Newsflash is a new and exciting iPhone app that delivers global, local, and customized news to you in a very slick package, with some unique features for an iPhone news app. I recently reviewed it “ check that out HERE to see why I think it may just be the best iPhone news app I ‘ve seen.
The app is doubly interesting to me because of the story behind it. The idea for it came out of a competition at the University of Missouri, and it was developed by four MU students who took it from initial idea to App Store submission in under 6 months.
As we all know, there are plenty of tales of frustration and heartache among apps developers “ so I always love to see the ‘Feel Good ‘ stories like this one, and asked the developers whether I could do a short interview with them. They kindly agreed and Kevin Karsch and I did it via email over the last few days. Read on to read that interview, unedited “ the questions are in bold, and the responses in plain text
Who are the lead developers of the app?
Brian Grinstead, Kevin Karsch, Chris Stein.
Is everyone who took part in development a University of Missouri student? How many people were involved? Care to name them?
Yes. We are all engineering students and have graduated within the past year. A total of four people were involved, the three lead developers, and an MU journalism student, Mary Beth Bergsieker.
Was this part of a University initiative, or an independent project?
The competition was a convergence journalism initiative at MU. It was promoted as an interdisciplinary iPhone application competition in which teams of four students (in varying disciplines, such as journalism, engineering, business, education, etc.) competed against each other. In the beginning, over 20 teams entered the competition, but only five were selected as finalists in the competition. This selection was based purely on an idea that was pitched to judges; no applications were developed prior to this. Fortunately, Newsflash was selected to continue the competition. Once the finalists were selected (in November 2008), each team was given $3000 in funding to develop and promote their application. With this funding, we created the version of Newsflash that’s on the app store now.
What are your plans for updating Newsflash?
Right now, we’re still compiling user requests and input for UI tweaks and other updates users would like to see. We’re also going to be adding support for local news internationally, which the app is currently lacking. Also, we should be able to improve the performance of Newsflash, at least in terms of finding the user’s location. Most of this will be implemented in the next release, although we currently don’t have a timetable for when the next release will be.
How long did Newsflash take to develop – from first idea to submitted for Apple’s approval?
We first came up with the idea as part of the previously mentioned journalism competition in October 2008. We had a full-functioning prototype by December 2008, but we spent the next few months polishing the app and making it more user friendly. There was also a good deal of down-time during development due to other commitments, such as classes and work. Newsflash was first submitted to the app store on March 30th and was accepted on April 26th. To summarize, it took about 6 months from start to finish, but we were not constantly testing and developing during this time.
Are there more apps to come from this group? If so, can you talk a little about what kind?
We have some ideas but aren ‘t ready to announce them yet
Will it always stay free, or are you looking at paid models as well?
At the moment we are planning on keeping it a free app but we are also not against charging for it.
I need to say a big thank you to Kevin and his colleagues for agreeing to do this with me. I find it really interesting to hear about what ‘s gone into getting an app developed and into the App Store, and I hope some of you do as well
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