Pimp My News – iPhone Optimized Talking Social News Site
PimpMyNews is a new ‘talking social news site’. It offers a pretty nice combo of features, that look especially good for when you’re feeling lazy about reading (maybe just tired of staring at screens) and want to catch up on the news with minimal effort.
The first thing it does that stands out is it provides an audio clip (that plays in QuickTime player in the browser) of each of the top news stories. So you can quickly glance down the list of headlines, pick one that interests , you and tap once to have it read out to you.
The next handy thing PimpMyNews does well – and that helps justify the ‘social news’ tag – is give you a nice one-tap selection of popular social network sites to share or clip an item to. As you can see in the screencap to the right, it offers a nice article summary view along with links for Digg, Del.icio.us, Facebook, and other popular sharing sites.
There’s also a big, easy button for emailing an articl
e to a friend or colleage, right alongside each headline. At the bottom of each page there are links to report a mispronunciation, tell a friend about the site, and suggest f eeds to add to it.
PimpMyNews shows 10 pages worth of Top News headlines, along with 10 pages of Top Blog sites’ news. It’s got a pretty simple and splashy sort of graphics and color scheme.
Right now, all the articles are read out by a fairly neutral accented male voice. I wonder whether in future you’ll be able to choose among a few options, as you can with many in-car Sat-Nav systems and similar (so that guys can always choose the husky voiced woman!).
There is also a full browser version of PimpMyNews – which I have to admit, I had never heard of before discovering the iPhone site (full site is just www.pimpmynews.com)
Give Pimp My News a look at:
I just recently started using PimpMyNews. I have been creating playlists for my iPod with the news sources they provide online. It saves me a lot of time in the mornings, and when I can’t read the paper, I still get an update on what is happening. The voice might need some work, but it isn’t bad, and they have a way to submit errors you hear, in an effort to improve the audio aspect of things. You should give this a try!
This site and application are great! Being able to catch the news while on the go has proved to be very beneficial. I get only the news that is relevant to me instead of sifting through overwhelming sources of information. highly recommended! Its easy to use and its FREE!!!
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