I’m looking at the “New Yorker Digital Edition,”:http://archives.newyorker.com/ and I thought I’d get a few initial thoughts down here.
* Is this the most ambitious integration of a magazine on the Internet that we have yet seen? If anybody reading this can think of something comparable, please write in and let us know! To summarize: every subscriber to the magazine now receives, in addition to the physical version in the mailbox, an identical version of the magazine (including layout and ads) in a digital format that can be viewed in any browser wherever there is an Internet connection. Furthermore, every subscriber may now view every single issue the magazine has ever published. The Internet is a palpable problem for magazine publishers, because they are an expensive proposition and the audience is spoiled by widespread free content on the Internet. _The New Yorker_ can use assets that less lofty magazines cannot bring to bear, but this may be an exciting model for other magazine publishers to consider.
* If you attempt to access an archived issue as a non-subscriber, the program inquires whether you would like to purchase the issue for $4.99. In this way the model could potentially increase revenue over and above the subscription revenue. Quoting from the Digital Edition: “For $4.99, you’ll receive access—for one year—to the entire issue in which the article you’re looking for originally ran.” Question: will people confronted with such a demand opt for a subscription instead? How many articles does one have to want to read before a subscription is a better use of one’s money? On “Amazon”:http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Yorker-1-year/dp/B00005N7T5/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=magazines&qid=1226059422&sr=8-1 you can get a year’s subscription for $39.95, so that’s about the cost of 8 individual articles. I think this aspect of the model may well lead to an increase in subscriptions.
* The search function within the Digital Edition itself is limited to the issue you are viewing. I noticed something rather tantalizing: I was looking at the “May 31, 2004, issue”:http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=2004-05-31#folio=032 (the one with the “William Finnegan article”:http://emdashes.com/2008/11/prescient-finnegan-gleans-poli.php on “Barack Obama”:http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/05/31/040531fa_fact1?currentPage=all), and I did a search on “Bill Clinton.” Two hits came up, _apparently responding to full-text hits_. (The search results seem to reproduce the actual lines of text in which “Bill Clinton” appeared.) Anyone who has used _The Complete New Yorker_ DVD archive knows that this is potentially a big item, because _The Complete New Yorker_ limits the user to a keyword/abstract search (it’s a bit more complicated than that, sometimes searches appear to respond to text that is not limited to the “library card” presented in the “article abstract” section). In any case, anything resembling full-text search capability is pretty awesome. I think we need to hear more about this.
* As Jonathan Taylor was the “first to notice”:http://emdashes.com/2008/11/take-the-new-yorker-digital-ed.php, you can now execute a search at “newyorker.com”:newyorker.com, and if an article is not available on the website, the abstract result now includes a link that brings you to the article in the Digital Edition. That works seamlessly, it’s very impressive.
* Dig the URL format for linking to articles in the Digital Edition, it looks like this:

http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=2004-05-31#folio=032

(That’s the Obama article again.) The “032” is a page number. So if you know the date of the issue and the page number (remember to use a placeholder zero or two to keep it a three-digit number), you can generate a valid URL on the fly. At Emdashes, we will endeavor to include such links to articles as we move forward.
* What about royalties? _The Complete New Yorker_ is the legacy of judicial rulings stating that a magazine publisher has the right to reproduce the full magazine but not in such a way that the individual articles can be copied with impunity. Does the Digital Edition maintain this logic? It probably does—you still can’t grab an ASCII version of any article and put it on your website. (I’ve always felt that this Solomonic judicial ruling struck an ideal middle path between protecting the rights of contributors and the public good of making the magazine available to all at an affordable price.)
* Look and feel: I like the usability but it’s juuuust a bit pinched. I’m not crazy about the dialog boxes that pop up, but that’s a small thing and I expect it to change over time. It’ll be interesting to see how it all evolves. On my MacBook, the bottom toolbar is almost always off the screen, meaning I have to scroll down to access it. The left/right buttons are a little “HTML-y” for my taste, but I do like that the interface responds well to the left and right arrow buttons. Flipping through the magazine is enjoyable, but the experience of dipping in and out of pages might need to improve a little bit. Still: this is a great beginning.
* Hey, recent issues have active links to the web! You can click on any URL in the issue, whether it be in _New Yorker_ content or in advertisements. Pretty sneaky, sis. In addition, the table of contents (for new issues) is hyperlinked to enable you to access every article directly from there, which is a nice touch.