I have been on a riff lately, trying to find ways to upend the status-quo and try doing something different.
My opportunity came.
Last week the The New York Post decided to erect a paywall for anyone trying to visit their site on an iPad to view their content. I don't find paywalls to be intrinsically wrong, it's just that discriminating based upon the type of the device was an odd choice. You gotta make money somehow-- I get that--and maybe the NYP thinks this is one way to monetize their newspaper business in an increasingly digital world. However, pissing readers off isn't necessarily a good place start. I wouldn't be making a stink if they were uniform in their paywall approach, putting it up for *all* users visiting the site, not just iPad owners.
I thought this would be a golden moment to do something quite a bit daring and create an iPad app that is able to browse the NYP website without all the hassle. Enter:
NYP Climber. Essentially, you get a browser with a couple features baked in, like Instapaper support, that make reading content a lot easier. For a cool 99 cents you can pick it up. I've got a free version that is still waiting on Apple, but you can expect that soon.
For a small wall as this, there are multiple ways around it: dig, bomb, walk around, or in this case, climb. The way I see it, luck favors the bold, so suit up.