iLounge

Virgin Digital has released Project, a new multimedia magazine designed specifically for the iPad. Project promises coverage of a wide range of topics including international culture, entertainment, design, business and travel though a free reader app that sells individual monthly issues for $3. Each issue includes content updated daily throughout that month, as well as videos, photo galleries and music. Previously purchased issues can be kept in the app or re-downloaded later at no additional charge. Project requires an iPad running iOS 4.2 or later and is available from the App Store as a free download.

Initial Thoughts on Project from iLounge’s Editors: Despite the hype that’s been circulating recently over the very existence of Project as a rival to News Corp.‘s upcoming iPad-exclusive publication Daily, it’s safe to say that you can easily save $3 by skipping this new magazine. Excited by the prospect of a publication guided by Virgin’s Richard Branson, we instead found Project to be a third-rate clone of the many Adobe-aided iPad magazines we’ve seen before, filling pages with weak, laddie mag-class writing and quite possibly the most useless Jeff Bridges interview we’ve ever read. Apart from its back end, which seeks to fuse what amount to blog-like web updates and comments into the application, there’s precious little novelty here.