Blio e-reader software hands-on

A different eReading related offering from CES - eReading Software for your PC. A change after seeing so many eReaders announced.

This software is available for buying, organizing and reading your eBook content on PC and Mac.
Interesting to link in additional content from the web, which seems nicely integrated into the "book".

I don't think such software can be built only on having a nice UI and a "snazzy" (as Engadget put it) 3D reading mode, with animated page turns. Those gimmicks can quickly ware off, and even get in the way of really "getting into your book". Personally, I'd go for the "invisible user interface" approach, where you don't even realize there IS a user interface, just a book which you quickly dive into.

The utility of this software, over either using nothing, or the PC software that comes with an eReader you buy will depend a lot on the type of reading you do and where it will be done.

Reading on a laptop (which I have tried) is subject to all my usual gripes:

• power up time
• form factor, keyboard in the way
• heat generated
• size and weight
• short battery life, both while reading and in any "fast-boot sleep state"

One area where a PC can excel at the moment is in showing high-color, interactive material, where it ceases to be an eBook and becomes something new. If the right content is produced to take advantage of this, and the UI works, then it could lead to new types of "books", reading and education.

With recent and expected developments in display technologies (PixelQi, Mirasol, LiquaVista) we may see that ability coming to eReaders too, or a convergence between eReaders and tablets and PMPs and laptops - depending on how you prefer to view that.

Off one thing going for a PC, is the fact that you maybe carrying it anyway! With the small additional weight new eReaders represent, I take my eReader anyway - PC or not, just like I'd take a paper book - PC or not.

From Engadget coverage at http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/06/blio-e-reader-software-hands-on/ (short video included)

Amazon's iPhone eBook Business

I've finally gotten some time to comment on the recent moves by Amazon to provide eBook reading and access to their eBook content on the iPhone/iTouch platform.

Thanks to readers for pointers to these articles on the subject

• Yahoo News Article
• PCPro Article

Amazon now provide a free iPhone application  for eBook purchase/download/reading. It's available from Apple's iPhone App Store. 

I see this as a great move for Amazon, as it will drive content purchases for Kindle and non-Kindle users alike. Although details of it are still missing. e.g. Do you need a Kindle/Kindle-account or anyone can sign-up?

People have asked me about the "competition" in eReading between iPhone and similar devices and eBook readers. I don't see them as directly as competitive, but as complementary devices. 

Often have your phone and some time to kill. When you have more time and access to your Kindle, it provides a better reading experience.

I think Amazon have done a smart thing by embracing the iPhone and not considering it as direct  competition to the Kindle.

It's also a smart defensive and growth move.

Defensive: The Kindle business seems to be going just fine for now, but if it turned out to not be the preferred reading device/experience long-term, this move puts Amazon right in the game on the leading candidate for an alternative platform - the iPhone. Also, if Apple ever comes out with anything bigger along the lines of the iPhone (like the much-rumored iPhone internet tablet) then they will be right there. If that does happen we might see some direct Apple-Amazon competition. This move clearly states Amazon's intentions and let's Apple know they'll be a fight for content on such a platform.

Growth: The market for the Kindle solution is limited, with plenty of people not wanting another device, and prefering the iPhone alone. If Amazon stuck to just selling content to Kindle users (ignoring MobiPocket, an Amazon business, for the moment) they would be missing a lot of content sales, the part of the business with the best margins.

While the rest of the world wait for the Kindle outside of the US, this also opens Amazon's content store to all those iPhone users world-wide, leveraging Apple's efforts to get the carrier agreements in place. Those agreements are something Amazon will have to replicate each time it brings the Kindle, with it's Whispernet delivery service, to a new country.

With 240,000 books in Amazon's catalog (and newspapers and magazines also) it comes straight in as great competition to other iPhone eReading solutions (which I've covered here in previous posts). I haven't seen much on the reading software itself yet, so I'll be looking to see how it shapes up. No doubt they will try and make it as similar in operation to the Kindle as possible.

Reading the same content between/across multiple devices does introduce the problem of keeping your reading in sync. Especially when the devices have different sized displays and features to adjust text size and hence pagination. Due to these, a user can't just remember a page number and jump to it on the other device as the page number for the same point in the book will be will be different on each device.

In texts with long sections or chapters that can be a pain, and have you searching through them for paragraphs you recognize until you find where you left off on the other device.

I'd touched on this useful feature in previous posts and glad to see it supported.

Now, we need to take a look at the reading software itself, but that's for a future post.

New Adobe PDF and .epub SDK gains vendors support

A Yahoo article picks up on this technology announcement from Adobe of a new PDF and .EPUB software SDK release and agreements in the mobile and eBook reader space:

"In support of the new Adobe Reader Mobile SDK, a number of companies announced plans to ship devices or applications in 2009 that integrate the new Adobe technology, including Bookeen, iRex Technologies, Lexcycle, Plastic Logic, Polymer Vision Ltd., and Spring Design. The Adobe Reader Mobile engine is already integrated into the groundbreaking Reader Digital Book™ by Sony."

SONY are amount the vendors announcing support for it (the Sony Reader was one of the first eBook reader devices to support PDF with software from Adobe, not other sources):

“With support for reflowable PDF and the new EPUB format, we are able to deliver richer reading experiences to digital book lovers,” said Steve Haber, president, Digital Reading Business Division, Sony Electronics. “The Reader ships with support for Adobe Reader Mobile SDK today and allows consumers to acquire eBooks from a variety of sources, including public libraries. Our goal is to foster an open content environment that enables our customers to maximize the use and enjoyment of their Readers.”

iRex and Adobe have also made a subsequent announcement.There is an Adobe Press Release and iRex also publish on their i-to-i blog :

"iRex has reached an agreement with Adobe to license new PDF technology and EPUB file format plus Adobe’s content protection technology for the iRex Digital Reader 1000 series.

Enabling the iRex DR1000 to offer reflowable PDF technology, allowing text to adopt automatically to the screen size, thereby preserving layout integrity and enhancing the reading experience. In addition it will also support the EPUB file format, an XML based eBook standard which already has broad support from the publishing industry and is expected to accelerate the availability of eBook content.

Both the PDF and EPUB support will become available through a software release scheduled in quarter 2 2009, more details will follow later."

We may see it ship in READIUS, whenever that ships!! Via Lexcycle (maker of Stanza reader software) you may also see it creep into iPhone versions of their reading application?

The theory of re-flowable PDF is fine, but the practise is somewhat more complex and less hopeful. There are not many good tools to create re-flowable PDF and not many reflowable PDFs have been or are being generated. The majority of PDF files that you may find out there or can generate yourself will probably NOT be reflowable.

If we have to rely on publishers of professional content to generate re-flowable articles and books then it maybe better for them to just publish directly in .Epub format?

One advantage of publishing in PDF is that you have a LOT of desktop computers with PDF reading software already installed - something which won't happen overnight for .Epub formats. So, if its useful to read across eBook reader and PC/Mac platforms then PDF maybe a good way to go, and maybe more so for internal Enterprise documents that published material.

Reflowable PDF may be a good compromise for certain types of professionally published materials, like Newspapers and Magazines. If you have a large screen or PC then viewing the entire page or spread in the original layout is advantageous, but then to zoom in and read a specific article, or to read on a small screen (mobile) device, the re-flowing ability will make that more comfortable and reduce the need to zoom and pan constantly across a page or column as it can be adapted to the current screen/view.

A Tale of two eReaders

Here is a follow-up to yesterday's post about Walt Mossberg's coverage of new eBook readers for the iPhone, a short video interview with him about them and how they compare with the Amazon Kindle.

Walt Mossberg on newer eBook offers on the iPod Touch / iPhone

In previous posts I've commented on a few of the recent eBook reading software applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch (Stanza, eReader, etc).

At the Wall Street Journal on-line, personal technology columnist Walt Mossberg discusses a couple of recent additions to those offerings.

The first is "Shortcovers" from Indigo, a Canadian book selling company. It will be available soon (maybe by the time you read this) on the AppStore and will give you the first chapter free and then allow you to buy buy chapter by chapter, or specific chapters of books (for around $0.99 per chapter) or to buy the whole book in eBook format, or to buy the book in paper format. Sounds like the software has some interesting features which I'll check out and cover in a future post.

The second is call "Iceberg" now on AppStore. It has few titles at the start but they will be working hard to increase the number of titles available on it.



If you prefer to "read" about the subject (and not watch a video) then you can read Mossberg's column article on the subject.

It seems like the battle of "Convenience" vs. "Better reading experience" is served. Fight!

Direct download your Stanza eBooks to your Apple iPhone or iPod Touch

Over here at TeleRead forums they explore the direct download of eBook content to the iPhone or iPod touch for the Stanza eBook reading software.

I've commented on the Stanza eBook reading software for iPhone/iPod Touch previously in these posts:-

• Nifty new ebook reading apps for iPhone/iPod Touch
• Half a million downloads of Stanza eReading software for eBooks on Apple iPhone
• eReader eBook reading software for iPhone and iPod Touch

The news is though that now you can download content to read directly to the device, from the device, from the BooksOnBoard web at least when downloadign non-DRM-ed epub formatted content.

If there are any readers who have done that, then please share your experiences by submitting a comment to this post.

eReader eBook reading software for iPhone and iPod Touch

eReader is another eBook reading application for the iPhone and iPod Touch devices.

You can see a 10minute demo video of their v1.0 release (from July 2008) here, or embedded below:

Getting the application
The application is downloaded to the iPhone from the Apple AppStore as for other applications.

Getting Content
eBooks can be purchased from major publishers (at the moment eReader themselves and Fictionwise), although they say they will be adding more sources shortly.

Books are kept on your eReader web account, even if you have deleted your local copy from your iPhone or you have not yet downloaded it to your device.

From the UI you can go to your eReader account (with a username and password login) and then select books from there to (re-)download into the device memory.

You can request multiple downloads in parallel, and it advises you when they are completed.

Premium content requires an unlock code on download, although they do "cache" them to save re-entry.

For purchases done via the device the credit card number configured on your eReader account is used.

At the time of the video (July) they state they have more than fifty thousand titles available, which is more than some eBook reader platforms.

Usage
The app has a "bookshelf" inside which is nothing more than the books on the device itself, as opposed to the books you own or available from the web.

Page turning is the intuitive, and rapidly becoming ubiquitous on the iPhone, "swipe to turn".
I didn't see demo-ed a simple "tap to turn" option that exists in Stanza or "Classics", the previous iPhone readers I've covered, but I hope they have included it.

Good features included are:-

• supports landscape format
• dictionary integration. A downloaded dictionary (of which there can be multiple) works across different books. Just press and hold to see dictionary entry for a word.
• font size control.
  

and they state they are planning improvements in the number of sources of content and user interface and collection browsing/filtering, some of which maybe already in the 1.3 release now available

Summary
eReader seems like another well done eReading application for the iPhone platform, with more than some others have in back-end systems and available content.

These eReading applications for iPhone are following Apple guidelines and UI styles and doing a nice job of user interaction and graphics.

As a result they are already trending to convergence, with not a lot of difference between them!

The difference will be in the availability of books from the internet, pricing and integration with other possible reading devices and services.

Half a million downloads Stanza eReading software for eBooks on Apple iPhone

Apparently, the Stanze eReading software from Lexcycle for the iPhone has been very successful, with already over 500,000 downloads.

The iPhone reader application is available on the Apple iPhone AppStore and the desktop/laptop eBook software for PC or Mac is available from this section of the Lexcycle web.

The fact it is free is obviously a factor, but it does indicate the level of interest or intrigue there is about being able to read books (and other material) on the iPhone/iPod Touch platforms.

If you want to see it working in a demo, you can do so in a number of movie formats at the Lexcycle web site, here.

Among other features it does seem to have a lot of configurations options for the reading appearance, allowing you finicky readers to see your contents just as you like it.

It's available in twelve different languages and has users in more than 50 countries, aparently.
Any users out there amongst you who can give a hands-on assessment.

The Stanza Online Catalog includes over 40,000 book and other items, “in more than 20 languages.”

It can display files in the standard ePub format, and have integrated a number of web sources for books, such as Feedbooks and others.

iRex DR1000 eBook reader community development kicks in

Over at the iRex company blog you can read in this post that explains how just after a week of them releasing their full-source-code to the open source community, they have seen the first "community developed" application (FBReader) released for the DR1000 eBook reader.

iRex are pushing a radically different model for their software platform with their recent open sourcing of their code, and it will be interesting to see:-

• how many, and which, applications get developed outside of iRex
• how iRex will handle rolling some of them back into the core platform they release or manage
  
• how they affect the iRex Illiad reading experience, if you have many different applications on it with different user interaction models, layouts etc.
• will it make anyone else consider taking this route? I can't see Sony doing it somehow.

Watch this space and I'll inform of developments.

Nifty new eBook reading apps for iPhone/iPod Touch

This article on AppleInsider covers a new eBook reading application for iPhone called "Classics" to add to existing ones like "Stanza" and"eReader" which are available from the iPhone's App Store.

As it's name suggests it's targetted at Classic content, digitized and made available by Project Gutenberg, after some clean-up and cover design by these guys.

"Classic", rightly or wrongly in this space is becoming a synonym for "Out of copyright, and free". The app costs $2.99 at the Apple App Store.

From the available screen shots at AppleInside and their own web (http://classicsapp.com/) they seem to have done a nice job on the aesthetics front, which was much needed for Gutenberg content in my mind.

I won't re-write the original AppleInside article to check it out, but just to show one more image of how they have taken a detailed and subtle approach to the content's appearance and page turning.

Whether those are the right design decisions to have taken from a readability and usability point of view, or not, I'll leave to experts to debate. But you have to admit they've done a "nice" job of what they set out to do. This attention to detail and presentation is also reflected in their web.

I'd welcome comments where from anyone who either reads regularly (or a lot) on the iPhone or who has tried this application.

Apple iPhone eBook reader update

Original Post from August 11th, 2008.

In this previous post I discussed a program for reading eBooks on your iPhone (withing which I include the iPod Touch via Wi-Fi).

Now new iPhone firmware has (probably temporarily) nixed that application - but this article from the Wired blog finds a more than acceptable replacement that connects to the excellent FeedBooks online store of free eBooks and provides what sounds like a pretty nice iTunes/Kindle-like experience (if you get onto the internet first via 3G or Wi-Fi).

P.S. Despite the sentiment (that I can share) of George Orwell, "Homage to Catalonia" is not his greatest book, or that great a read in my opinion.

eBook reader on the iPhone

Original Post from March 10th 2008.

Here on the Teleread forum is an update on the plans of Zachary Brewster-Geisz who wrote the Books.app reader (open source, GPL) for jailbroken iPhones. The article is based on an interview with him (here) at the "iPhone world" blog.

It's a fairly simple (but it should be, no?) reader application for iPhone (and I assume iPod Touch) that currently takes books in TXT and HTML formats only.

It will be interesting to see if the recent SDK & Developer program & App Store announcements from Apple will have it, or improved versions of it, appearing as an official application on the App Store in the future. Based on it's Open Source roots and the motives of the author, I'd expect it to be a free app on the App store.

That (together with some work on the new formats and some Mac OX X and/or Windows converters) could cause a surge of activity among people creating (or making available!) free content. Alongside all those options for Palm, Sony, iRex etc on content webs we may see iPhone appearing.

Implementing .epub is probably a bit of a larger task than the author is currently tackling, but there are other open source implementations underway, and so we may see that appear as an option.

I'd be surprised if Adobe is not readying Adobe Reader, Digital Editions and .epub reading capability for the iPhone, not to mention Apple itself....

The opening up (in a way) of the iPhone as a development platform will I expect engender a whole series of apps for it in this general area, and then we'll see how they survive, merge, die or thrive and which ones (and formats) come out on top.

eBook reading on your Apple iPhone or iPod Touch?

Original Post from September 29th 2007.

Do you wish for an eBook reading app for your iPhone?
This reader does and spent the time to create the mock-ups, which he posted here on MacRumors.com as part of his wishlist of applications for his iPhone.

See these nice mock-ups of the UI on the iPhone.

Somehow I suspect that Apple would work on his #2 wishlist entry "iTunes Store for iPhone" before getting to eBooks (I've never understood why Apple haven't done this, and remove the PC/Mac centricity from the whole music purchase thing and make your account on iTunes the center of things...)

But who knows, I could be surprised.
Many commenters on his post hate his other ideas, but no comments on the eBook idea at this time.
I'd take bets that before too long we'll see a newsreading app on the iPhone, and after that maybe for other textual material like books - but in that order.

Well, since I wrote that (and forgot to post it) we've seen the introduction of the iTunes Wi-Fi Music store for iPod Touch and iPhone which now allows you to purchase digital music directly from those devices when connected via Wi-Fi (including picking up your Latte at Starbucks). They've kept it PC/Mac centric though with that music being "synched-back" to your PC/Mac when later connected.

The use of Wi-Fi, not EDGE or another data connection, avoids Apple having to have an agreement on the content purchase with the Telcos. Presumably it was easier to get a good deal with Starbucks than with ATT Wireless for music download?

So, if there are people out there who read books on their mobile phones (I'm always amazed by that, but there's plenty of blog entries and comments from people who do...) then presumably the iPhone/iPod Touch with the bigger and brighter screen will make a better reading device for those users?

That would be especially true for news reading, and not a long novel, and so I stand by my comments above that someone will work with Apple to provide a news reader on the iPhone. Google with Google News? Reuters or another agency?

I suspect that Jobs is making overtures to the New York Times with iPhone often having images of the NYT on it in photos, adverts, etc. Just like he often plays Beatles songs in his keynote speeches, while in negotiations to sell the Beatles music catalog on iTunes.

So I'll predict that the NYT will be the first newspaper we see on the iPhone. :-)

New York Times Reader - success & review

Original Post from June 19th 2007

Install and Set-up
Eventually I was able to get the New York Times reader software to work.
They have (for me) a confusing / troublesome sign-up process that confuses Member ID, Name and e-mail and also seems to fail occasionally.
I can’t get it to work thru firewall/proxies.
After registry, you need to also “activate” your 30-day free-trial on the web using the “green button”, which was not obvious.
Initially I couldn’t see any Help link or menu and no README was shown on install.

After starting, it seems a few minor bugs remain with dialogs remaining open and unable to close them, and I had at least one hang. This seemed worse on first usage, and improved after a PC restart.

Download
I was concerned that first download would be huge with the last 7 days included, but no as only the current day's edition is downloaded initially.
Each day in the previous seven day period is downloaded on demand when you request to read it, causing a slight delay to start reading it. This delay is mitigated by the fact articles within a day’s edition are downloaded incrementally - so you can start reading before all articles for a day are downloaded.

Layout
Daily edition adapted nicely to the wide-screen on my laptop, filling it neatly.
There is no page scrolling, or scroll bars. Each newspaper section is laid out on one screen no matter the window size. It seems that articles have a priority order with more space assigned to the higher priority ones, then less and less until the latter ones are only headlines. Thus a section of articles is squeezed into the available space. It is possible to change the font sizes for readability and the articles are scaled-back in order to fit on the screen.

Articles are highlighted with a grey area when mouse-over to show their extent. Clicking on the headline/article summary takes you to the full article, with “good-res” photos, etc. Some longer articles take up more than one page (screen) and so there is a “Next page” button to move to subsequent screens. Still no scrolling. Works with keyboard cursor keys to navigate pages too.

Read articles are shown with their headlines in a grey color.
There are buttons for “Back to section Index”, etc.

I notice that some articles get reused across sections (e.g. in Science section AND Technology section) and across days, mixing in with new articles. Thus sections always appear neatly full. Not sure if this is only done with unread articles or with all articles.

Overall they have put quite a lot of attention to detail and the “page layout” in particular, in order to avoid scrolling and filling the spread aesthetically with articles of most interest.

The edition (if you are connected) can update and change while you are reading it.

They have created a “News in Pictures” function that is a slide-show of the major news articles.

Some adverts have Flash style animation. This didn’t distract me as much as I had expected, I guess due to being used to flashing banner ads and such-like in a web browser.

The natural comparison (without having stopped to think about it), when reading on my computer on an upright LCD screen, was the web browser.

There is a Windows System Tray icon for synchronization in background. It only appears when the reader is open (which seems a bit incongruous) and goes away when the reader is closed.

In the Windows Start Menu you will get a New York Times group with a menu entry for the reader and an “Empty Cache” entry. Initially I thought this was the cache of past days articles and it started empty. It turns out this is in fact a command to empty the cache. It is a DOS batch file and gets started in a DOS window – strange.

Content drives my reading time and frequency and the very US centric news (and too much baseball! J) lost my attention after a while.

If you are American, or live in the US, and hence have a strong interest in the content, or like the New York Times and want a PC based news reader then this is a pretty good option for you and the best I have come across in terms of layout and readability (newspaper like, not a string of RSS headlines) and navigation.

Circulation reporting of e-editions
In the US (and in other countries too) there is an association that regulates newspaper circulations and how their statistics are gathered and reported, mainly for advertising purposes. It turns out that for an electronic edition to qualify in your circulation numbers you need to ostensibly show the same content and same layout as the printed edition.

This explains a lot of the attempts at on-line newspaper to reproduce the printed layout and is an example of regulations driving design when arguably the layout, content, navigation and other features should be more driven by user needs/preferences and technology capability than by reproducing print in another medium. But advertising dollars is what moves this industry!

Newsstand

Original post on May 23rd 2007
Newstand have their web site at http://www.newsstand.com where they allow you to buy single electronic editions, or subscriptions to many newspapers, magazines and journals from countries all around the world. At first glance I was surprised at the number available, and found newspapers from my home country Scotland (The Scotsman) and my adopted home Spain (El Pais). They seem to have quite a few in Asia and even a few Arab and African papers too.

From my quick glance through Press Releases it also seems they offer Professional Journals, such as Law Journals, but I didn't try to download or use those (so far).

I followed the free samples link (in the left side-bar with their own adverts etc) to try it out.
I noticed they carry the New York Times, which I've tried to read with their own reader, so I tried that. This takes you through a simple registration step, a $0 purchase and checkout and then directly into reading of the free sample edition you selected.

There is no software download or install, but an "on-line" viewer (maybe ActiveX or such like, I didn't check). It does allow you to save the edition locally, which should allow off-line viewing.

It has landscape/portrait views, search, print, zoom, back, forward, last page and first page buttons.

It reproduces the newspaper's paper layout "faithfully".
It offers a 1-page, or 2-page spread layout option.
The zoom is a 2-level zoom: full-view, or one zoom level in. Mouse-click toggles back and fore between the two.

The layout made the ads jump out at me as being very prominent, maybe even more so that they would have on the printed edition, even though the layout is identical!
Waiting a second or two for a page download, in 1-page view mode to see "only" a full-page ad for something I am not interested in, seems more frustrating to me than leafing past it in the paper edition.

Navigation is limited (but paper-like!), with no links, no TOC, no sections, etc.

Pages are downloaded on-demand as viewed which caused a significant delay waiting for some pages, and that's using a fast internet connection. I think they could download some of it in background while you read the first pages!

If you use the 2-page spread view, with only one level of zoom, that leaves the text of many articles unreadable - even on my 19" 1280x1024 monitor and my reasonable eyesight. Not for poor monitors or senior citizens!

I noticed some ads had some VERY low resolution images that just looked like smudges. They looked to me like the low-res TIF preview that some DTP applications embed (e.g. in EPS files) to aid page layout, and not the real "final" artwork. So, that could be some type of format or OPI error showing through the conversion process from the print edition to the on-line edition.

Overall, I'm impressed at the content they have available on-line, but not impressed at their reader and its navigation features - even for a "PC/Laptop" reader.

Please go ahead and kick its tires and submitt your comments here.

New York Times - Times Reader

Original post from May 22nd 2007

Continuing my previous post about on-line readers for newspapers and magazines....
I went to New York Times - Times Reader download page to subscribe and download their new reader software with the objective of using reading it to read the NYT.

It remembered that I am a subscriber for New York Times from a previous occasion (Technology section on-line I assume, which I read sometimes when I get a MyYahoo or RSS page that links to it).

The initial download is a 5.5MByte download of a self-extracting .exe installer.
Not too much I hear you say, well wait....

The installer fires up and does the pre-requisite installation of Microsoft's .Net Framework 3.0!
Despite having a PC with everything up-to-date, obviously that doesn't include .Net Framework 3.0.

.Net 3.0 download, extraction and installation takes a significant amount of time and glad I'm doing it on a good connection.

The downloader shows you features and images about the reader while it's working. Including one image of a color, handheld reading device which caught my eye (but I didn't recognize it).
I have to investigate further what that's about....Maybe it's a UMPC or a Tablet PC I hadn't seen before? Maybe a TFT reader? Maybe an invention of their imagination?

It also shows what seems to be a "show me the news in a photo-slide-show" mode. Interesting. This seems to be a more passive reading, a little more like watching TV.
Instead of more active, directed, reading you just sit back and watch it go by. Maybe similar to what you sometimes do with a newspaper, just that you have to physically turn the paper's pages....?

By-The-Way: Anyone remember Pointcast?

The installer then moves on to the relatively brief Reader installation. It ends without the usual options to show a README file, or to start-up installed application immediately.
So I start-up from Program menu (which seems to have an entry for past days news too - initially empty).

My first use experience is dismal :-(
It fails to log me in, with no error message at all, not even a cryptic one.
I suspect it will be something to do with http proxies....but who knows?
All buttons shown are inactive, including "SETTINGS", so not sure where to start fixing this...

I look forward to trying it as I think the "sync" model is a good one, that offers a lot of transparency for the user and keeps me as up-to-date as possible, with a cache of 7 days past news, with no extra task for me.

I notice it has a "Refer a Friend" link which is a good idea.

So, I'm off to debug http proxies, which might require waiting until I can test it from a location with no proxy server between me and the internet.

As an aside, The Sony CONNECT software also fails dismally in this area - dealing with proxies.

If I was a paying subscriber I would be seriously pissed at this point.

But even so, my patience is limited so the NYT just maybe about to loose a future subscriber....and future blog entries on the subject :-)

Stay tuned.