NewspaperDirect's Michael Oksinski responded Tuesday to all questions I sent to NewspaperDirect and PressDisplay.com, as described in this blog posting from Sunday night.
TWO FREE ARTICLES PER NEWSPAPER PER DAY
First, the image above shows how registered subscribers to PressDisplay's "Pay as you go" option at $0.00 per month can select, from its 1,400 periodicals, up to two articles per periodical, to read online for free each day, in their original print layout. This is, for me, a great feature apart from the ability to read newspaper issues on our Kindles with original print layout shown.
Trying to access an article from the thumbnails on the side will cause pop-ups that tell the reader there is $0.00 credit to read an article, so don't click from the right side to choose an article on a free basis -- the Free feature's choice has to be done from the top toolbar's Table of Contents.
Hovering over the toolbar's Table of Contents option will bring up Sections in a menu and for each option a linked popup with specific article titles you can click to read online, which includes 2 free ones for each newspaper of interest that day. (I haven't explored what the reading-offline feature entails.)
The key is the "Table of Contents" in the top toolbar, which in the image above shows a pull-down menu of sections to choose from after I clicked on the TOC.
This works well for me though it's easy to click on an article I didn't intend to, while hovering over the choices, but that's my problem, so click carefully :-) The theory is that you can choose up to two articles per newspaper to read for free per day and would be prevented from receiving a 3rd one at no cost for that newspaper that day. It would normally cost 99 cents to read a third article from that newspaper on the same day. (There may be a bug on our behalf tonight because I was able to choose more.)
TIP:
From any area of PressDisplay, click on top left PressDisplay label to go to Home page.
EXPORT to KINDLE function from Online reading via PressReader:
The Export of a prepaid full issue direct to the attached, recognized Kindle (via USB cable) from online reading still doesn't work for me as it can't "prepare" the article and stays at 0% done - but they are aware of the problem for some PressReader Kindle users and are working on it.
Workaround for now: download it to your computer, which takes maybe two seconds and just move it over to the attached Kindle. (PressReader sees the attached Kindle automtically and places itself at the proper drive letter and in the 'documents' folder. Your computer's 'My Library" Export-to e-reader function (with a choice of "Kindle") works without a hitch (see body of original post below) and I can read the issue from the Kindle.
Eventually, they'll do this via wireless access to the Kindle, they say.
SOFTWARE anomalies in a downloaded newspaper file
They are working on the problem reported with The Independent's Sunday Travel section articles missing some column content. The USA Today issue that I downloaded to test handling of graphics on the Kindle had no problems of any type.
As with normal copying of text online from, say, the NY Times, a graphic character used for the first alpha character in an article is missed because it's not text. Kindle Editions from Amazon are able to handle those well. But Amazon carries only 92 newspapers, though one of my favorite things is Amazon's 75c Sunday NY Times, so nothing takes the place of that for me.
IN GENERAL
If someone wants to keep up, offline, with a newspaper not easily available otherwise for the Kindle, this is a good option. And the choices from so many newspapers and magazines around the world, for Kindle reading, is pretty nice.
Note that some newspaper publishers have expiry dates for issues in your computer's PressReader library though. What that means for the Kindle I'll have to ask. Options are given for shorter or longer times by our choice, possibly depending on publisher.
NEWSPAPERDIRECT replies to Kindle-feature questions
Here is information received from NewspaperDirect's Michael Oksinski, so you can see the quality of attention he's giving to feedback on experiences with PressReader. Also, NewspaperDirect's PressDisplay has a Twitter presence as "@PressDisplay" on that interactive service. Additionally, PressReader users can also write comments to the PressDisplay Blog articles, but Twitter may be more immediate and nicely brief, unlike my floods of words. From PressDisplay:
' ...
1. As for the Sunday Independent Travel section missing paragraphs, this issue has been escalated to our XML processing team for an immediate fix.
2. Regarding the Export to eReader, I have been informed that changes have been made on the server side that will eliminate the majority of errors like the one you described. Please notify me once again if it's still not working.
3. All registered users have free access to 2 articles from the current issue of any title per day, on our site. Simply select a title and click the Table of contents on the toolbar along the top of the screen (not from Table of content listed to the right of the front page). A drop down menu will appear where you can select the article you want to read, as shown:
As for the navigation of PressDisplay, there are a lot of helpful hints located on our PD help page... '
Original Kindleworld Posting of January 10:
This is an update to the blog entry two days ago about Newspaper Direct's Press Display.Com now bringing the full-content of about 1,400 newspapers and magazines to the Amazon Kindle.
There is also a PressDisplay blog which contains an embedded video showing PressDisplay on the Kindle. You can also watch it at youtube.
At the left is a print screen or screen grab from my Kindle's PressDisplay issue. You'll see, at the top, links to the Table of Contents and to next and previous page numbers. Next/Previous are easier to do on the Kindle levers though. The image is smaller to allow navigational text links.
There's an error in the video about the Next and Previous button taking us to the next and previous 'article' -- this is true if the article page you're on is only one page long. Next and Previous buttons work as they do on the rest of our documents -- they just go to the next page and previous page.
The first picture in a newspaper and for each section is always a full newspaper shot as it appears in print, and as with any photo in a Kindle book or periodical you can zoom the picture to fill the screen (though the picture resolution will seldom be good that way, except with the San Francisco Chronicle, which does a great job with its photo sizing and resolution).See the image on the right for the same newspaper picture zoomed.
That image isn't meant for reading though.
Following the newspaper image, there'll be, on the next pages, a text summary and then the full text story in regular text.
TABLE OF CONTENTS TIP
Story titles and page numbers will be shown, and when you move the cursor to them, they become bordered in a box that seems to be a barrier. What you need to do is click on the box and then you can enter the area to choose page numbers. I've seen this kind of oddity in the formatting of public-domain books (classics) too.
CHOOSING FROM 1400 NEWSPAPERS [Edited to change 'members' to (registered) 'PressReader users']
PressDisplay.com is not an intuitive site.
Be sure to take a look at the how-to videos.
They organize newspaper options on the left by country, and this is a good place to start.
If that's too vague, do a Search, at the top for a subject of interest.
The results can be amazing. The search can go back from 3 days to more, depending on your subscription choice.
Full issues to read online or download or extract to an ereader are usually 99c per issue.
Here's the Membership or Registered User pricing page for personal use, not business.
The odd thing is that those having "free" access can read two articles from any and all papers a day but no more than that from any one newspaper. A third article in a newspaper will usually cost $.99 ... Free accounts can't print, or listen to the audio version, or share the article via email, or get a translation of the article. All those are available to subscribers.
On that membership pricing page, it has the following in bold print:
"All registered users have free access to 2 articles from the current issue of each publication."
HOW DO YOU READ OR DOWNLOAD THE STORIES
This was not very clear. The PressReader we're to download has options only for iPhone/Ipod, Blackberry phones, iRex, but none for Kindle or Sony.
It turns out that we're to (1) download either the PC or Mac software
and install it, after which we can (2) Download the issues to our computer libraries (not unlike iTunes) for reading on the computer and for moving to the Kindle via the "Export to reader" feature. The latter worked fine for me after it advised me that to use the Export to Kindle function I needed to install ".NET Framework 3.5" or a later version.
For computers that need it, you can find that here. I downloaded the Full 3.5 version, not just the bootstrapper.
WIRELESS delivery someday
In their blog comments area, Michael Oksinski states that they'll be offering this on a wireless basis later as they do for Sony users.
CAVEAT
I've submitted a bug report to the blog page. On the download I received, a main story I wanted is missing several columns, though I can read them fine in the online version there. The technology online is pretty amazing but it takes time to experiment with all that is there.
FREE REGISTERED MEMBERSHIPS
I don't totally understand yet how that works. See NewspaperDirect's PR release at PRWeb which includes this:
' Free and Flexible Pricing PlansAre the "free plans" different from the "pay-as-you-go plan," which is also $0.00 ?
From free plans (which offer 2 free articles from every issue every day), to our pay-as-you-go plan, to monthly subscriptions for personal, corporate or professional use, PressDisplay.com has pricing plans to suit every need and budget. '
Nevertheless, the pricing page we're shown does say, as I mentioned earlier:
"All registered users have free access to 2 articles from the current issue of each publication."
Well, apologies for this somewhat confusing report of what I could find out while experimenting with this feature. I'll be interested in others' experiences with it.
Original posting about NewsDirect and PressDisplay was done on January 6.
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