As Hurricane Irene approaches the upper east coast, property damage is of course a key concern—but Hurricane Irene is also, at least temporarily, knocking down some virtual walls—paywalls. Laura Hazard Owen reports on PaidContent that the New York Times and Newsday.com are both making hurricane coverage available to all readers for free. E-magazine service Zinio is also offering free issues of several electronic magazines to travelers stranded by the hurricane. Of course, the usefulness of these free services depends on people being able to keep their connectivity during the storm. USA Today has a guide suggesting ways for...

Version 2.0 of the iPad magazine app Zinio was released yesterday, Engadget reports. (Video overview embedded below the cut.) The app includes in-app purchasing of magazines (presumably forking over 30% to Apple) and adds some new content preview options including free articles from a number of publications. It also offers improved performance and new functionality such as in-app shopping. (Social networking features are reportedly on the way.) But, as Engadget points out, the prices of Zinio e-magazines are still in line with what you would pay for a physical newsstand copy. Too bad about that. ...

On our sister blog Appletell, Ed McKell reports on the way that his iPad apps have, over time, started taking longer and longer, until lately he started the backup before he went to bed and it still was only 2/3 done when he got up seven hours later! McKell learned from research in forums that others were having similar (pardon the pun) issues caused by magazine apps, and decided to experiment with deleting the Wired magazine app which was storing 3GB of back issues, to see if it had any effect. To his surprise, without the Wired app...

From the press release: Zinio, the world's leader in digital publishing, technology, distribution, and services, and NACS Media Solutions (NMS), a subsidiary of the National Association of College Stores (NACS), today announced a partnership to develop the first all-digital online newsstand directed specifically at the college market. Featuring 3,000-plus magazines and books suitable for reading through Zinio's UNITY™ platform, which enables on-line or offline access on any PC, iPhone, iPad, and upcoming supported devices, the newsstand will break new ground by taking the world of reading to the platforms most popular with the Digital Generation. The new collegiate digital newsstand, which will...

For years, I have been a closet magazine freak. I love magazines, love browsing them, love reading them. But I simply don't have the space to buy every favourite and keep them around each month, and I hated buying them and then having to throw them out. So for years, I restrained myself. The iPad Zinio app has freed me, and I am having a blast with it. WHAT IS THE ZINIO APP? The app is the latest iteration of a Mac/PC/Smartphone magazine platform. It's been around for years, but I had not heard of it before. You can shop for magazines...

Dan Cohen has a review of Zinio and he says that it's great! He saw the original app when it came out and here's what he says about it: The only problem was…it was awful. Seriously… the Zinio iPhone app was a train wreck– a horrific attempt to port a large screen application to OS X iPhone. Now, he goes on to say: So I was a bit surprised when, about a week or so ago, Zinio released an official iPhone app. I was even more surprised to discover that… IT IS GREAT!!!! Go over and read the full review....

Zinio is angling for an interface for the iPhone crowd. It might be too much of a stretch, though......