Zinio Reader 4 Enables Multi-platform Access To Interactive Magazines

Zinio, a company focused in digital publishing tech, has just released Zinio Reader 4, an Adobe AIR application that enables access to thousands of magazines — interactive magazines too, and National Geographic celebrates with a freebie.

Zinio Reader 4 allows users to instantly access over 2,000 magazines by utilizing Adobe’s AIR framework. It is essentially a cloud-based digital library that will be synced to your devices.

Users who install this application can pay once for a digital copy of a magazine, and it will instantly be available to the user for reading in its entirety on any platform that supports Adobe AIR. They call this the UNITY platform, and it could be the future of digital publishing.

Unfortunately, Adobe AIR isn’t necessarily our favorite platform; however, it does allow cross-platform usability, and — for that — it is an obvious necessity. After all, if we purchase something, we want it to be everywhere we are, right?

To celebrate this launch, National Geographic is giving away their first interactive magazine: the April 2010 “Water” issue. We can’t argue with free stuff, so go check out the magazine and download Zinio Reader 4 if you’re ready to jump on board the future of the magazine publishing.