Times Reader: the best of web and newspaper

I am unabashed fan of The New York Times – at least the online version of it. They have now released version 2.0 of the Times Reader, which is a great replica of the offline edition on your computer. It runs of Adobe’s AIR platform (the earlier versions ran on Microsoft’s Silverlight) so it runs on Windows, Mac & Linux.

The navigation and interface is classic NYT – clean, great fonts and lots of content. The content includes News in Pictures, News in Video and the Crossword. Stuff like David Pogue’s blog for example, is missing. Most of the content is subscription based and at $15 a month, it is a tad expensive for us Indians who are used to paying half that amount for the entire year’s subscription of dailies. The presence of ads could be a sore point for many. Check out Gizomodo’s review and Technologizer’s review of Times Reader.

If the future versions include content from other newspapers (the online version already has), it’d be great. In India, many of the leading newspapers offer the offline version in an e-paper format, with some charging for it, with an eye on the NRI reader. Is this the future of global newspaper properties which are struggling for survival?