New York Times updates iPad app with full content, free until 2011

The New York Times is set to update its Editor’s Choice iPad app — which only offers a select amount of content — with a new version tomorrow that offers much more content from its website, media-and-technology news site PaidContent reports.

The update iPad app will offer content like breaking news, video and other multimedia, as well as deeper access to the New York Time’s archive. Full access to the app will be free for now, but come next year when the NYT begins its “metered model” to charge repeat viewers of its site, a subscription will be required. There’s no word yet on how much the app subscription will cost, but the paper tells Paid Content that it will probably offer monthly and annual subscription options.

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For now, users will still have to register for a free NYTimes.com account to gain full access to the new app, which includes more than 25 sections of content and around 50 blogs. Unregistered users will have access to top news, business and video, as well as the most emailed stories. Eventually, the company expects to update its iPhone app in a similar manner.

The new iPad app also comes with some new features: A navigation bar at the bottom of articles will let users find other stories easily, and you’ll also be able to receive pop-up alerts for breaking news when its closed. It will be able to display full-screen photos, unlike the previous iPad app, and eventually it will allow users to save articles within the app (which the iPhone version already supports).

Instead of being the end of the more restrictive Editor’s Choice version, the paper views the new app as more of an upgrade. As limited as the Editor’s Choice app was, it still managed more than 650,000 downloads since it launched on the iPad in April (the iPhone news app has been downloaded more than 5 million times since its July 2008 release).

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