Speaking of Condé Nast properties, internet hipsters, and the iPad: Anil Dash describes the all-star team of nerds (Paul Ford! Garrett Murray! Andre Torrez! Liz Spiers! And don't forget: Anil Dash!) who brought Gourmet back as a "massively multiplayer magazine", a phrase he employs with zero irony.
If you work on the Web and yet haven't heard of any of these people, that's fine. With the exception of Murray, they're all people who were A-list bloggers on the internet six or seven years ago when I was first starting out, back in those pre-Facebook days when being an "A-list blogger" meant being a snarky web developer in Brooklyn.
I don't mean to diminish these very talented and experienced folks' contributions to the Web we all know and love. But what this team has tried to do with Gourmet Live is ambitious, and there are things about it that just do not make sense. For starters, why can't you e-mail or share anything, or invite friends to follow you, or do anything social on this obviously social-network-inspired app? Sure, you can have the app automatically post links to itself to Facebook or Twitter when you "unlock" a new magazine, but that's not a feedback loop—it's just me using my network to provide free advertising.
But, that bitching aside, the content is great. The recipes are well-written and sound delicious (I have two bookmarked for Fall dinners), the photos are gorgeous, and there's not much wrong with the user experience that can't be fixed in a decent version 1.1.