This morning I received my daily email from the New York Times. Normally I just click through and read the stories that interest me from the email itself. Today I thought I would take a look at the 'electronic edition' which is available through a service called NewsStand. I found this out when I explored the possibility of downloading the historic November 5th, 2008 edition.
First of all I wanted to try a sample so I picked this weekend's edition of the paper. NewsStand does offer a huge number of publications, mostly for a fee of course but I'm always interested in how feasible it is to read traditional publications online. Back last year there was Mygazines.com which still appears to be around, but not for the purposes originally set up (now selling a technology to publish YOUR magazine online). In the past pdf files have been available for download and I've also had a look at Zinio.
My impression of NewsStand so far is inconclusive. The reader has a user interface which is not intuitive. I want to read the paper not learn how to use another reader. I downloaded the offline version but could not get the sample issue I had to open using it – maybe it's better? I can't say. Also the look and feel of the reader seemed rather dated which was disappointing.
I believe I could subscribe to the New York Times and use iBrowse to read it – this may be better than using NewsStand, but that will have to wait for another day.Given the wide range of publications using the NewsStand service it's difficult to ignore. But if the question after this mornings experiment is:
Will I pay $15-$20 for a month subscription to the New York Times or the Globe and Mail?
The answer has to be … No. Not yet anyway.
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