Dr. Dobb's Journal June, 2004
Several readers have complained that they've recently received Dr. Dobb's Journal subscription renewal notices from a company called "Platinum Publishing Services," which bills itself as "an independent magazine clearinghouse agent." Let me make this perfectly clear: Platinum Publishing Services is not an agent for this magazine, and has no legitimate ties to it. Do not send the company any money for Dr. Dobb's Journal subscriptions.
Of course, part of the confusion is that Platinum Publishing Services operates under a bunch of different aliases, including I.C. Marketing, Publishers Services Exchange, Rabor Management, Lakeshore Publishing, and American Consumer Publishing Association, to name a few. You can find a more complete list of nom de plumes at Scientific American (http://www.sciam.com/page.cfm?section=subscriberalert), whose readers have also been bothered by the company. Likewise, Running Times magazine is warning its subscribers to beware as well (http://www.runningtimes.com/special/subalert.htm). Moreover, Publishers Services Exchange (or whatever it goes by) is reportedly under investigation by the Oregon Department of Justice and is (or has been) embroiled in nasty lawsuits with magazine publishers ranging from Time and Hunting & Fishing to Coin World.
To find out more about what the outfit is up to, it seemed fair to give them a hidey-ho. But when I tried calling the company, the corporate phone number turned out to be inoperable. I next did a "whois" on its domain name (http://www.acpai.com/) and dialed the number that popped up there; alas, it was disconnected. Finally, I resorted to the customer service number, which finally put me through to customer service. Remarkably, what I learned was that the company claims to be authorized to cash checks made out to "Dr. Dobb's Journal" (it is not), that the name of the company president couldn't be released ("for security reasons"), and that no one knew where the company's marketing department is located ("maybe somewhere in Texas"). Still, I did learn that I could subscribe to Dr. Dobb's Journal, but to get a special rate, I'd have to immediately commit via electronic fund transfer—paper checks not accepted.
The bottom line: Don't send this company any money for Dr. Dobb's Journal—checks, cash, credit cards, debit cards, or wooden nickels (on second thought, go ahead and send those wooden nickels). If you hear anything from the company, forward the information to me. We've already notified the Oregon Department of Justice and we've sent the company notices barring it from saying it is an agent for DDJ.
As for your subscription, if you have any questions, you drop can me a note. I may not know the answer to your question, but I do know who to ask.
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A few weeks ago, we held a reader roundtable (well, "reader rectangular table" would be more accurate) where I had the great pleasure to meet several people who've written for DDJ (Shehrzad Qureshi and John Kanalakis immediately come to mind, for instance) and with whom I've enjoyed chatting with online over the years. Participants made a lot of good suggestions on how we can make the magazine better and we've already started implementing some of their ideas (and no, the space allotted for this column is not going to be halved).
Still, the biggest surprise was that most of the folks around the table missed altogether the introduction of our special Windows/.NET supplement that kicked in with the April issue. I guess we didn't do a good job explaining it.
If you recall, we're publishing two versions of DDJ—one with extra Windows./NET coverage (see pages S1 through S16 in this issue), and one without. You pick the version you want and signing up for the at-no-extra-charge additional content is simple—just go to http://www.neodata.com/cmp/ddj.html. Starting with next month's July 2004 issue, you will only receive the extra articles if you ask for them. If you don't request it, what you'll likely be missing are articles on debugging .NET apps, building tamper-resistant .NET assemblies, and more. Again, if you have any questions, just drop me note.
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And speaking of subscriptions and questions—here's one for you. It's going on about a year now since we introduced downloadable PDF versions of DDJ, online archives, and a bunch of other stuff. So what do you think? Any suggestions as to how we can improve things? Any ideas on how we can make it less confusing? Anything you'd like us to do differently? We'd really like to hear from you so that we can better serve you. You know the routine—just drop me a note at jericksonddj.com.
Jonathan Erickson
editor-in-chief