So, back to the topic. Just downloaded the app TheStar ePaper for my iPhone. If you click the link using your computer, it will show you like some sort of a layout for the newspaper. Kinda like reading newspaper in a PDF format. And when you click to go to the next page, it will be "flipped" to the next page. Kinda cool in a way.
On the right side, there's thumbnails for the whole newspaper, where you can easily scroll through to look for a particular news, and when you click on the thumbnail, it will be flipped to that page.
When you hover your pointer towars the The Star Malaysia on the top left corner, it will come out with the other sub sections for the newspaper, like Metro Central, Metro North, etc etc. The Calendar, is for you to choose the newspaper date. But if you're looking for much older news, I suggest that you search for it from the official website.
When you hover your pointer towards the Table of Contents near the top of the page, there will be a drop down menu where you can hover your pointer to any news section, and there will be another section coming out on the right, showing the news in that particular section. There's an article rank, showing which are the news that have more views. The blue color box with a number in it, is the page number. Follow by the various news, and the first paragraph of the news, which usually contain summary of the news.
Anyway, that's the website version of e paper. Below is the iPhone version.
First you need to sign up for an account in TheStar website. There's a Sign Up at the top right corner of the website. After you signed up (fill in your details etc etc), then you'll receive a confirmation email. After confirming, go back to your iPhone, click Settings, under Account, click on the Free Account to key in your email address and password to authorize it. Once authorized, you can start downloading the e paper.
To download the latest copy of the e paper, just go to the "Store" at the right hand corner, and there will be a list of the latest e paper available. After you clicked on it, it will download to your phone, and will be like the print screen above. Under My Library, it will show all your downloading and downloaded e paper.
As usual, you can zoom in and out by pinching your finger on the screen. Scroll left to the previous page, and scroll right to the next page. At the bar below, you can quickly scroll through the pages instead of scrolling right, page per page. Just click on the bar, and then it will come out something like the print screen above. Then you can easily scroll through the pages. Or you can click on which news section you want to read by clicking on the arrow beside the bar to choose which news section you want to read.
You can also print screen or print the page by clicking on the icon with the arrow coming out of a box on top of the page. You can choose the printer and number of copies if you want to print the page.
To download the app, just go to AppStore and search for TheStar ePaper.
And by the way, the free subscription is only until end of April 2012. I'm not sure how much they are gonna charge later tho. In the mean time, go download and try it out. It's free anyway.
Experience of using it, well, I'm not using tablet, so it's a bit small and hard for me to read the news because I need to keep zooming in and out. But I like it because it is the same with the printed version, and it's convenient to bring around (since it's in my phone). And once I've downloaded it, I don't need Internet connection to read it. So you can just download it using WiFi, and read it afterwards. I'm sure it would be convenient for those with iPad, and all the other tablets available because of the bigger screen. However, I would still prefer the paper version. It is called newspaper after all. :p
