It’s good to see not all newspapers are caught in a stupor the Japanese ones seem to actually be seeing their common interest and making something sort of useful to their readers.
First, it’s nice to see newspapers do stuff which is innovative instead of being stuck in the headlights and waiting to die.
Secondly, this adresses a real problem. On any commute I make with my iPhone, I theoretically can read all the news from the world’s best newspapers instead of grabbing a free newspaper from the box on the station. I’ve done so for a while, but lately I don’t bother anymore. The reason I don’t bother is that it is too much hassle to lead the newspaper’s awful bloated websites over what passes for 3G in this part of the world, then select what I want to read and then read that. There are too many actions involved and the cognitive load is too great.
A simple app which works like a specialized RSS reader where you can triage for a specified set of newspapers and categories the articles you want to read and then get those in rapid succession would be a godsend.
