There's a review up at Cnet on the New York Times Reader application. This is a WPF application that uses the richness of the PC to display content from the NYT with a better reading experience than you get in a browser.

Unfortunately, I've not been able to try it yet as there doesn't seem to be a download link but there are pictures of the app on the website.

It's an interesting review because, whilst the author seems to like the application, the second half of the review seems to be centered around the ideas that;

1) Rss Readers and web sites should free content creators from building dedicated applications.

2) Users don't want to run different apps for different content.

I must admit that I don't really get that part of the review. 

On (1) it seems to me that sites are constantly building dedicated applications to differentiate themselves by presenting their content in the best way possible. Take Cnet's own new TV service which looks like a dedicated application to me. Now, that application happens to run inside of a browser window but I can't get too excited about whether an application is running in one window or another as either way that application has to be designed, built and maintained.

Also, I'd imagine that a content company like the NYT builds its content once and then goes about transforming it into the delivery mechanism. I'd guess the content lives in a database or some XML definitions and then it gets;

1) Transformed into HTML for the web.

2) Transformed into XAML for the WPF application.

and I'd imagine/hope that it doesn't affect the content authors too much as to how the content is delivered.

The final thing that worries me about (1) is it seems to suggest that "we're done" in that web sites and Rss readers are all the technology that we need in order to deliver the content that people want. I'm still hopeful that the technology can do better than it does today.

On (2) - I think this depends a lot on delivery mechanisms for the applications. If applications like the NYT reader;

1) Automatically install, launch and update securely just as easily as pages on a website.

2) Provide a better experience than running inside of a browser.

then I think people will use them and not really be so conscious of the fact that one Window on their screen is owned by IE (for instance) and another one is owned by some other technology.

So, all in all, I'd like to see more applications like the NYT Reader that show that it's we're still moving forward when it comes to delivering rich content and that we're going to make some use of all that computing power that modern PCs and devices have available to them.