WEBSITE | This week, THE NEW YORKER magazine launched a redesigned website, with a cleaner look and more web-only content. As a bonus, they're offering up everything the storied magazine has published since 2007 to everyone, subscriber or not, for the summer as well as a selection of some of their best work from years past, including short stories by Junot Diaz and Alice Munro. Not a bad deal. (Side note: When the Inlander launched in 1993, we used The New Yorker, with its in-depth features and thoughtful arts criticism, as a source of inspiration.)
TECH | In the last couple of months, SLACK has become the go-to collaborative messaging platform. In essence, it allows teams of people to chat, share files, host group and private discussions and integrate outside services like Google Drive and Twitter — and everything is searchable and seamlessly syncs to a phone app. Slack only launched publicly in February, but is already in use in offices like the New York Times, BuzzFeed, the Atlantic and ... the Inlander. We're testing it out ourselves, and so far we're liking how easy it is to keep related messages in an organized thread or "channel."
TV | Food has become a sport unto itself — with countless competition shows like Iron Chef America, Top Chef and Chopped. But where those shows pit experts against each other, one show — MASTERCHEF — puts America's best home cooks through a series of challenges before finally crowning the season's MasterChef. Sure, like all reality TV, it can be corny and overwrought, with silly rituals and ham-handed product placement. But to MasterChef's credit, its emphasis on home cooking allows the novice chef to follow along and find some inspiration. FOX, Mondays at 8 pm.
