Leafing through a magazine on the Internet usually cannot compare to the real experience, but tonight "Tech Live" examines a reading application that may soon change that. Zinio Systems offers a free downloadable reader that attempts to bring online reading closer to the experience of browsing a paper magazine. Unfortunately, it has some limitations -- mainly the fact that only one magazine can currently be viewed using it.

To view a digital magazine, you'll first have to download the Zinio Reader, software that's similar to Adobe's Acrobat Reader. Once the reader is installed and launched, a browser-like bar spans its main interface window. Magazines can be downloaded from the company's website. Or if you subscribe to the service, they can be "pushed" to you when they become available from publishers. To access a magazine, you click on a toolbar icon to launch it, or a button in the download window will let you begin reading the magazine immediately after it's downloaded.

Other buttons on the toolbar allow you to highlight text or add annotations. For instance, you can use a highlighter to underscore specific lines of an article. You also can add notes. The feature works similarly to how you might add comments to a spreadsheet or Microsoft Word document -- though we thought the feature needed an "undo" tool, in case you change your mind about the highlighted text. You also can send the magazine to others, complete with highlighted portions or your annotations.