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Mini Me rolls off the presses with a Web site

Roland Peter and July Huang take a look around the city with their magazine and Web site. PHOTO: JULES QUARTLY, TAIPEI TIMES

When it came to thinking of a name for a small what's-on? guide to Taipei, the first thought was to call it "weekly." That was scrapped because it sounded too puny. Then it was decided to publish every fortnight, hence the proposal "biweekly." That was binned because of its gay connotations. The name "14" (days) was toyed with but discarded because it souned too much like a teen magazine.

The deadline for publication was two days off and a printing mistake meant the four-page foldout zine was smaller than envisioned. Hence the name Mini 14, issue one of which rolled off the presses a couple of weeks ago to a generally favorable reaction.

If you haven't seen it yet (2,000 were printed for its first run and 4,000 were distributed last weekend for the second issue) it's a glossy, color publication that fits neatly in the pocket and lists club nights going on in Taipei, in addition to covering past and upcoming events with a few paragraphs and a photo.

Oddly, perhaps, the cover story for the first issue was about the Zurich techno street parade in August. The Taiwan angle on this story was that DJ @llen played there two years ago. The deeper logic, however, seemed to be that one of the two partners behind the publication is Swiss national and business school graduate, Roland Peter. Twenty-four-year-old July Huang (黃姝妍) majored in hotel management and gravitated toward editing, languages and lately the Internet.

Mini 14's recent lead story covers the Autumn Tiger Festival under the headline `One Night in Wulai.' There were five pictures from the event and about 220 words with a Chinese translation. On the Web site there are more words and a gallery of photos, which are pretty neat.

The kicker behind Mini 14 is a Web site that helps people make friends and maybe more. Sex sells, so it's at the heart of urbanpeople.net, the name of the Web site. Party previews, restaurant reviews, articles about events and life in Taipei all draw browsers to the homepage, from which you are guided to the membership site. Joining is relatively easy: supply a functioning e-mail and receive a password. Tick a box to indicate "I want to have fun." Then fill in a few profile details before attaching a picture if you so wish.

What you get is access to fellow members, or the people behind their pictures and tags. Theoretically you can find out where they are going out and meet them, because they can choose to say where and when through the incorporated instant messaging system. So far there are around 250 members, Peter said. Most of them are from Taipei and many of them know each other already, So, a small cyber-community has been formed, in which everyone agrees to have fun.

Peter said the idea was to plug into people who were surfing and looking for friends. But at the end of the day, he said, virtual talk is not as exciting as the real thing, meeting someone.

The magazine directs people to the Web site, Peter said. "A magazine is a one-way communication, a Web site is a two-way conversation. This is part of its functionality. This should be, at the end, a social thing."

It's also a commercial venture into the burgeoning scene of Internet-based contact sites that are particularly prevalent in Taiwan, one of the most wired country's in the world. Urbanpeople.net replicates the experience bilingually. But, like Mini Me, it has plans to grow , cover the rest of the country, and eventually, take over the world.

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