The idea of a blog with podcast and newsletter is very attractive/interesting at least to me :)

why go virtual? still waiting for the book! in the meantime: coffee2go

iPhone? Small audience. Don't bother.

Twitter? What's twitter?

Newsletter? You had a newsletter set up long ago. So far in the MTF Newsletter Archive there is one from September 2004 and one from November 2004. What happened to the last four years? Sure, go ahead since it was part of the idea to begin with.

Blog? This is a great place to contact and interact with members. Use this. The forum was a spam magnet, and another blog would likely be the same.

Podcast? No, limited use and it seems other things could benefit the site more.

We are waiting for the book. Many of the members who were to have images in the book have moved on due to changing camera systems, frustration with site performance, or have died while waiting. Priority should be made on getting the long promised book published before other ideas are attempted.

Agree with Edwin (knowing that I've only been here a year now), AND, again, all the work we did on giving requirements/bug reports/etc to improve the site. This is more important to get this site "more user friendly" - get it right, before attempt new stuff. My 2 cents.

Indeed! It was so long ago and has been so delayed that i forgot about the MFT Book! Michael and Edwin are right before we can even think about other stuff we should concentrate on the book and make it a tribute not only to this community in general but those who cannot share it with us but gave us so much. What happened to the Book? What's the main problem with it?

Not sure what a podcast would look or sound like but I podcast a lot so would be interested. I already view MFT a lot on a wireless enabled Nokia phone but it's no substitute for a large screen when trying to view photographs - just helps to keep me up to date and fill some empty moments in my day. I actually think it's already a pretty good example of social networking but closer to the original sense of the word than to myspace or similar. To be honest, I think your target audience is a bit too old for it to really take off successfully (and I include myself in that at a youthful 46).

Yes, why not? Like Adrian, I link into MFT occasionally on my phone and I like it. Anything that improves access and diversity of access to MFT is a good idea imho. If you want to do it, then go for it. Nothing wrong with choice is there? Those that don't want to avail of it need not do so.

Many thanks for teasing out new ideas for improving MFT access and choice of access.

I'm with those who consider there is too much unfinished business outstanding to contemplate other things (Book, site improvements). For me a user friendly and responsive site with quality participation by members is more important than esoteric bells and whistles. The Book seems to be a vain hope.

Titanic

Sad, true and utterly hilarious Rex.

As an iPhone owner (who knows about quite a few MFT members with iPhones!) I would be interested in an iPhone MFT-version but maybe not to look at the images, but more in the shape of a news-stream, blog, or something like that.

MFT-Twitter sounds very interesting as well... I like the basic Twitter idea but it will be much more fun when coupled to a "community" like MFT.

The next few years the internet will inevitably become more and more mobile, with simpler sites (or better: simple sister-sites of complex sites) and more and more content adapted for smaller screens... it's an interesting development I think, because a lot of the simplicity has vanished over the last few years... smaller screens will bring that back a bit. Some iPhone news-sites are actually nicer to read than the original newssites, because of this simplicity.

check for yourself:

and the specially-for-iphone interface:

So yeah, I read the headlines on the couch, on my iPhone... it's better.

Site works fine on iPhone already of wifi