See us now, get the app soon

You can already land on the philly.com and branching Daily News site on an iPad through the Safari browser. If the eyesight's good, you won't even need the device's zoom-in function to read text on that good-sized, supersharp screen.

But the iPad's incompatability with Adobe Flash Player technology (used in animated advertisements) can cause lockups.

Better news - a "unique app" customized for the iPad is on the way for Philadelphia's papers, said Brian Tierney, CEO of Philadelphia Media Holdings, owner of the Daily News and the Inquirer. "We hope to have something up in 60 to 90 days. I didn't want us to wait for a consortium of papers to do something. I wish we had had the opportunity to get our hands on one of these a few weeks ago to launch even sooner."

Tierney has hired a site designer, Mario Garcia, and says the plan is "to do something truly new and different - and charge from day one as well" - as the Wall Street Journal and USA Today will be doing after free trials of their iPad apps.

- Jonathan Takiff