Sean's Idea Kitchen

Enter the Architecture Journal Reader

For those of you that read "The Architecture Journal", here's another option for you that actually is better (if you're with computer).  Simon Guest is introducing the Architecture Journal Reader, a WPF based reader that delivers.  Here's a quick feature list.

1. Online syncing and delivery of content.
2. Offline reading.  (This is more important to me now that I've had to endure reading on a mobile device over the edge network)
3. Highly searchable (and discoverable)
4. Annotation - both ink and text.
5. Multiple language support - (English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Japanese)  There a nice touch with the language selection.  You just pick the one you want and that's it.  No "make English my default language setting or menu option".
6. You can save local copies.
7. Print (The print version is actually quite luxurious to read.  Great font choice)
8. You can email articles with a nice summary.
9. Keyboard (via arrows) or mouse navigation
10. Quick access to all editions of the Architecture Journal on the left hand side.
11. Reading list for your "read this next" list.
12. Find in article.  (It's not a menu option, just hit "ctrl + F" and it will show up as an overlay on the bottom left corner of the article.)  Hit the "escape" key to close it. 

Here's a pic of the first run of the ARC reader, notice the green progress bar syncing content in the top left hand side.

Here's a shot of the front page.  All articles are listed on the front page.

And the search results for "SOA".  The search is lightning quick. 

Features that I'd like to see are:

1. Different color schemes
2. "What others are reading" page
3. "What others are reading and where they're located map"
4. Marked as read indicator 

  Get the beta here.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=dd466bbb-1b7d-438e-9f9a-954ce2058f15&displaylang=en

 Remember that this is the beta, which means it will only get better with your feedback.  Thanks to the SAG team for putting this together. 

 I think we'll see the "Reader" platform start to evolve, in the next couple of years.  (I'm thinking an aggregated content delivery model for different magazines.)

Sean 

Note:The ARC Reader requires the uses port 8080 to pull the content so if your place of work is using a proxy server (and it blocks that port) it's not going to be able pull the initial content.