Here is the second thing I ‘ve discovered thanks to a new Twitter follower over the last couple of days “ and one I ‘m very happy about. Newsflash is a new iPhone app “ produced by students at the University of Missouri “ that may just be the best iPhone news app I ‘ve seen yet “ and I ‘ve seen, and liked, a lot of them.
There are a number of very good news apps already available for the iPhone “ from the AP ‘s Mobile News app to strong entries from The New York Time, The Wall Street Journal, and various others. The problem is, as in several other app categories, it ‘s very easy to find several you like and end up with a whole lot of home screen space chewed up by these “ and they all count against that ceiling imposed by Apple for the maximum number of apps you can have on your phone (currently 148 apps in firmware 2.x).
Newsflash offers a potential solution for you if you want to have a lot of good news sources but don ‘t want to end up with 20 apps in order to get them.
Newsflash pulls news items from a large number of leading sources. I ‘m not sure exactly how many sources it uses, but the sources I ‘ve seen in just a brief time with the app include: the Associated Press, Reuters, the BBC, The Guardian newspaper, The New York Times, The Washington Post, FOXNews, The Los Angeles Times, ESPN, MLB.com, and lots of others.
So you get tons of good sources in just one app “ and this is not an RSS reader app, it is a full news program, much like those offered by the WSJ and others, with some nifty features that make it very nice to work with. For instance
A fresh, new Front Page treatment “ The Front Page screen is not just a listing of news items as in many other apps “ but a screen full of icons for main topic areas “ like Politics, Headlines, Technology, Business, World, Sports, and Entertainment.
Even better, it ‘s very easy to customize this front page to your taste. Just hit the + button on the bottom bar and enter a name for your section, a search term it will feature, and choose an icon for it. So, for example, in under a minute I can create a new section called ‘Manny ‘, set it to use Manny Pacquiao as its search term, choose a photo of Manny from my photo library, and then tap on that icon on the front page and check out a news stream specific to the best pound-for-pound fighter on the planet.
You can also create “ just as quickly and easily “ a custom ‘Local ‘ icon for your front page “ so I ‘ve now got one called Austin, based on my zip code and providing local news.
Of course, it ‘s simple to edit the front page “ and get rid of any items you ‘re not interested in “ including the built-in main topics.
So just to recap, the score so far is: news from lots of top sources, custom news streams for topics that interest you, and local news “ all one tap away on the front page.
You can bookmark items that interest you, for quicker access later on via the Bookmarks icon in the bottom nav bar.
The app also has a history tab “ so you can browse back through what you ‘ve been reading recently.
In fact, all of the app ‘s four nav bar items are very useful. They are: Add (to add an item to the front page as described above), Bookmarks, History, and Search “ which lets you search for whatever you ‘re keen to read up on.
The app ‘s inline browser is very nice, and quick. It shows a good summary page for each story
And the full article also displays well, and you can use normal pinch and tap to zoom gestures on these pages, or email a story, or choose to open it in Safari
My only small complaint about Newsflash is that its listing view for each news section is pretty drab looking “ with all stories displayed on a grey background that doesn ‘t appeal much to me. These section views could do with some design enhancements I think.
Navigation within the app is easy and comfortable, and the functionality of the app is superb.
I really like Newsflash. It delivers a lot of strong features, especially for a free app. Right now, if I had to narrow myself down to just one news application on the iPhone, this would be the one.
You can find Newsflash in the App Store now, and it is free.
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TAGS: iphone apps, iPhone news apps
