Following on the heels of the New York Times, the Seattle Post Intelligencer has launched a news reader that allows you to read the print version of the newspaper through a desktop application.

I gave the reader a test drive and think it is a fantastic piece of technology.  The reader runs smooth and fast and creates a really pleasing reading experience.  It is much better than the PDFs of print editions I've seen in other places.

However, there are a couple of problems with this.

(1) You have to install the reader software on your machine in order to use it.  Not only that, the version of the reader is specific to each newspaper.  So if I want to read five papers online like this, I'd have to install five programs.  This is much more likely to be adopted if you could install the program once and then read all your newspapers and magazines on it.

(2) I don't want to read the print version of the newspaper on my computer, even if the reader is really slick.  I really don't.

If I'm on my computer, I'd rather just go to the website and quickly pick and choose what I read.   Maybe I'd use this thing for a glossy magazine, but I'm having trouble seeing why I'd use this application instead of just reading stuff on the newspaper's website.  I don't get it.

Am I missing something?

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