Flipster: When You Need a Free Magazine

I recently joined the modern era by getting myself a smart phone. *Gasp* "Nick, don't you know that those have been a necessity for, like, several years now?" Very true, and now that I have one, I'm never going back to a "dumb" phone hehe. I bring this up because there were a whole bunch of pre-loaded apps that came on my device, and I'm nervous to try many of them because I figure they are just previews of services that will very quickly want my credit card information.

Its a bummer, because some of them might actually offer some free content, but I don't want to risk it. But, I have some good news for those of you who are like me. The Community Library Network has just subscribed to an e-magazine service that comes at absolutely no cost to you now, or later. 

The service is called Flipster, and I just put the latest issue of Consumer Report onto our office's iPad with very little effort, and at no cost. "Now, Nick, didn't the library have a subscription to a service called Zinio that did the exact same thing? In fact, didn't you do a blog post about it?" Very true again. Our network has replaced our Zinio subscription with Flipster. But, many of the same titles are available on the Flipster platform, and the ease of use on Flipster is fantastic from what I've seen. 

Flipster lets you view current and past issues of magazines on your internet-connected computer or mobile device. Its as easy as having your library card and going to CommunityLibrary.Net/eStuff. If you have an iOS device (Android as well at the end of the summer), you can download the free app and download full magazines onto the app for offline viewing. 

So if those pre-loaded apps are looking a little spooky, but you'd still like some free content, try out your library's free e-magazine service and let me know what you think. 

Zinio: Best Magazines, Digital Format

Typically speaking, I don't read a ton of magazines. Typically speaking again, the times that I do are when I'm waiting for an appointment to start, or when I have some time to kill at the library and my book is at home or something.

But, if those magazines that I browse through at the dentist's randomly showed up in my email's inbox, I might start to read them a little more lol. Basically, that is what Zinio has been doing for about 10 years apparently, and now the Community Library Network has got a subscription to their library service.

If you bounce over to our network's Zinio browsing page, you can see all the magazines that are free through our library's subscription. If you don't see one you're after, just let us know and we'll see if adding it might be an option.

When you find one you'd like, you can register with Zinio (with an email address, username, and password), and they'll notify you by email when a new issue comes out. Like the cool service that it is, your issues don't expire, and you can view them as often as you like. Another nice piece of this service is that you can either read it online or offline on your computer, iDevice, or Android. That means you can read it whenever you want to, wherever you want to, on whatever you want to.

So the next time you need Car and Driver, Billboard, or US Weekly, sign up with Zinio and get it for free!