In this post, I’ll share with you some answers to questions PressDisplay.com users asked about our home page. Feel free to suggest other questions for this post and we’ll do our best to answer them. Also, don’t forget to check out the help files on PressDisplay.com related to this area.

1. What’s the difference between Editors’ Picks and Readers’ Choice?

In 2006, we introduced “article ranking” in PressDisplay.com. Top stories on our home page were determined by an algorithm which measured how long people actually spent reading an article. We didn’t measure how many clicks a story received, because people may click on a story because of its title and then abandon it when they see that the story isn’t interesting for them.

And we didn’t just measure the value of a story by what an editor thought should be a top story (typically those stories on the front page of papers, with big fonts, pictures and continuing on internal pages, etc).

We measured the length of time people actually spent reading each article in PressDisplay.com and then assigned a rank to that article. We show the rankings using small green cells beside each article. Notice the story shown below has ranked 4 out of 5 – an interesting story, according to 0ur readers.

We award 5 green cells for the most interesting stories – i.e those stories that retained readers’ interest the longest.

Then every 10 minutes we recalculate the article rank based on latest reader data we have received and refresh the home page so you always know which stories our readers enjoyed the most.

Today we also offer a feature which allows readers to choose if they want to see what editors picked as the top stories of the day OR what other readers actually thought were the most interesting stories OR a combination of both.

A new control has been added to the top right corner of PressDisplay.com. Here’s what it looks like:

Just use the red sliding bar to choose which perspective you want (Readers’ Choice……Editors’ Picks) and then use the green slide bar to apply your choice to your news sources (All sources…… My Newspapers).

I think you’ll be surprised to see how different the two views can be. And don’t forget if you want to see what the top stories were from the different perspectives for each of the last 7 days, just use the calendar control at the top of the display under the headline ticker tape control to select a different day.

2. Why do I see mostly English stories even though I’ve selected multiple languages to show the news in?

All the stories that appear on the home page of PressDisplay.com, including top stories, business stories, sports stories, entertainment, etc are based on what a user chooses as his sources for the home page and whether he wants to see editors’ picks or readers’ choice stories (or a combination).

If the highest ranked stories by editors or readers are mostly English stories (and English is one of the languages you selected), then you’ll see more English stories than stories in other languages. In fact, often you may only see English stories on the home page. This is not too surprising given the number of English newspapers we carry and the popularity of the articles in them.

If you want to see stories in other languages (other than English), then just de-select English and refresh your display. Stories in your other languages are sure to appear.

3.  How are stories picked for the home page?

I recently saw an email into our Customer Support group questioning our implementation of our home page and the selection of articles that appear.  Here’s what a customer shared with us:

 ”I’ve just resumed my Press Display subscription and I’m really enjoying the unlimited plan.  But I question your news judgment on the website’s front page.  How do you pick the stories?  I have it set to “all sources” and “editor’s picks”, but I see nothing about the day’s most important story from my viewpoint, the California fires.  You’d see that story on most of your own newspaper’s front pages, and you have excellent coverage from the Los Angeles Times, but there’s nothing on your front page about it.  Instead you are highlighting a provincial political story from Alberta.

In sports, it’s opening day of the World Series, which I would think is worth a mention on the home page, but instead you have highlighted day-to-day hockey stories.  You have the Boston Herald from one of the home cities, and a Colorado paper from a medium sized city, but nothing to point readers to those papers.  I know you are Canadian-based, and I have no problem with Canadian news.  Many of “My Newspapers” are Canadian.  But I doubt that you intend your front page to be so narrowly focused on Canada.  It could be a lot more useful and inviting to the Press Display service if it took a broader view.”

First, let me thank this subscriber for his frank and helpful comments.   I am pleased to say that, as a result of this request and a few others we received asking for more customization features for the home page, we are going to add Country to the list of My Sources, thus filtering news even further to meet the needs of readers.  For new visitors to PressDisplay.com, who haven’t selected a country, we will display content based on their IP address by default, until they make a different selection.

I hope this helps.  Thanks for all your product suggestions.  Please keep them coming!

Gayle

In this post, I’ll share with you some answers to questions PressDisplay.com users asked about our title selections.  Feel free to suggest other questions for this post and we’ll do our best to answer them.  Also, don’t forget to check out the help files on PressDisplay.com related to this area.

1. Why do you not carry the NYT or WSJ?

There are some newspaper publishers (like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal) who have invested heavily in their own online editions and are not yet prepared to share them on an aggregated news site. 

Both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are part of our Print-on-Demand service, but have not yet taken the next step to join the PressDisplay.com family. 

However, we at NewspaperDirect are hopeful that this will change in the future and we will continue to negotiate for their inclusion in our continually expanding list of titles. 

Note, we do have the Wall Street Journal Europe and the Wall Street Journal Asia. 

We won’t give up.  Perhaps you could send the publishers you want to see on PressDisplay.com  a little encouragement?   Just don’t tell them I sent you.

2. Can I choose different papers within the 31 issues under my economy plan?

Absolutely.  Although the 31 issues was based around the number of days in a month (for people who like their favorite daily newspaper sent to them every day with an email alert), you are not limited by the choice of papers or by time.  You could choose all 31 different issues in one day or choose different issues over an extended period, even beyond a month.  It’s up to you what papers you choose and when you choose them.

3. Why don’t you carry more magazines?

The answer to this is very much like the answer to question 1 above.  We’d love to have more magazines, but many magazines are still tied to their own electronic editions.  We’ll continue to pursue these, however, as our goal is to continue to provide you with the widest selection of full replica publications anywhere on the internet. 

Which magazines would you like to see on PressDisplay.com?

4. Every day I seem to be receiving an email from PressDisplay.com, indicating that some newspaper or magazine title has been released. What is this all about?

The Newspaper alert is one of our free and handy features available at PressDisplay. It lets you know when your favorite publication is available for your reading enjoyment on PressDisplay.com. This is often before the issue hits local newsstands. Subscription to this feature was part of the registration process when you first visited to PressDisplay™.

5. How can I subscribe to this Newspaper alert?

To manage your email alerts and newspapers within My Newspapers, simply click on Edit. In the ‘My account’ console you will be able to add and remove newspapers to My Newspapers as well as manage all newspaper alerts.

6. I don’t want to receive Newspaper alerts. Is there an easy way to stop these emails?

Absolutely. You can either click on the ‘Unsubscribe’ link in the actual email you’ve received, or visit ‘My Newspapers’. Once logged in you may choose to delete newspaper alerts.

In this post, I’ll share with you some answers to questions PressDisplay.com users asked about our reading interface.  Feel free to suggest other questions for this post and we’ll do our best to answer them. Also, don’t forget to check out the help files on PressDisplay.com related to this area.

1. I’d like to print out the whole paper.  How do I do that?
 
In PressDisplay.com a subscriber can print a single article (using the print icon in the tool bar at the top of the text view window) or a full page (using the print icon in the bottom tool bar).  So the only way to print the whole paper is to print it a page at a time.

I realize this is rather inconvenient, but it is designed to protect our publishers.   If we supported full paper printing, a monthly subscriber paying less than $10 per month could print an unlimited number of copies of a paper and sell them on the street, with no revenue going to the publisher.   We need to discourage this behavior, while still providing some printing capabilities to our subscribers.  So we compromised by offering page and article printing.

However, we do have other services at NewspaperDirect for people who want to print full newspapers.  Just check out our Print On Demand service for more information.

2. When will you offer Safari support?

We are pleased to share with you that Safari support is just around the corner.  Look for an announcement in the coming weeks.

3. What is SmartNavigation?
Our proprietary software processes newspaper files as they arrive from the publishers and intelligently recognizes images and articles. These files are then presented to readers in an interactive format, allowing readers even greater functionality from their selected publication. Coupled with the existing digital tools, SmartNavigation provides readers with advanced digital tools such as:

• Table of Contents
  A table of contents will appear on the upper right hand side of the page. By simply moving your cursor over “A1 Front Page” a complete list of articles, by section, will appear. For fast linking to a specific article simply select the article and you will be automatically be directed to that article.
• Article Text View
  Each article is recognized as unique object within the newspaper. This means that by simply selecting the title of any given article a plain text view will appear. This makes copying-cutting-and-pasting articles very efficient.
• Article Jumps
  If an article is divided onto more than one page, simple click on the “See Article Y, Page X” and you will be immediately brought to the remainder of the article.
• Instant Translation
  When an article is in a text view, readers have the option to translate the text into one of several major foreign languages. Simply select the desired translation language from the drop down menu. NewspaperDirect’s translation feature provides a general interpretation of an article’s content, but does not represent an exact translation. Please note that NewspaperDirect is not liable for the accuracy of any translation as all text are automatically translated without manual verification of correctness.

4. What is Article Rank?
Article Rank is the most innovative way of assessing the interest of any given article by our reader. The more time readers spend reading a given article, the higher the Article Rank of the article. By ranking articles this way, PressDisplay displays the articles that readers believe are most interesting. The Article Rank fluctuates though out the day; thereby, reflecting reader habits.   

5. Are there any translation capabilities on this site, or is every newspaper only readable in its native language?
All newspapers are published in their original language. NewspaperDirect’s proprietary SmartNavigation allows supported titles (distinguished by )to be translated into one of several major foreign languages. Simply click on the article title for a text view. Within the text view a toolbar will appear along the top of the article under “Translate to.” Simply select the language in which you wish to read the current article. An automatic translation will appear. This translation is a general interpretation of an article’s content, but does not represent an exact translation. Please note that NewspaperDirect is not liable for the accuracy of any translation.

In this post, I’ll share with you some answers to questions PressDisplay.com users asked about our search and monitoring tools.  Feel free to suggest other questions for this post and we’ll do our best to answer them.  Don’t forget to check these two related posts:

Monitoring Just the News 

No Cost Monitoring of Printed Newspapers

And also the help files on PressDisplay.com related to this area.

1. Can I set up an RSS feed based on my search criteria?

Currently, with PressDisplay.com you can receive either the front page of the newspaper OR the complete newspaper every time it is published on PressDisplay.com.  You cannot set up an RSS feed based on your search criteria at this time.
However, we recognize the value of this feature and so we have added it to our development plan and hope to be able to announce it shortly.

2. Can I set up a monitor to only search specific newspapers?

Yes.  Check out this short video that shows you how to do it.

In this post, I’ll share with you some answers to questions PressDisplay.com users asked about our information management tools.  Feel free to suggest other questions for this post and we’ll do our best to answer them. Also, don’t forget to check out the help files on PressDisplay.com related to this area.

1. Can I save articles in PressDisplay.com so I can retrieve them even after the issue is no longer available as a back issue to me?
Yes, that is one of the great benefits of using PressDisplay.com bookmarks.

Bookmarks are a very convenient way to save stories or pages of interest indefinitely, even after they are removed from our available back issues list.  And you can still share articles on those bookmarked pages through email or your blog.

Check out this post where I show you how to create and manage your bookmarks.  How to organize YOUR content on PressDisplay.com

2. What is RSS?
A: RSS is a format for syndicating news and the content of news related web sites. By using RSS programs, called news aggregators, you can easily keep up with all of your favorite newspapers by checking their RSS feeds which display new content as soon as it is published online.

3. How can I use RSS?
A: To begin using RSS, readers must use RSS reader desktop client or any web-based aggregator which can present new articles in a list, giving a line or two of each article and a link to the full article or post. There are multiple programs that can be downloaded free. Here are two to consider:
http://www.download.com/FeedDemon/3000-9227-10252579.html
http://www.download.com/RssFeedEater/3000-9227_4-10467867.html?tag=lst-0-6

For a full list of aggregators visit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_news_aggregators#Web_based_aggregators

Select the newspaper for which you wish to receive an RSS feed. Select the RSS icon and you will be instructed to copy the URL(s) into your RSS Reader.

In this post, I’ll share with you some answers to questions PressDisplay.com users asked about our PressReader software.  Feel free to suggest other questions for this post and we’ll do our best to answer them. Also, don’t forget to check out the help files on PressDisplay.com related to this area.

1. Why can’t I save a paper as a PDF?

The PressReader software was designed to give users the same rich experience they receive when reading their newspapers in PressDisplay.com, plus some additional enhancements such as: 

• New Interface – read and manage your publications with incredible ease and clarity
• SmartNavigation – utilize text view and other powerful advanced tools
• Search – search all content held within your library
• Subscriptions – create and manage your subscriptions
• Recent Issues – return to your most recently read issues

Due to the offline storage limitations imposed by our publishers we are not able to provide PDF support where users could export an entire paper into PDF. There would be no way we could control the life of the document or the printing of it.  As you are aware, printing of newspapers in PressDisplay.com is limited to articles and single pages only.

Note, however, that you can print to PDF an individual article or a page in a newspaper in the same way you send a file to a printer.

In this post, I’ll share with you some answers to questions PressDisplay.com users asked about our mobile version of PressDisplay.com.  Feel free to suggest other questions for this post and we’ll do our best to answer them. Also, don’t forget to check out the help files on PressDisplay.com related to this area.

1. What features of PressDisplay.com are not available with the mobile version?

While all content from PressDisplay.com is available on smart mobile devices there are few features that are still in development.  They include: Bookmarks, Email sharing, Blogging, Monitors, NewspaperRadio

We are continuing to enhance the mobile version of PressDisplay.com and will be announcing new features over the next few months so please stay tuned…

In this post, I’ll share with you some answers to questions PressDisplay.com users asked about our pricing plans.  Feel free to suggest other questions for this post and we’ll do our best to answer them.  Also, don’t forget to check out the help files on PressDisplay.com related to this area.

1. Why would I subscribe to PressDisplay.com when there are so many free news sites available?

There are many features available in PressDisplay.com that you cannot get with free news sites, such as:

• 100% full content replicas of hundreds of printed newspapers (ie. Many front page stories from printed newspapers are not available on free news sites)
• article ranking (readers’ choice versus editors’ picks),
• advanced search and monitoring of printed news
• newspaper radio,
• downloading of full newspaper replicas for offline reading

to name a few…

Let me give you one example of how PressDisplay.com’s free news monitoring compares with other free news alerts:

Many consumers and companies rely on online news searches from services such as Google News or Yahoo News to be notified when a news article contains a specific word or phrase, however these services can only locate online mentions and only for those media outlets that do not require a subscription to see the original content.

PressDisplay.com provides access to exact replicas of every printed issue in its roster of global newspapers, and also shows the article in its original context, exactly as it appears in the printed edition.  This equates to significant added value to business, such as:

• Understand prominence. Business executives and PR agencies can see exactly how a company or product (or advertisement) was positioned in the printed publication relative to other stories or advertisements (e.g. section and page placement, font size, position of pictures, format, etc.).

• Build better clip reports. Copies of the original, color article, complete with any graphics, can be added to media kits or used in legal documentation where referencing original printed newspapers is required.

• Articles can be translated on the fly in up to 12 languages, so stories that reference a company or product in a foreign language newspaper are instantly accessible to readers in their native language.

• Share and collaborate. Smart bookmarks allow subscribers to set up folders for hot topics in their industry, competitors, partners, or clients, providing a central repository that everyone in their company can access.

• And, with a corporate PressDisplay.com subscription, anyone in the company can contribute to these shared folders with their own search results, creating a collaborative environment for sharing market, industry, competitive, partner and customer news.

Visitors to PressDisplay.com can create up to three monitors, free of charge, and track items of interest (e.g. company name, person, product, competition or hot topic) and choose to have the results sent to their email inbox either as soon as articles are published or at a specific time each day.

And don’t forget that PressDisplay.com offers flexible subscription plans (from our free plan, to pay-as-you-go, to personal, corporate and professional) where users can try before they buy.

2. How can I subscribe and what are the subscription rates?
You can subscribe to PressDisplay.com with a value-packed plan that best fits your reading habits. Click here to view the subscription plans:
PressDisplay.com Subscription Plans Information

3. How do I upgrade my subscription plan?

Under the “My Services” menu item, enter ‘My account’ console, select Subscription Status and then click on Upgrade Subscription.  It’s a good idea to visit your Subscription Status page on a regular basis, to keep yourself updated on how many newspapers you’ve read this month, and when your next payment is due.

4. Can I later change the email address I used for my registration?

A: Absolutely. Please send your current email address and the new one to our Customer Support Team and all the changes will gladly be done by a member of our team.

5. I am a paid subscriber. I need to cancel my PressDisplay.com/PressReader subscription. What is the best way to proceed?
A: We understand that your needs may change. If you ever need to cancel your subscription to PressDisplay.com (and we hope you won’t), simply log in to www.pressdisplay.com using your existing account credentials and navigate to My Services > My Accounts > My Subscription. Then, select the Pay As You Go plan and click the Continue button. Please note that your recurring subscription will stop immediately.

Or, send a quick note to our Customer Support Team at least 2 business days before your current subscription is scheduled to renew. We will immediately process the cancellation and send you a confirmation for your records.

6. I am a paid subscriber. I need to suspend my PressDisplay.com subscription for a couple of months. Is there a way to do this?
A: Of course! Should you require a suspension of your subscription, please send a quick note to our Customer Support Team at least 2 business days before your current subscription is scheduled to renew. We will immediately process the suspension and send you a confirmation for your records. Then, when you are ready to come back to enjoying your favorite publications on PressDisplay.com, send us another quick note, and we’ll re-activate your account.

In this post, I’ll share with you some answers to questions PressDisplay.com users asked about our sharing tools.  Feel free to suggest other questions for this post and we’ll do our best to answer them. 

Before you check out these FAQ you might want to view this post on bookmarks.  Also, don’t forget to check out the help files on PressDisplay.com related to this area.

1. Is there a limit to the number of articles I can share?

There are different limits on the number of articles you can share per day, depending on your subscription plan.  As of the writing of this post (note these may change in the future), the subscription plans and the sharing limits are as follows:

2. Can I share the whole paper?

With PressDisplay.com you can share individual articles and pages, but you cannot share the whole paper. 

3. What happens when I use up all of my bookmarks? 

If you use up all of your bookmarks, you can upgrade your subscription to a plan that offers the number you need, or you can just delete bookmarks you no longer need and reuse them.

In this post, I’ll share with you some answers to questions PressDisplay.com users asked about our sharing tools.  Feel free to suggest other questions for this post and we’ll do our best to answer them.  Also, don’t forget to check out the help files on PressDisplay.com related to this area.

1. What is blogging?
Blogging refers to blogs which are websites that focus on a particular topic or area of interest. The difference between blogs and a traditional website is that blogs are highly interactive where messages, articles, images and links can be posted and commented upon.

2. How do I begin blogging on PressDisplay?
A: To begin blogging simply select the article to be added to your blog. Select and the text editor will open. The text editor allows bloggers to choose the format in which the article will appear in the blog. Once an article is formatted the blogger must select which blog the article will be posted to. Once selected and formatted, the posting may be submitted for posting, saved as a draft associated with the blog or cancelled.

3. What blogging sites do you support? 

Currently PressDisplay supports the 4 free main blogging sites:
• Blogger
• WordPress
• MSN Spaces
• LiveJournal

Other sites will be added in the future.  Please share with us which blogging sites you would like to see.