Read Economist for free on your Kindle

One conundrum in publication industry, as Steve Jobs once pointed out, is that not many companies figured out how to monetize their digital contents. The websites set up by the worldwide giant newspapers or magazines have been up and running for over a decade, yet one can still access almost all articles for free of charge. With smartphones and tablets as better replacement for paper media, different ways of consumption such as Newsstand on iOS and Kindle by Amazon, are provided to potential subscribers; nevertheless, it does not sound like a good bargain when you can just launch a different icon(a browser) for free access. With Jobs' tight integration model always hard to break through, here is the solution I found on how to read my favourite yet most pricy(Economist) on my favourite reading device(Kindle).

* Sign up to this website(or more conveniently, sign-in using a Google ID): Kindle4rss This website can basically collect articles on rss feeds you enter, and send to your Kindle address as a book, which seems to me no different from any magazines I have bought via Kindle store. I believe this Chinese company has a great product, and it's sad to see not many people are seeing the potential of what it can do.

* Goto Settings->Your Kindle, enter your free.kindle.com email address. If you are unsure, lookup from this page at Amazon.com. Also be sure to add your designated sender address from Kindle4rss back in your personal document settings at Amazon as approved personal document e-mail list.

* Goto Economist RSS Feeds page, pick your favourite sections in print edition or topics, copy(you can do this by right clicking the link then select "copy link address" or equivalent depending on the browser) and paste in the addresses in the search box on top of the Kindle4rss webpage. This is even better than buying the whole magazine as this filters out all topics you are not interested in.

* Once Kindle4rss finishes collecting the new articles, press "Send *** new items now" button on the left. Turn WiFi on your Kindle, and wait for a new 

What if I don't have a Kindle? Amazon graciously made the Kindle app available on all major platforms. You now get a free.kindle.com email address for all devices to which you install Kindle app.

Upgrade to pro? free account limits numbers of feeds to 12 and articles to 25, but I don't have problem with that and also going back to the website once a week(every Friday when the new issue is released) and pressing Send button. However, for only $1.90 a month through Paypal, you can remove that contraint as well as have the articles automatically sent to your Kindle.