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If you're thinking that last week's press release seemed hastily assembled, you're right. I reached a point on Thursday morning where I realized I'd told enough people privately about the impending launch that it probably would leak soon if I didn't leak it first, so I announced it on Twitter and Facebook and then crafted a brief general release to make it publicly official. But make no mistake, iProng Magazine has been nearly four years in the making.

When iProng.com first launched back in early 2004 (under the name "iPod Garage" or whatever we were calling it back then), I knew that if successful, iProng would eventually evolve into a magazine. Whether it would be a print magazine, whether it would coexist with or supplant the website, and various other specifics were always hazy, as was the target release date. I was always vaguely shooting for five years out, so getting the first issue out the door after a mere three years and eleven months means that we're actually launching early, stunningly enough. But last week's announcement has led to a variety of questions, many of which I knew were coming, so today seems like as a good a day as any to go ahead and clarify what the roadmap currently looks like, at least to the extent that I can do so publicly.

Why the mix of technology and content? Why include music and podcasting in a magazine for iPod users?

The iPod is first and foremost a content player, and if you're not a fan of music and/or podcasts, you probably don't own one. But don't let the famous faces on each month's cover fool you: the majority of the content in each month's issue will be related to the iPod and iPhone. Just don't expect to see an iPod or iPhone model on the cover unless it's a brand new one, and we're not expecting any of those until mid-January at the soonest.

What kind of music and podcasting content will be included each month?

We're going to leave the heavy lifting of creating your own music and podcasts to those publications devoted solely to those topics. iProng Magazine's content will include feature stories on established musicians and podcasters you ought to know more about, as well as up and comers you'll want to hear about. We'll be taking advantage of the new media space to do things a little differently; in our first issue we're featuring two prominent podcasters, and rather than assigning staffers to write up each, we've asked the two video podcasters to write about each other's shows. And for some crazy reason, they've both agreed to do so. Our musician interviews will be a little out of the ordinary as well. One band currently on tour has invited me to visit them at their hotel when they pass through Los Angeles next month so I can get a real feel for who they are before writing them up, as opposed to the usual fifteen guarded minutes on the phone.

What about the website?

iProng.com has been publishing since 2004 and isn't going away. Just like our iProng Radio podcast didn't hurt the website, iProng Magazine won't hurt it either. While each monthly issue of the magazine will include exclusive features that won't be published separately on the website, those features will always be just a free download away. And if you're thinking that there must be an impending website redesign to correlate with the launch of the magazine, you're on the right track.

Why a digital download version and not a print version?

I'm not ruling out ever having a print version, but I'm certain that the best way for us to get wide distribution is to give iProng Magazine away for free, and you can't give away a print version. Anyone savvy enough to operate an iPod or iPhone is savvy enough to click on a PDF link and then read the contents of the PDF on their screen. If we were going after some stodgy target audience who thought in old fashioned terms, then we might have no choice but to do a print version. But these are iPod and iPhone users we're talking about. Owning an iPod doesn't mean you're a techie, but it means you're open to the digital way of doing things.

...but I can take a print version with me! Can I do that with a digital version?

The great thing about targeting iPod and iPhone users is that both the iPhone and the iPod touch are capable of displaying PDFs linked from a website, meaning that not only can iPhone and iPod users take iProng Magazine with them, they don't even need to sync it from their computer; they can simply download it directly onto their iPhone or iPod touch any time they have wireless access.

...but I really want paper in my hand, what can I do?

For the handful of potential iProng Magazine readers who just have to kill trees to feel satisfied that they're reading a magazine, there's always the print button on your computer. And the beauty of doing it this way is that those users only need to print out specific pages to get what they want, as opposed to every page of the magazine being printed and mailed to them. The cost of printing a few pages for yourself would still be less than the three or four dollars we'd have to charge for a print version of the issue. But we're confident readers will be thrilled with a free digital copy of each month's issue.

Who's going to be on the cover of the December issue?

Nice try.

Alright, I hope that makes the vision a little more clear. Much as I'd like to put everything out in the open right here and now, some of the details are going to have to wait until they're ready to see the light of day; name-dropping the artist who will appear on the first cover wouldn't be appropriate right now for instance. But the beautiful part about publicly announcing this earlier than I originally planned is that I've been able to get immediate feedback from people whose opinion I value (which in this case includes pretty much anyone willing to cough up an opinion on the matter). Even with the relative lack of details last week, the questions people have asked have inspired more than a few "oh yeah, we should consider that, shouldn't we?" moments.

Aside from the encouraging words from various members of the new media community and the iPod industry, the really gratifying part is that the editors of both Blogger & Podcaster Magazine and Podcast User Magazine both sent encouraging words my way on the day I announced iProng Magazine. Not that we'll be competing with either one of them (our twenty percent podcasting content won't hold a candle to the podcasting-specific nature of both of their fine publications), but it's nice to know that we're being welcomed with open arms. It also means we'll never have a potentially embarrassing moment where we both put a picture of the same podcaster on the cover in the same month, for instance. I've written articles for B&P, and I've been quoted more than once in PUM, so I feel like I'm indebted to both of them right out of the gate, and their support on this means a lot.

Equally cool is the fact that a number of tech-oriented websites have already signed on a distribution partners (which in digital context means they'll simply make sure all of their readers know that we've released the new issue each month), including one iPod-specific website, so it's nice to see that the publications in this industry that we respect are willing to support us as we go down this new road.

I'm going to keep blogging about the progress of the first issue because, well, it's what's on my mind and it's my blog. As we progress, it'll be fun to announce some of the various features that we'll be including. For instance, I can already confirm that Joe Hewitt, who wrote the iPhone app for Facebook which was featured in the September 5th Steve Jobs keynote, has agreed to a brief interview for our December issue (and I don't mind announcing it because we've already done the interview). But that barely scratches the surface of what we're currently sitting on for the first issue alone; for instance we'll be featuring a new podcast from an already-prominent podcaster but I cant tell you about it right now because the podcast itself isn't publicly available yet (although I've been having quite a bit of fun watching it this month).

Those various undercover aspects aside, I'll try to be as open as possible between now and the day the first issue is released with regards to where things are headed and what will be in that issue. If there's one thing I've learned by hanging out with social media types over the past year, it's that being open about what you intend to do is a great way to get feedback, positive or otherwise, which can really save you from making a key mistake, or missing an opportunity that's obvious to everyone but yourself. So I promise to leak what I can :-)