Better than the Web?

Slate's Jack Shafer takes a look at the New York Times Reader, which he thinks might be the first truly readable online newspaper. Why? It resides on your hard drive, not on the Web, and is displayed via new software from Microsoft that providers sharper resolution than what is available on the Web. I'm not going to bother with links; Jack's got them all.

At the moment, the Times Reader is available for Windows only, but is eventually supposed to migrate to the Mac as well. As Shafer describes it, the Times Reader sounds very much like the vision that people such as Roger Fidler had for electronic newspapers pre-Web: You'd download content that you'd already paid for (the Times Reader is currently free, but that will probably change) and then take it with you, with no online connection needed.

Online newspapers are still too difficult to read and use, so this bears watching.