Skim a newspaper online? With the NY Times Skimmer you can!

One of the things that many of us “old timers” miss, when it comes to accessing our news publications online, is that sweet and tactile ability to simply skim the pages.  Most of us have spent many a lazy and lingering moment idly flipping pages and reading opening paragraphs in a hunt for something that more fully consumed our attention.  It is hard to do that online with so much being thrown at you at once.  At least one publisher is trying to recapture a little of that old glory.  The venerable New York Times has launched its new Skimmer!

Launched today, the New York Times Skimmer is designed to recreate that experience of leisurely paging through the paper.  Granted, it is not nearly as tactile. However, it certainly is a fantastic interface.  The grid-like presentation gives you a smattering of headlines and accompanyiong summaries for each section of the paper.  You choose the section from tabs on the right and simply browse the headlines.

Skimmer is actually a web-based application, not a site per se.  It is optimized to work with rious browsers and gives users some degree of control over the display options.  A particulalry neat feature is the text itself. Skimmer is using the actual NY Times fonts!  Thanks to some real innovation at the New York Times, reading the news could yet again become a pleasure!