Magzter, the Global Mobile Magazine Store! Magzter is the ideal way to browse, buy, and read magazines on your iPad and iPhone. New titles from around the world are added every week

Features

1. Country-based storefront where you can set the country and be shown the latest and best magazines from your country of choice first and improves magazine discoverability
2. Improved magazine reader with better readability options
3. Magazine reader shows individual page loading status and overall magazine download %
4. Improved help tips for all screens
5. Improved search features across magazines including a powerful keyword search
6. Archiving of magazines and individual issues to save valuable space on your iPhone or iPad after you have finished the reading the magazines
7. Social sharing of magazine pages on Facebook and Twitter
8. Enhanced category listings to enable readers to find magazines based on their category and genre and also to find the top magazines in each geographical location
9. Support for Chinese and Arabic magazines with reverse page swiping (left to right) to read these magazines
10. Push notification inside the app of new magazines as they are made available to read or buy

When publishers embed bonus video and audio content, Magzter brings them to your right inside the issue. Enter a contest, take a poll, or follow an interesting website link, all without leaving the magazine.

Cons

1. There’s some stability issues when accessing “store” and new categories that was not previously loaded
2. The magazines still using old publishing model of purchasing & subscriptions that may lose out to free blogs and website news & articles online that’s been aggregated by free applications like Zite & Flipboard.

Overall, the applications feels like a good alternative to paper version of magazines however I experienced some random stability issues even using WIFI connection.

There’s more that can be achieved on digital media if you use iBook author to change existing magazines into full interactive magazines utilising all the sensors of iPad & iPhone like accelerometer, voice, touch, multi-touch and GPS to enhance the experience.

Although there’s some video, audio and links found in the magazines but the overall feeling of the magazine still feels slightly static & almost the same as the paper version.

The loading of the magazine thumbnails sometimes also made the process slow to a pace that’s not acceptable in today’s standards of iOS applications, maybe a progress bar with % completion of loading can help with the waiting.

I’m wondering if Apple is watching this space as it’s almost clear as day that magazines & books are prime targets for Apple’s iAds advertising integration.

Overall, digital publishing have to continuing innovate to capture the first real fully functional interactive & entertaining magazine on the iPad & iPhone. 😀

Magzter is a good beginning and soon more enhancements will improve the digital publishing industry further!