Access print magazines online with Coverleaf
Too busy to pick up your favorite print magazines from the newsstand? You are not alone, and for all of you I have good news.
On Monday,Texterity announced its new digital-magazine service, which allows readers to access print magazines in an alternative manner that's completely new, yet very familiar--online at Coverleaf.com.
At the Web site you can browse through categories of magazines, pick one off of the digital shelf, preview it for free, or pay to instantly see its entire contents. The magazines' digital layouts look very much like the print originals. You then can subscribe to either a print or digital version of a magazine, or even buy a single copy of any issue digitally (or you can have it mailed to you the traditional way).
Personally, I think Coverleaf is a cool idea that offers avid magazine readers a centralized Web-based place where they can read and manage their subscriptions conveniently without a huge bookshelf or lots of storage space.
From the publishers' perspective, the Coverleaf service potentially helps lower the costs of reattaining subscribers and offers a new way to interact with them. Also, it measures their readership. Most importantly, the site allows for adding multimedia contents, including video, audio, and hotlinks to the digital magazines, which is impossible with print versions.
Dong Ngo is a CNET editor who covers networking and network storage, and writes about anything else he finds interesting. You can also listen to his podcast at insidecnetlabs.cnet.com. E-mail Dong.
Print magazines still serve a purpose, such as while waiting to see the doctor, but I agree digital magazines are fantastic.
There needs to be a balance, though: some online magazines employ so much active content that you just can't "read"; the 'magazine' is too busy downloading an ad or some content. You can't turn the page and let the ad/whatever download in the background. It's very annoying.