SH magazine's new website

A couple days ago we whined a bit about the fact that the website for 8Days/SH magazine had been neglected for several weeks. Now we know why. SH and their two-letter cousins HK (Hong Kong), I-S (Singapore) and BK (Burger King Bangkok) all have a new online home: asia-city.com.

Call us Scrooge, but we have to say this site is a disappointment. We like a lot of the content in SH -- like Jarrett Wrisley's weekly restaurant and bar industry gossip, for example -- and we'd love to be able to link to stories in the magazine on a regular basis. This site does not allow that. (That's Shanghai, while having magazine stories on its website, is just as hard to link to because of the way the site is organized. City Weekend has by far the best site of the bunch.)

Despite boasting "content provided by" the SH, HK, I-S and BK city mags, the only true content on asia-city.com is restaurant reviews from all cities (and you have to register with the site to view that). Yes, you can download PDF versions of the magazines, but that is clunky, lazy and not very user friendly.

On the bright side, the Tokyo Narita Airport has unlimited wireless internet for around US$5. And that's where we are right now. Said to us by an American seated next to us on the plane from Shanghai: "I think Shanghai out-Londons London now." Um, yeah.