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The Times of India, supposedly the largest selling English newspaper in India has launched the e-version of its “touch-n-feel” newspaper. Although quality of content has rapidly waned in the Times family, it has managed to keep up with the technology, at least to my satisfaction. Jivha and Simple Simon can write oodles of posts on their disgust with the Dishrag of India and Slimes of India respectively and I tend to agree with them most of the time but I honestly admit that I do visit the Times website at least once a day.
If I want real hardcore news content, I rely on the Indian Express and the Hindu. If I want sensational controversial edits, Rediff with its opinionated columnists fulfils my meager needs. But if I want to plain waste my time catching up on some obscure survey, mostly sex-related or feasting my eyes on skimpily clad unknown models, I visit the Times of India.
But the currently free E-Paper brings the experience of a good ‘ol newspaper as close as possible to the real thing. Admittedly, we can get the best news content off the Web from umpteen sources but the look of a friendly newspaper, the one we have grown up with can never be replicated anywhere else. Usually the online news sites present the news content with flashing web-related ads and annoying pop-ups but the e-paper lets us view the paper in its entirety before selecting the article we are interested in. The best part about it is that if we select the picture view format, we can see the images and the text or almost-PDF format.
Heck, I can even see what movies are playing at Sterling and Regal in the typical newspaper format with the jazzy graphics and I did miss that. I can admire the colossal photo of Sehwag hitting a grand six, hogging the Sports page. I can unabashedly ogle at the babes on the front pages of Bombay Times. I can even check out some advertisements and TV listings for old time’s sake.
But I don’t see myself subscribing to the e-paper service (although the just-released Rs.50 ($1.20) per month sounds tempting) because first, the servers are painfully slow even for my broadband connection and I am not going to spend the better part of my morning waiting for pages to load.
Second, after the nostalgia factor has died down, I don’t see myself going back to the site to read news the old-fashioned way because I guess content ultimately rules over form and presentation. I rather get my news in quick fire courier-font and getting on with my day rather than sitting back everyday and admiring the layout of the newspaper. People living in India might not relate to the nostalgia factor out here but for all the Indian Diaspora, I would definitely recommend at least a look.
by Patrix | on Thursday, January 15th, 2004 at 7:15 pm | 
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