10 Great Media Sites: ECN

By Sean Callahan

The multimedia aspect of ECNmag.com, the website for Advantage Business Media's Electronic Component News, is right out in front on the home page. A box near the top of the page is tabbed “multimedia,” and it features videos, podcasts and webcasts produced by ECN's editorial team.

The home page also showcases a “Video of the Day” sponsored by Digi-Key Corp., an electronic components distributor. ECN's editors are expected to carry a video camera in their pocket and shoot, for example, interviews with exhibitors on show floors.

Speaking on the phone from the 2011 Electronic Distribution Show & Conference in Las Vegas, Alix Paultre, editorial director-design group, said, “We not only do videos and podcasts on the hard technology, we also have discussions on the market and where the technology is headed.”

ECNmag.com also produces a regular podcast called The Tinker's Toolbox, which mimics a radio talk show format. In a recent episode, Paultre interviewed Manish Gupta of Symmetricom on timing and synchronization.

But ECNmag.com's commitment to multimedia is perhaps best represented by its topic-specific landing pages, which provide a deep dive into such things as computing electronics. That particular page features a range of media—an aggregated news feed on the topic, new-product descriptions, audio podcasts, videos and whitepapers—providing comprehensive coverage.