I did still find that the images of each newspaper’s cover were not zoomable for me- maybe I’m missing something there, but if they’re really not zoomable, I think they’re a waste of space.

Thanks again for the comments. I like PressDisplay’s concept, was just very disappointed with the delivery of it – not so much now, and have bookmarked it, and will be updating this post as well …

Thank you for all the comments – we encourage you to keep sharing your thoughts on PressDisplay for iPhone users (as well as those who access the service on other types of devices, both mobile and stationary). We want to make sure the experience on iPhone is great and do encourage you to continue sending us your feedback. You can do it directly by emailing to pressdisplay@newspaperdirect.com.

It appears that an incorrect URL was listed for a short while on the Apple Web Apps page (listed as http://mobile.pressdisplay.com). And quite a lot of experiences described above were based on using a site from that URL. In fact, the correct URL for all types of devices is simply http://www.pressdisplay.com: the system will automatically determine whether you are accessing the service from an iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Mobile device, or simply from a PC or Mac, and optimise the user experience for that particular device.

We would also welcome all users of PressDisplay to visit our blog (http://blog.pressdisplay.com) on a regular basis. There is a special iPhone category there, which you can visit by clicking here: http://blog.pressdisplay.com/category/iphone/. We’ve also recorded a couple of videos, showing the functionality of PressDisplay on various devices, including iPhones. You will notice that iPhone is a perfect device for digital newspaper and magazine reading. Not only can you browse top stories from over 600 worldwide publications, but you can also see the table of contents for each individual publication’s issue, being able to select the articles of interest. Thanks to the great image display engine in iPhone, you can also zoom in and out on the image of each individual newspaper and magazine page (using, of course, the finger pinching, native to iPhones).

We work hard on many levels to bring together world’s publishers in one place while providing, as was mentioned here earlier, full content publications in an original format (and this what makes this service different from individual newspapers’ and magazines’ websites). New publications and enhanced features are being introduced on a regular basis. We hope you will (or will continue to) enjoy PressDisplay and share your thoughts with us, so we can make each user’s experience the most enjoyable one.

Thank you once again,

Igor Smirnoff
Director, Strategic Development
NewspaperDirect, Inc.

What the service does is pull together all the articles in each edition of the particular newspaper, organized on a page by page basis. Depends on the paper, but this is generally very different than Yahoo or Google News, which aggregates web or newsfeed based stories. For example, there are many articles in the daily Guardian newspaper that do not make it onto the Guardian Unlimited website.

Maybe this is a specialized app (I’m a UK expat in the USA who likes to “read” the Guardian on my iPhone while on the bus on the way to work) but what it gives me is the full content of paper organized within the actual structure of the paper (an experience close to reading the actual newspaper itself). I find it intuitive and easy to read (but then I still get most of my news from newspapers and not online). If you’re only interested in the information itself, and not the way the information is organized into an actual newspaper, then I agree the news aggregators are a better way to go.

So you’re more than free to say it’s an iPhone application that sucks, but your piece seems to imply that the only way you can read the stories is to peer very closely at the photographs of the page, which is clearly not true.