the impact of horror films on society and behavior. A must-see for any film fan.

The Decade in 7 Minutes, from Newsweek - The past decade's major news events in yummy YouTube-sized video.

The art of procrastinating - Laughing Squid points us toward this animated short titled "Procrastination" by John Kelly. How meta. 

This week, Google has chosen the finalists and Central Park and the Bronx Zoo made the list! Central Park is in the "Landmarks" category and is up against four other contenders including Alcatraz and the Kennedy Space Center. The Bronzx Zoo made the "Theme Parks & Zoos" list. Princeton is also running in the "University Campuses" category.

The finalist that receives the most votes in each category will get a visit from the Google Street View trike.

You can vote as many times as you want at www.google.com/trike. The deadline is Nov. 30.

"We'll then work on getting all the winners into Google Maps, and of course we'll work closely with the relevant organizations to collect images of any privately-owned locations," wrote Laura Melahn, a Google product marketing manager. "It takes a bit of time to ride a 250-pound bike around the country, but we're excited to see which locations get your votes."

Although a few bike paths made the final list, we'll be excited if Google takes the Street View trike on the city's 420 miles (!) of bike lanes so they can build a "bike there" feature for their Google Transit site. Google hinted on their Lat Long Blog that they're be working on it. Sites like Ride the City are picking up the slack, but it's not always easy to look up at the street signs while you're riding down 1st Avenue and trying to swerve around pedestrians, delivery trucks and taxis. With Street View maps, bike riders would know they'd have to take a left at the Dunkin Donuts on to get on the 21st Street, West-bound bike lane.