Pressdisplay brings Newspapers Online

Last week Pressdisplay.com mailed me and said they had chosen to give me unlimited personal access to their new system.- And I must say I am impressed. I have just read my local tabloid, Jerusalem Post and The Guardian in full versions on my tablet-pc with a bunch of features that makes newspaper reading much more fun and integrated with what else I do. I can blog a specific article as an image with link to the full original article for my readers to view, I can have articles read by a female machine voice if I prefer and I can setup a subscription system locally on my laptop that automatically downloads my preferred newspapers among more than 200. The system also stores my downloaded newspapers for up to 60 days.

Let me show you how it works.

Pressdisplay lets you access more than 200 newspapers from one site and with one subscription. When you subscribe you can read your newspapers before it appears in newsstands and before it is even printed! As a subscriber you can read your newspapers online and/or download the PressReader, a program that lets you read and manage newspapers for offline reading and more convenient page browsing.

Interestingly the Pressdisplay browser really makes the regular print newspaper format browsable. Specially if you use a vertical screen like a tilt LCD or tablet pc. I use the PressReader on my tablet PC, but there is a version for smartphones as well running the Windows Mobile platform 5.0.
When logged in to my account I can browse newspapers by language, title or country. I can pick a newspaper and its front page will appear in full screen size. At the bottom of the screen some tools for surfing, zooming and other things show up. At the right thumbnails of the issues other pages are listed. One click and that page shows up. Pages can also be flipped by clicking the corners of the pages.

This is yesterdays edition of The Guardian, viewed with PressReader online. This is also here I can choose newspapers for my off line PressReader.

Here is the downloaded version on a tablet. All pages is listed at the right sidebar.

If I chose to hear the words of an article spoken I just click the loudspeaker icon next to the headline of an article and a player starts.

I choose to save The Guardian for offline reading.

The Guardian now shows among my other preferred newspapers in the PressReader display, it is fully downloaded and I can start reading.

Most of the time I read in single page full screen view. It takes a few minutes to get used to the navigation. One click zooms in and four-way scrolling is done by holding the pen down on the screen. Here you see full page view, the text is too small for reading articles.

First level zoom is perfect for reading four columns, that makes up The Guardians Berliner format.

If I find something interesting, that I would like to share I can send a number of articles each month to friends and theres a blogging feature that allows subscribers to publish directly from the system to blogs. WordPress, Blogger, Livejournal and MSN Spaces are supported.

PressDisplay has a range of subscription models. There is a free sign up, where you can view front pages and buy single editions for USD 2.75. for USD 10 you can have monthly access to 31 newspapers of your own choice etc. There is also some corporate solutions and plans for libraries and hotels.

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