As I did last year — read it here — this is my list of favorite media for the year, which is basically me telling you what I obsessed over the most in 2011 (as far as I can remember, since it’s usually the case that some terrific things get forgotten by the end of the year). It’s not a “best of” list, I did not sample everything that came out this year, this is just something that I put together to remember what it was that I liked in a year, and I figure it can also act as a guide for some people who are looking for recommendations in various categories. I choose five items for each medium, which I list alphabetically (it’s rare that I can really choose one thing over the other), and then include a few honorable mentions.

Again, I don’t include books since I unfortunately don’t read enough of them (the vast majority of my reading time goes to the web, magazines, and comics). 

Favorite Games
This category is definitely one where I can choose an absolute favorite, and that would be Forza 4. Not only is it the game that I’ve spent the most time playing, I’ve become obsessed with it, and it turned me into a huge fan of the Top Gear TV series (see below). For the platform, I only list the one that I played the game on.

• Forza 4 (Xbox 360)
• Jamestown: Legend of the Lost Colony (Mac)
• L.A. Noire (PS3)
• Portal 2 (Xbox 360)
• Sideway: New York (PSN)
• Honorable Mentions: Back to the Future: The Game (Mac), Cave Story+ (Mac), Dead Space 2 (PS3), Dragon Age II (PS3), Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes (PSN), Pinball FX 2 (the Marvel tables, XBLA), Saint’s Row: The Third (Xbox 360), Uncharted 3 (PS3)

Favorite Games (iOS)
As with last year, I’ve separated the iOS games, because as much as I do enjoy playing games on my iPhone and iPad, I’m afraid that for the most part they still would not fare well against my console selections. 

• Assassin’s Creed Recollection
• Bang!
• Elder Sign
• Kard Combat
• Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP
• Honorable Mentions: Aquaria, Bug Princess, Jetpack Joyride, Neuroshima Hex, Shadow Era

Favorite Magazine Apps
Last year I didn’t include a magazine category because I felt like it would have been too difficult to narrow it down to five — and you can always follow my other site, The Magaziner, to see what I like in terms of magazines — but this year I do feel like these are the ones that I look forward to reading the most (and yes, it’s all digital, I don’t read much print these days). I should also add that these are not necessarily what I feel are the best magazines apps in terms of innovation and execution, but rather the ones I like because of content. I included the Izneo app, a digital platform mostly for French comics, because through I buy the weekly Le journal de Spirou.

• Bloomberg Businessweek
• Izneo
• Letter to Jane
• SPIN Play
• The New Yorker
• Honorable Mentions: GQ, Wired

Favorite TV Shows
Again this year, it’s the category I have a tough time keeping short, since there are quite a few series I really do enjoy. The most conspicuous addition, and to be honest, the series I enjoy watching the most these days, is Top Gear, and from the newest season I’ve been going back through seasons to watch more. I’ve never considered myself a car guy, or been particularly obsessed with cars, but there’s something about the way the show is filmed, and the humor found throughout, that has completely sucked me in — here’s a post I wrote a few months ago about all of this. You’ll also notice Glee, which I only started watching this fall — I found myself immediately addicted, rushing through the first 2 seasons and eventually getting caught up. What can I say, it makes me happy watching it. 

• Breaking Bad
• Game of Thrones
• Glee
• Louie
• Top Gear
• Honorable Mentions: Boardwalk Empire, Bored to Death, Community, Curb Your Enthusiasm, How to Make it in America, Justified, Luther, New Girl, Parks & Recreation, Sons of Anarchy

Favorite Movies
Since there are many films that haven’t reached digital/video yet, there’s still a lot I haven’t seen (like all the big December releases). I think I cheat a bit with some of the picks as well, as some of the honorable mentions may have been released in 2010. Most telling though is that my top 5 was composed of 4 documentaries before I saw the Tintin film today (and there are more in my honorable mentions). 

• Beats Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest
• Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop
• Drive
• Senna
• The Adventures of Tintin
• Honorable Mentions: Bill Cunningham New York, Bridesmaids, Crazy, Stupid, Love, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, Lemmy, Moneyball, Source Code

Favorite Albums
I had a really tough time here narrowing it down to five, and so many of the honorable mentions are probably all to be considered a “6.” Also, I will admit that the album that I really have enjoyed the most this year is Q-Tip’s The Renaissance, which came out in 2008 (but that I got into after watching the Tribe Called Quest documentary). I will do special episodes of the Codex and play all of this music (in this category, and the next).

• Days (Real Estate)
• James Blake (James Blake)
• Strange Mercy (St. Vincent)
• The Year of Hibernation (Youth Lagoon)
• Undun (The Roots)
• Honorable Mentions: David Comes to Life (Fucked Up), Let England Shake (PJ Harvey), Mirror Traffic (Stephen Malkmus), Shangri-La (YACHT), Torches (Foster the People), Underneath the Pine (Toro Y Moi), Wild Flag (Wild Flag)

Favorite Tracks
It wasn’t as easy to come up with this list as last year, since I’m a 100% Spotify user these days — last year I mostly looked at the play count in iTunes. But to help narrow it down I looked through the playlists of all of my Codex episodes, and came up with the following. 

• “England” (PJ Harvey)
• “Our Hearts Are Wrong” (Jessica Lea Mayfield)
• “Ravan” (Brasstronaut)
• “Redford (For Yia-Yia & Pappou)” (The Roots)
• “Video Games” (Lana Del Ray)
• Honorable Mentions: ”Audio, Video, Disco” (Justice), “Civilization” (Justice), ”Please Ask for Help” (Telekinesis), ”Tada no Tomodachi” (Salyu x Salyu), ”The Noose of Jah City” (King Krule)

Favorite Comics
I always find it difficult to really remember my fave reads of the year, but here are a few that I quite enjoyed. Also, I will say that my most enjoyable comics-related reading this year was going through the entire Tintin series, something I hadn’t done in years (probably in 2 decades). 

• Batman, Inc.
• Daytripper
• FF/Fantastic Four
• Mister Wonderful: A Love Story
• Northlanders
• Honorable Mentions: The Walking Dead, Punisher Max

Let me point you to a new post on The Magaziner that helps explain why you should go and support this Kickstarter campaign to help finance a fourth issue of Letter to Jane on iPad. Tim’s a friend of mine, and he’s been doing some amazing work in terms of editorial publishing on iPad — first with his independent magazine called Letter to Jane, and then by collaborating on the third issue of Port magazine. I really want to see this fourth issue happen, so please consider chipping in a few shekels — and for $200, he’ll even give you the source code.

And while I’m talking about magazines, let me also recommend you pick up the new issue of Gym Class Magazine (No. 8), which not only includes a piece by yours truly, but is basically a dream team issue with contributions by a bevvy of magazine freaks (and I of course use that last word in the most positive of sense). You’ll find it in physical shops, but the easiest way to get your hands on it is to order it online from the GCM Shop. Big thanks to Steven for letting me be a part of this issue.

I have this other little site called The Magaziner where I obsess over magazines. For the past few months I took a break from writing up any new reviews (sticking mostly to news items and covering the occasional new releases), but I’ve found a way to make the review process a bit easier (by adopting a template, based on something my friend Andrew Losowsky had been developing for a site that never launched). The first one up is for what I’d say is my favorite iPad magazine, SPIN Play.

Just over a week ago I attended the launch party for the second issue of TOO MUCH magazine, held at the United Bamboo store (in the building’s event space) in Daikanyama. TOO MUCH is of course the follow-up to OK FRED magazine, and is still helmed by the editorial duo of Yoshi Tsujimura and Audrey Fondecave (my fellow Radio OK Fred podcasters). The party doubled as an exhibition based on a feature written by another good friend, Ian Lynam, of which you can see more here. You can buy a 2-issue subscription to TOO MUCH (it’s published twice-annually) here.

After the reception, we walked down towards Nakameguro to get some drinks at Just Another Space, which is a rather funky spot — and hey, there’s ping-pong table there too.

Also, if you’re curious as to the effect I’m putting on these photos (which I also did for the haircut post), I’m using a series of actions in Photoshop that replicate the filters found in Instagram — in each case, I’ve applied “Hefe,” followed by “Brannan.” You can download them here (and thank you Nick Chester for the tip on this).

As you’ll notice if you visit SNOW Magazine right now, I’ve decided to put the site on indefinite hiatus. I’ve been quite embarrassed by the lack of updates to the site over the last few months, and I think it’s just better to have it go on leave for a while, instead of the lame life support I’ve had it on.

Why the lack of love for the site? I just haven’t really had the time to focus on it like I’d want, and to be fair, I’ve been much more passionate about what I’m covering on The Magaziner — and the Codex podcast — and I think it’s best that I just let myself embrace those things, instead of continually feeling like I should try to come up with something to write about on SNOW, and feeling stressed about it. In the end, it’ll be for the better for everyone, as it frees me up to do more casual writing here, and to continue my exploration of how the magazine landscape is shaping up as it embraces new digital platforms.

As for SNOW Magazine, I’ll just say that it’s going away for now, with no definite plans on when it will be back, or even in what form. I don’t think I was ever really able to do what I wanted to do with SNOW, and I think — and I’m hoping — that what I’m doing over at The Magaziner will eventually inform what the next stage will be. And yes, I’m already thinking — and it’s what, in the end, I’ve really wanted to do — that this next stage or new form will be more publication-like, as in regularly released packages of curated ideas and stories (some people call these magazines).

Oh, and I will eventually reinstate access to the archives.

I gotta say I’m getting a kick out of this: In the past 24 hours I conceived of a site, a name, bought the domain, got it working, installed WordPress, imported posts from this site, found a theme that I modded to my liking, and have now launched my latest project, something I’m calling The Magaziner. What’s a magaziner you ask? Here’s my made-up answer:

We hereby define a new term, that of the magaziner, described as a person who exerts an unhealthy amount of love for all things magazine. The Magaziner is a site that mostly focuses on the intersection between magazines and the digital frontier, and what it means for the medium. This does not preclude the inclusion of a healthy amount of print love.

It all started last night when I was reading a comment on Facebook by Craig Mod, who suggested that all of the magazine-related coverage I’ve been doing over the past couple of months is getting lost within the rest of what I post here. I think he made a good point — and god knows I have a lot of respect and admiration for what he’s accomplished over the past year or so — and so I decided to launch a new site that would be exclusively for all of the magazine stuff. Expect the same kind of coverage you’ve been seeing here — commentary, news, new release announcements, reviews — that weighs heavily on the emerging digital side of the magazine publishing industry, something I’m quite passionate about (although I do still love my lovely print publications, thank you very much).

So this site returns to being a hub for news on me and all of my various projects, which on top of The Magaziner includes Codex, my new weekly music podcast, Radio OK Fred, SNOW Magazine, PauseTalk, and other fun stuff. Hope you’ll continue to follow what I’m up to here, and if you really enjoyed the magazine coverage, then please head on over to The Magaziner — and you can of course subscribe to an RSS feed. There’s a Twitter account too (@the_magaziner) that I’ll be using to post magazine-related news as well.

Oh, and one more thing about The Magaziner, please consider this a beta version of the site. As I said at the top of this post, it all came together rather fast, so over the coming weeks I’m sure I’ll be changing things here and there, fixing things I missed, and maybe coming up with new features or sections to add.

To produce? Maybe for the content itself (although for the most part, content is shared between the two), but one of the biggest selling points for going digital is to save on printing costs and distribution. I do still have problems with some of the points this piece from Forbes brings up though on the content production side of things. I get that producing videos for a digital edition adds costs, but the idea that including more photos in the digital edition also raises costs is ridiculous — we’re just getting to see more from a shoot, the parts that usually end up on the cutting room floor.

The question of bandwidth could be an issue, but really, is there actually an alternative to releasing magazines for the iPad than through the iTunes App Store? The article gives Zinio as an example, suggesting that all magazines sold through that device are doing it through its own servers. Is Apple really not getting any cut from sales that are done through the iPad app though? If so, then I guess we can expect to see the release of a Conde Nast (or Time, Inc., etc.) app, that will house all of its magazines.

Update: A reader suggests that the point about the photos is not so ridiculous, considering that most photographers are paid for each photo published. I assumed they were paid for the shoots.

Well this is disappointing. One of the things I was most looking forward to with the 4.2 iOS firmware update for iPad was the addition of multitasking, and therefore the ability to download stuff — like gigantic issues of Wired — in the background. Sorry folks, switching to another app after you start the download simply pauses it, waiting for you to return. Come on Wired, fix this. And if you’re wondering, this month’s issue clocks in at 351MB, so we’re on a downward trend in terms of size at least.

Jeremy attended — and participated in — last week’s “Edit 2010” magazine publishing event in Warsaw, and includes a nice round-up of what was covered, especially on the Adobe digital tools front.

Pictured, an earlier issue of Gym Class Magazine that was on display as part of a magazine exhibition. Make sure to pick up the latest issue!

Last night marked the official launch of TOO MUCH magazine at HAPPA gallery in Nakameguro, and man was it ever fun. Such a terrific gathering of people, and everyone seemed really happy to see Editions OK FRED finally be in the magazine business again.

Although it still doesn’t appear to be for sale online, it should be soon enough, and I’m sure you’ll be spotting it in Tokyo’s better bookstores. At the event they were also selling a separate pamphlet that features Japanese translations of all the articles (remember, unlike the bilingual OK FRED magazine, TOO MUCH is English-only).

Above, the two creators of the magazine, Ay2 and Yoshi (and of course, my fellow Radio OK FRED co-hosts), and just behind the glass you see Cameron as well, who edited the issue.

I’ve been meaning to do a write-up on The Times‘ iPad version of its monthly Eureka science magazine for way too long now, and please don’t think that it’s because I don’t think it’s good. In fact — and as Jeremy also quite plainly stated in his review — quite the contrary, as I think it’s one of the best iPad magazine releases so far.

What’s especially impressive is that I find this magazine to be interesting even though I normally would not be inclined to pick up a magazine about science. But Eureka on iPad does so many cool things with the digital format that it’s worth picking up for that fact alone — and it’s ridiculous not too, since it’s also priced at a mere $1.

It all kicks off with a graphically pleasing table of contents that lets you quickly zoom into the different sections of the magazine, using an atomic structure-like layout that suits the theme perfectly. You can also move around to different sections with a pop-up guide on the bottom, which is similar to the ones used in the Times iPad app, but with a graphical touch up.

It also does an amazing job of using imagery to enhance articles, and as with more and more iPad magazines these days (and to be fair, it was something I first saw in the Times app), it uses the landscape mode for extra content, like detailed slideshows and the like. I wonder why so many UK-based publications are doing this, but so far it’s not really happening on the US side.

Without going into too many details, let’s just say that you’ll find beautiful layouts and fun interactive features throughout, and so it’s well worth picking for a look at what a true graphic-heavy iPad magazine can look like (as opposed to the farce that is the New York Magazine app). Sure, there are still certain issues — still no text manipulation, and no sharing tools — but there’s still a lot to like, and as I said earlier, at $1 you can certainly check it out for yourself.

Remember when there was a lot of ruckus around Apple’s decision to start refusing apps they deemed too sexy for the App Store? Well, now it’s hitting iPad editions of mainstream magazines, as it appears that the reason it’s taken so long for the latest issue of Esquire to come out on iPad — the “Sexiest Woman Alive 2010″ issue — is because of said sexiness. The inclusion of this video of Minka Kelly was too hot for Apple?

The issue is now out on the App Store, but no word on what was censored or removed in order to get it approved. Certainly doesn’t make me want to get it (nevermind that I wouldn’t pick it up anyway, since I still think $5 is too much of an asking price). (via @twitsplosion)

Beautiful cover for the new issue of Little White Lies, which of course is the Tron: Legacy issue — and here’s also a gallery of every cover. Don’t know Little White Lies? It’s by far the best movie magazine out there, with each issue focusing on one movie. You can even read issues for free through Issuu, but I’d happily pay for a nice iPad edition.

One thing that has been bugging me though is that it changed its logo recently, and although everyone seems to celebrate this change, I have to say I preferred the old one.

As I teased last week, Gym Class Magazine 07 is now out, and can be purchased online from the GCM online shop. Lots of great content in this issue, including a terrific cover story on George Lois, and a short interview by me with composer Shigeru Umebayashi. Steven — the man behind the magazine — even created a nice little video (above) to show off some of it.