Zinio Web Reader
Oswald Lemus
Zinio Reader (Panther version, 1.4.3) is a free 6.4 megabyte download that allows you to download and read the electronic magazines. Once you download a magazine and open it in the reader it behaves similarly to a paper magazine. The display shows two facing pages (or just the cover when you first open a new magazine). This results in text that is a little too small for me to read (on a 12" iBook at least) but the default mouse click action is to zoom in on an area of interest. The amount of zoom can be adjusted from zooming in from two pages wide to one page wide, to as large a zoom as from the two-page width to one third of a page in width. Clicking along the side of a page causes the page to flip, with or without animation. Like Adobe Acrobat Reader, moving around in a zoomed in page is as simple as clicking and dragging the page. In addition to the smart mouse actions, there are also navigation buttons along the bottom of the reader. The reader also can be navigated by keyboard shortcuts. In all, it is an easy to use program that works well on my 800 MHz iBook with 256M RAM.
The bottom line is that I really like the Zinio reader as a complement to the printed magazine. It is convenient to use and has an intuitive interface. The only drawbacks that I see are the DRM, and the cost for subscribing to both versions of a magazine. Now, if they would only start offering archives in the Zinio format I could get rid of the boxes of old magazines that I have stacked in my basement!
Has anyone figured out where Zinio stores our MR's on our local computers? I realize that would depend on your operating system, but it appears not even Zinio knows (or at least haven't shared that info with me). I can find the cover JPegs, but that's it. The other day I was reading some MR's in the Zinio Reader and started drilling down through various menus. I somehow came to a place where I had the option to sign out of Zinio. I figured I didn't need to be signed in to Zinio to read my mags, so I signed out. DON'Y DO THAT! All my mags (not only MR, but I had some old PC Magazines I bought too) were gone. I had to download ALL of them again. That's when I started to suspect the magazine was not actually on my computer. About 40 magazines downloaded in a couple minutes. I have a fast DOCSIS connection (cable), but that still seemed pretty fast.
Hmm, I don;t have that issue with the Zion Reader on my iPad - I can sign out, then sign back in some other time and whatever I've downloaded in the past is still there. I haven't bothered installing the app on my desktop. You're one the right track with appdata - try looking in c:\users\username\appdata\local\virtualstore. This is there the actual odf files for each issue of MR in the 75 year collection are stored.
It does seem to keep a rolling set live on my iPad - if I go back to March or April, or go to last year, those issues need to be downloaded again. Good thing, or I would quickly need to trade in for a 128GB model to hold it all. On a PC I can imagine it keeping them all until you delete one - after all, 75 years' worth is less than 20GB.
iPads and other non-computer devices may handle things differently, I dunno. However, I did find out that the mags are indeed stored on my computer because I disconnected my internet cable and was able to read the mags, and they were there on the PC, all 40 something of them.
Zinio told me the mags were actually stored in the "system files" for the Zinio Reader, but never explained which precise files they were. I could not find them in the Zinio Program floders or any user folder (all the files in those folders had the time stamp of the day I installed them, so I don't think they had been updated when i downloaded a new issue).
Still not sure why I "lost" all my mags when I signed out. If anyone wants to try it, in Zinio Reader 4, click on the gear in the lower left corner of the screen (the PREFERENCES button). The dialof box that pops up has 3 tabs - Account, MyLibrary and Reading. If Account is not active, click on Account, then click on SIGN OUT (top line, to the right of your email address. If you have the same result I did, when you sign back in, all your mags will be gone.
Probably a slight bug. I can understand them not appearing if you sign out - if you aren't logged in to your Zinio account then it has no way of knowing what magazines you 'own'. However, they should reappear when you sign back in, without downloading. I suspect that it simply resynchronized you account witht he loco failes rather than downloaded them all again - even with a very high speed connection it would take more than a minute or so to download 40+ magazine issues.
It may be by design, to keep you from cheating, if they dump everything into one big file, it's done to handle multiple Zinio accounts on the same computer so it only displays those items that belong to whichever user is signed in.
First, the reason all my magazines were gone after I signed out of Zinio and then signed back in is that a couple days before I had updated (i.e. changed) my email address. So, when I signed out, I had been signed in (for months) under the old email address, and when I signed in using the new email, naturally there were no mags downloaded in that account. This is actually done intentionally by Zinio so that if you subscribe to multiple magazines, you have the option of having different IDs for each (perhaps multiple users on a single device).
I am assuming the reason all this happened when I signed out was NOT because I was signing out of the Zinio service (on line) but rather signing out of the reader. But it is not obvious WHAT you are signing out of when you sign out.
Next, WHERE ARE THE MAGs Stored? Well, on a Windows 7 PC they are stored in the Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\ZinioReader4(with a bunch of characters after it)\Useraccount (e.g. your...@email.net)\book folder. In that folder there are a bunch of folders with numbered names. It appears there is one folder per mag. In each mag folder, there are two files for each page of the magazine.
Why is this important? It isn't really, unless you are a bit obsessive about backing data up. I am, and I wanted to be sure these magazines were backed up. Granted you can always download them again from Zinio, but that assumes there is a Zinio. What if the decide they don't want to provide the service anymore (for any of a bunch of reasons)?
" I can understand them not appearing if you sign out - if you aren't logged in to your Zinio account then it has no way of knowing what magazines you 'own'. However, they should reappear when you sign back in, without downloading."
Exactly right. As I posted a moment ago, the reason the mags "disappeared" is I had change my email address (thus in effect creating a new account). Now I have the mags on my system under both account names.
" I suspect that it simply resynchronized you account with the local files rather than downloaded them all again - even with a very high speed connection it would take more than a minute or so to download 40+ magazine issues."
" It may be by design, to keep you from cheating, if they dump everything into one big file, it's done to handle multiple Zinio accounts on the same computer so it only displays those items that belong to whichever user is signed in."
I agree with your logic, however the tech obviously either mislead me intentionally (to prevent me from cheating as you say) or doesn't know how his product works. Because each page of each mag has an swf file and a jpg file. They are not are "stored in the Zinio reader System files" as the tech told me. And that's cool - if they are concerned about security, I get it. I wasn't trying to get something for nothing, I was just curious and wanted to be sure I was backing the files up. Plus, I didn't understand why I "lost" all my mags. All's well that ends well.
I got a free temporary subscription to PC Magazine on Zinio and I liked it. Now I'm considering renewing the subscription and looking at other interesting publications they may have, but that's conditional to the following?
Items 1 and 2 got a thumbs up already. The offline Linux reader, from what I can see, even works as well as the Windows one. Now comes the $64,000 question: can I convert them to a format that doesn't depend on their proprietary reader?
I learned to embroider when I was a kid, when everyone was really into cross stitch (remember the '80s?). Eventually, I migrated to surface embroidery, teaching myself with whatever I could get my hands on...read more
This means the magazine can be read on a computer, laptop, mobile device (iPad, iPod, iPhone, Android), or electronic reader (kindle, nook, etc.). It also means that, if you found the print price of the magazine out of your budget range, you can now get the electronic version for less than half price for the year. For less than $40 per year (four issues), you can enjoy Inspirations Magazine in electronic format.
First of all, going through Zinio (this is the platform which hosts Inspirations Magazine), you have two options. You can opt in for a full subscription, which is the most economical approach, or you can be an individual copy. I bought an individual copy, since I am already subscribed to the paper version of the magazine.
Zinio gives you all kinds of ways to access the different pages in the magazine. You can scroll through the full size pages, or you can click the thumbnail view and see the whole glorious magazine in little rectangles spread out before you. You can click on the page you want, and go right to it.
2. If you like reading real books, flipping real pages, toting a magazine around, and so forth (I do like these things, including toting a paper magazine around for something to read), then obviously, you will miss those experiences.
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