The other goodies on offer include an animated thriller complete in 12 episodes, a completely printable literary classic, the world's top 10 advertisements, kitchen recipes, fashion and glamour tit-bits, news from Bollywood and Hollywood and a cartoon movie.

A multimedia magazine on CD-ROM, The Virtual Mahazine aims to offer to its users the complete reading experience by integrating audio, video and text all into one.

"The Virtual Mahazine caters to Indians from seven to 70 years old," says Mr Ashish Bhatia, director of Virtual Media Infotech Pvt. Ltd, the company that has launched the multimedia magazine. Mr Bhatia, who was earlier editor of PC Quest, explains, "The Mahazine contains infotainment for everyone, including women and children. The experience of such infotainment via a virtual magazine is all-round. For example, if you want to know about the works and life of famous music director A R Rahman, you can go through the text and simultaneously listen to 29 seconds of audio clips of all the songs the text talks about by clicking on them. You can also see 59 seconds of video clips of the movies from which the songs have been taken."

The audio clips are pegged at 29 seconds and the videos at 59 seconds in keeping with the maximum permissible limits under Indian copyright law. The Virtual Mahazine caters to different age groups as well as to varied interests. "For kids, who are more fun-loving and imaginative, we have a special Kids Zone, which has a cartoon movie, an interactive quiz, video games and an animated thriller," explains Mr Bhatia.

Women constitute the the largest chunk of leisure readers and for them, The Virtual Mahazine has a wide section, which includes fashion, cooking, news, cinema and music clippings. "You can print out our recipes," says Mr Bhatia.

"And the fashion section, with a video-aid, enables the viewer to experience what particular shades of lipstick or nail polish will look like. However, since Modi-Revlon is the sole sponsor of this particular section, we have only their products here."

The first issue of the monthly multimedia magazine was brought out in September this year. According to Mr Bhatia, the magazine will hit the stands in the first 10 days of each month. For just Rs 100 a month, The Virtual Mahazine is a good buy indeed.