PimpMyNews – the popular web service and application that lets you listen to all the articles on your favorite news and blog sites – has just recently released a native iPhone application.
I posted about PMN on the iPhone ( a web app in those days) about a year ago, and I’ve been a fan of the app ever since. So I’m very happy to see a native iPhone app for it, and I’ve been trying it out for the last few days.
To get started with PMN, you need to go to their website and register (for free) and make yourself a ‘playlist’ – a listing of sites that you like and want to listen to. You can choose from a broad range of categories covering news, sports, technology, entertainment, and lots more – and then choose your preferred sites within each category.
You’ll also want to give what I think is their best feature a try – rolling your own podcast from the sites you like to listen to. You can get this setup in just a few minutes on the site, and then have your own personalized podcast to subscribe to via iTunes or any podcatching service, with just your selected sites’ content all rolled into one for you!
So now let’s take a quick look at the new PMN iPhone app …
PMN has a fairly basic layout, and is easy to use. There are only three nav buttons in its bottom bar, which work as follows:
MyPlaylist – in this section, you can browse through your playlist content, either all mixed together, or one feed at a time. To listen to an individual story that looks interesting, just tap once on the story and it’ll fire up in the iPod player for you.
Quick side note – The female voice that speaks the stories for you is not hugely natural sounding, but it is clear and easily understandable.
MyPodcast – this section is where you listen to your personalized PMN podcast.
Info – in this section you can invite friends to try out PMN, get help or provide feedback on the app, suggest a new blog / site to be included, and report any mispronunciations you’ve spotted while listening. I should mention here that I love the responsiveness of PMN on mispronunciations and suggested new sites. For instance, I suggested that Mobile Orchard be added earlier today. I received the confirmation that they were added within around 2 hours – very nice.
A couple of things that I’d like to see improved in the PMN iPhone app:
I’d definitely like to be able to add new content from the iPhone, rather than having to go to the PMN site on a computer. I don’t mind the idea of the personalized podcast creation needing to be done on a PC, but when I just want to add a new site or two to my playlist, I’d like to be able to browse the categories and do that within this native app.
I’d also like to see PMN recognize – and strip out – blog post ‘header / footer’ type text. For instance, on this site’s RSS feed (which PMN uses) we have a boring copyright statement right at the top of each post, which is meant to be a slight deterrent for ‘splogger’ sites that steal content. It’s very boring hearing this read at the outset of each article when listening to it on PMN.
Overall though, PMN’s native app is a welcome addition to the App Store. It’s a great way to catch up on news when you’re not feeling like reading and just want to kick back and have the news come to you.
PimpMyNews is in the App Store now, at $3.99.
Oh, and PimpMyNews has generously given us 5 promo codes for the app to giveaway – so watch out for a little contest to give those away soon 🙂
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TAGS: iphone apps, PimpMyNews
