I’m quite amazed by the Guardian’s new print-your-own newspaper, G24. In size and format it’s almost exactly what I’ve been wanting to see a national newspaper do for years now; it’s what I hoped the Guardian or Independent might become when they switched from broadsheet to tabloid.

It’s much smaller than a tabloid (A4, of course - has to print nicely) but packs far more words into a dozen pages that you’ll ever see in the first 12 pages of a typical issue of Metro.

Plus, because the whole thing is compiled automatically all day, every day, the thing you download is always up-to-date, the most up-to-date kind of newspaper you can carry away with you. It’s bloody clever, another market-leading idea from the Guardian’s new media gang, who continue to cut a path a long way ahead of the other UK online newspapers. I predict G24 will be a success with intelligent commuters, backpackers who don’t want to pay for Guardian Weekly (in fact, it probably spells doom for Guardian Weekly), and those who work unusual office hours.

In some respects you can tell it’s been put together by a computer. There are odd layout quirks - large gaps, or a single line of a story hanging over into the following page - but overall it looks very professionally produced and is a delight to read. Doesn’t take long, either; just right for a tea break or a Tube journey.

I don’t suppose it will remain free for long, though. I just hope that when they do start charging for it, they’ll opt for a sensible low-cost price-per-issue rather than a subscription; after all, most people won’t want to commit to reading it regularly, they just want to read it when they think they’ve got the time. That’s not something you can pay up front for.