“When the iPad happened,” McCue says, “I realized there was an opportunity to bring some of the aesthetics to print, and to the digital world.”

And the app does that.  When married to the iPad’s screen, the effect is magazine-like.  If circulation of weeklies like Newsweek are falling, this is the kind of thing that could prop them up.  News photos — and even newsprint — pop on the screen, it’s super easy to navigate around, and you get to choose the sources on your home page.

Fittingly for a company that’s changing the way we see Facebook and Twitter, Flipboard is funded by, among others, some of the co-founders of those two social network hotshots.

With people actually waiting to download their app, it’s probably just a matter of time before people are willing to pay for it — or at least pay for advertising content inside, as McCue plans.  As cool as the iPad is, the best news about it is that creative people are stepping up to give us cool, good-looking things to do with it.

Flipboard can be found on the iPad.  Scott can be found on Twitter: @scottbudman.