Luck Favors The Bold: Climbing Over the New York Post Paywall

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.

Posted on Jun 28
Written by Wayne Hartman