The News360 iPad App is Like Crack for this News Addict

As long as I can remember I have always been a news addict. A habit that has been passed down from my father back in Nova Scotia. An early picture even shows me struggling to open a copy of Sports Illustrated. I would read the local newspapers front to back, gobble up every news magazine I could get my hands on.

These days of course, we have instant access to hundreds of thousands of news sources including web sites, blogs and news feeds. Having access to the web through mobile devices such as the iPhone and iPad has now taken my news addiction to a new level.

Introducing News360

On Monday, development company News360 released News360 for the Pad. News360 is a Moscow-based company dedicated to helping readers experience personalized news. They’ve used linguistic metadata analysis and algorithms to identify trends within the feeds of news sources from around the world. Interface design was provided by Motka Design Studio.

Over a 1000 News Sources

News360 aggregates feeds from over 1000 different news sources, including CNN, Fortune, New York Times, BBC, Guardian, Wall Street Journal and many more.

The news feeds can be sorted by Stories or Sources, as well as using GPS to locate stories near you. You can see recent tweets on the story or view the story and photos from any of the news sources that it had appeared in.

Deep Dive into background material

One of the more interesting features allows you to turn on highlighted hyperlinks. These links lead you to further background information on all the key people, companies, and subjects within the story. Once you’ve absorbed the background material you’re presented with more even more focused news stories on that keyword.

Customized Feeds

Create your own customized feed by using the My Sources/My Stories feature. Simply drag and drop icons for hundreds of sources and story subjects to the top of the screen and you’re ready to go.

I Like to Look at Pictures

If you like to look at pictures you’re in luck. Simply turn your iPad on its side and you’ll be looking at a series of scrolling news photos. Tap a photo and you see a headline, tap again and you can read the story with access to the hyperlinks as mentioned above.

Sharing is Good

Stories can be shared to Facebook, Twitter, ReadItLater (my favorite), Instaper and Email. Stories can also be saved to your iPad to be accessed later.

The site takes interface design and functionality cues from such popular news apps like Pulse News Reader, Huffington Post’s News Glide and of course Flipboard. However, the GPS feature for local news and keyword hyperlinking are features that I can really appreciate and use.

OK, enough writing I need to go get my news fix.

Fragmentation of the Reading Platform

I have always been an avid reader of newspapers and books offline. In the past 6 months I have introduced audio and digital books into the mix. I find that what I read has not changed, but the ways I consume my reading certainly has. Not only am I using multiple devices, I am consuming the very same content across several of them.

For example, I enjoy business books. I tend to listen to the audio version first to get an overview. One of the benefits of audio books is that you can get through the content quickly. If the concepts are worthwhile I’ll also download the digital book for reference. As a visual learner, I absorb the concepts better by reading the text, and can easily recall the information when I reference it in the future. The significantly lower prices of the audio and digital books also enable me to double up on the same content. The price of the audio and digital versions combined typically are equal to the price of a physical book today.

As another example, I read the newspaper daily. I typically read the digital version on my iPad while commuting, then seek out the same article on the web once I arrive at work, then share it out through twitter, email, etc.

Reflecting on my own experience, I’m seeing further fragmentation of the reading platform market happen as it has with other media and channels. When television became popular, it did not eliminate print and radio; when e-commerce became available, it did not eliminate brick-and-mortar retail. Each medium and channel simply adjusted and found its place in the mix. Some content and product categories fair better in the old format (e.g. groceries in retail) while others were transformed into an Internet-based business (e.g. FTD.com).

Like all other media and channels beforehand, each book platform will have its place in the ecosystem based on its strengths and weaknesses. Some genres will sustain themselves better in their traditional forms while others may see greater transformation depending on the customer attitudes and platform compatibility. For example, I can see science fiction novels fairing well in audio versions distributed through digital players (e.g. mp3 players, ipods), given the technology aptitude of the these readers and the compatibility of novels with audio versions. On the other hand, text books will hold strong in visual formats.

It’ll be interesting to see how things shake out, but for now it’s fun to be right in the middle of this transformation.

5 Most Viewed Articles on the Delvinia Link Pool: Jan 03 – Jan 09

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  Good

Click here to see what links we’re sharing this week.

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