Newsstand is totally news worthy

It’s no big surprise that I love my iPad, every chance I get I’m singing it’s praises.

There is an app that I’ve become very close with lately and I don’t think that too many people actually take advantage of it.

Newsstand

So what is it?

Newsstand is the place where all your digital magazines and newspaper subscriptions hangout.

Like most things from Apple, it has style. The Newsstand is just a clean, neat, and organized place to keep all your magazine and newspaper subscriptions. Nice little shelfs to organize all your periodicals the way that you want them.

From the Newsstand you can also subscribe to more of your favorite magazines and newspapers. The downside of the store is that it can be a little misleading. You’ll see that your favorite magazine is free to download to your Newsstand but you don’t actually get a magazine with that, you still have to purchase an issue or subscription.

Check your favorite magazines, some of them will allow you to download the digital edition on your iPad if you already subscribe to them in print.

The Magazines

I don’t get a whole lot of time to actually read magazines but there are a few that have become staples in my life.

I like the whole idea of having a digital magazine. In some cases it’s less paper waste and I like that I don’t have to worry about it taking up space and collecting dust in my house.

I’ve been a faithful reader of All You for YEARS and I have torn out pages all over the place of recipes and exercise ideas. Do I ever really pull them out and use them? Not often.

I love how instead of tearing out pages I can just bookmark the articles or recipes I want to save and I don’t have to worry about loosing them or finding places to keep them.

I have a few magazines in my Newsstand and they all have some different features. A couple are very interactive with things embedded in the articles and features that tie in social media. Others are just a basic digital version of the magazine with no frills.

I love that if there’s an article I think a friend might like I can email it to them or share it on Facebook or Twitter.

I have two magazines that have an awesome feature where I can enter a search term and it will pull matching articles from all the issues I have downloaded. That makes it easy when I can remember reading about a topic but can’t remember what issue it was in.

The more I use the Newsstand and digital magazines the more I enjoy them.

The one thing I really wish I could do is take notes. You can take notes and highlight books in iBooks, it would be a great feature to be able to take notes in an article or highlight just the specific part that is important to me. I guess I need to make a suggestion.

Have you started using your iPad to read magazines and newspapers? What do you think?

If you’re new to this digital stuff, give it a try and let me know what you think.