I’m delighted to see Guardian Unlimited leading the way once again with a brand new feature launched this week: G24. Essentially, this presents a multi-page almost magazine-formatted downloadable PDF digest of the very latest news on the website, so that one can print it off and read the very latest news at one’s leisure.

The G24 (a play on the names of ‘G2’ and ‘G3’ sections of the paper) currently comes in five editions: Top Stories, World, Media, Business, and Sport, each updated every fifteen minutes and containing no more than 10 A4 pages.

The launch is covered in more detail in the Editor’s Week column of today’s Grauniad:

This week Guardian Unlimited launched a new print edition – but unlike any newspaper you’ll have come across before. For a start, its distinguishing features appear to owe more to the world of online news than traditional print. It is updated every few minutes, is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, is free, and it can be found around the world.

The big difference is that we’re now asking you to, in essence, supply the printing press.

Is this the future of the newspaper? I don’t know. But it’s definitely a service I’ll be using (indeed, it’s one I’d probably be willing to pay for, as I already do for an ad-free Guardian site), and I will be amazed if this isn’t imitated within weeks by competitors.

I think this is a really good idea.