Has anyone seen the revamped Shares magazine? Ross Greenwood, the original editor, had the energy to build the magazine up and knock it into a workable format, and Rodney Hobson, the recent editor had the sense to progress through evolution, not revolution. Now we have a new editor, Jeremy Lacey, who impressed no-one last week in his first editorial by describing how inept he'd been in his share-buying, surviving largely through luck. He's now (assuming he's had something to do with the changes) redesigned everything seemingly by throwing everything up in the air and picking the parts up in the random order in which they fell. It now looks drab and lacklustre - the component parts are still there but in an order which makes no sense at all and which becomes a difficult read. Share tables and stats, which naturally, in my view, should fall at the end of the magazine, for ready access, are now scattered throughout. The natural progression, from headline short-pieces (news and tips) at the start of the magazine, through longer features, advertorial, and finally company reports and stats, has been lost.

I buy Investors' Chronicle for its sober emphasis on fundamentals, and Shares Magazine for its tabloidy freshness and emphasis on TA, with plenty of graphs and graphics. There may be some merits in extending the small-cap coverage, with the longer textual reports (although I preferred it as it was) but the loss of graphs make them look like a poor version of IC. It's the visual look and quick-read qualities that have suffered. It now looks dull and disorganised.

I'd recently been thinking of cancelling Investor's Chronicle in favour of Shares, but now I'm beginning to think I had it the wrong way around.

Thoughts anyone?

-- Kayak,

I realise the tightness of the relationship, just not convinced the relationship was a good idea!

They have yet again tipped Forbidden Technology, I made a nice tidy profit before. This tip maybe one worth watching

"Forbidden only needs a modest niche to be interesting. Imagine if the BBC decided to drop Real Networks in favour of Forbidden for its website. The quality gap has closed so the issue becomes one of money".

The thing is that the BBC are not going to do that as the closest thing to a world standard in streaming media is Mpeg-4. FBT does not work to a streaming media standard. The BBC uses Mpeg-4, Real, Windows Media, Quicktime as they need interoperability which FBT does not have. With FBT you cannot even resize the viewing area. The quality is also appaling with FBT even on broadband. In fact FBT does not seem to improve its quality at all when it is used over the fastest networks. This is just a niche player. Just look at the complete lack of revenue and the continued losses. It is a hobby company. The cash will last seven years, but they won't make any money. It's market cap is around 20 times its net asset value.

So you agree the tips aint up too much then Haystack ?

so overall doesnt look very promising does it? LOL!

HAd a browse through Shares comic in Tesco at the weekend. Oh dear. The people complaining about the redesign do have a point, don't they. I can honestly say, I have not seen a more amateurish-looking professional magazine in the last 20 years (since the early days of the specialist computer magazines in the early-mid 80s)

Hard to know where to start, but very ugly design, swathes of colour for no apparent purpose, radically different designs from one page to the next, stories that you can't tell where they begin and end, the "chart paper" background to the chartist page - where lines run through text looking like separators and make the text hard to read. Yuk!

Short of laying out the pages on the floor and throwing cans of paint at the pages, it's hard to see how they could have made a worse hash of it. Truly, truly dreadful - if I were putting out a free supplement to a local newspaper, I would be embarrassed if it looked like that.

(I make no comment on the actual quality of the content - I was not tempted to buy it)

zzaxx99,

After having read last weeks' edition with the new format, I have to agree with you! They really have spoilt it, and should restore the old format ASAP, before they lose all their readers.

I particularly enjoy the charts section, which I would like to see enlarged, and I would think that section has a huge following, with many amateur budding chartists around. With access to David Linton, and David jones, that shouldn't be a problem.

Hope they read this before it's too late!

ZZAXX99,

Actually this week i have yet to see an edition, and even WH Smith don't have any copies, and neither do either of my local shops that normally stock it.

Either they've sold out, or reduced their order, or don't stock it anymore!

What happened to the ozzy he was brilliant.We also have David Jones instead of David Linton on charts.I also thought i was going to get a good read this week when i felt the thickness,no just an extra 12 pages of the shares awards zzzzzz.

-- Andy,

I've noticed that the number of places stocking Shares dried up a year or so ago - surprised to see it in Tesco at the weekend - hasn't been in there for ages - they may have "sold" it to the shops on the basis of a relaunch?

I hope Lmpy didn't say sell Nord Anglia.

:-)

Where is he these days , could do with his support here.

zzaxx99,

Yes I noticed that most of the old stockists no longer sell it, but I have yet to see a copy in any of thr three shops I would normally buy it in.

I'm just going down to the shop near my office, they normally stock it.

Cheers,

Andy.

They have it for wrapping fish & chips here!

Exo,

LOL!

The newsagent on our business park had a copy, so will check if it's improved tonight!

I agree that the new format is crap, and that more care should be taken over the presentation of data. However, Shares magazine is the only investment magazine that I have found which can keep me awake.

Not being a fan of "funnymentals", I find the IC as dull as dishwater.

With the recent interest in spread betting and on-line trading attracting more and more small punters to the market, I'm surprised that other magazines (e.g. the IC) haven't made themselves more attractive and readable in format.

their big tip last week was ZOO clearly enought said didnt see it tipped anywhere else good record on their tips much better than IC IMHO

IC are justly infamous for the diabolical performance of their tips. As is Dr Death (Watson-Mitchell) - is he still tipping for Shares?

If shares mag owns this site I'd suggest their journos start contributing to the BB and covering the stocks that most private investors own. On todays BB hardly any stock talked about appeared in the FTSE350.

This BB's great for penny share speculators though, lots of ideas and none of the usual ramp and deramp merchants.