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Mastering the mobile phone frontier

There is little doubt: mobile news is the next great frontier for journalism. Much like the Internet in the mid-nineties, the mobile web is growing at an incredible pace. It doesn’t appear ready to slow down, either.

Happily, mobile news is a market where mainstream media outlets have a distinct advantage. Where anyone can set up a website or blog, the resources to create an effective mobile application and fill it with worthwhile content is almost exclusively in the hands of large web services and major news outlets.

On that front, one of the largest and fastest-growing mobile news platforms has been for Apple’s iPhone. Currently, in the iTunes Applications Directory, there are over 400 different apps in the “News” category. They range in scope from the very specific, such as Cricket RSS, a small application that tracks cricket news, to the traditional, including newspapers and news wire services.

So how do the mobile news applications stack up? Here is a look at three of the top mobile news apps on the iPhone, all associated with major news organisations from across the world and how they compare.

Le Monde

Current iTunes Rating: 4/5 Stars

Le Monde showcases what an individual newspaper can do with a mobile news application.

Le Monde’s application pulls up a list of 15 headlines and their thumbnail images. Clicking a story opens the article within the application itself, displaying the full text and a larger thumbnail of the image. The image can be made full size by simply turning the iPhone onto its side,

The additional tabs on the Le Monde application focus not on other sections, but rather, on other media types. The first is for pictures, which provides a list of 10 photo galleries, each of which contain multiple images. The galleries can be viewed either vertically or horizontally, adjusted by turning the iPhone on its side, and can be navigated by using the touch gestures.

The second tab is entitled “Sen.” It displays the most emailed stories of the day. The third tab is for videos, which once again integrates with the iPhones YouTube application to display them. Finally, in the “More” tab, Le Monde provides access to some of their other sections, including business, international news and sports.

Outside of the lack of a “Local” tab and the ability to save stories, Le Monde manages to match the Associated Press feature for feature. And it manages to make the application both look better and load faster. Le Monde’s application has many small touches, such as having images fade in as they load rather than just appear.

It has a polished look that makes the application both functional and practical.
Le Monde’s application does not have any advertising in it at this time.

Associated Press Mobile News Network

Current iTunes Rating: 3/5 Stars

The AP iPhone app is one of the most popular and best-loved applications. It is a simple, powerful, fast and effective news app that sets a high bar for others.

When you load up the AP app, you are presented with 10 headlines along with thumbnail images. Clicking on one of the headlines loads up the story within the application, along with a photo gallery that can be activated by clicking the “Photos” button. You can then scroll through the photo gallery using the phone’s touch gestures, namely flicking the images side-to-side, and even view the images horizontally by turning the iPhone on its side.

Every story can be sent to a friend, either via text message or e-mail. You can also save the story in a special folder within the application or you can even add your own report.

However, the most powerful feature of the AP application is that you can view your local news (if you are within the United States). By giving the applications your zip code, you are presented with news for your region in a “Local” tab. There is also a sports tab and a “Showbiz” tab, which covers entertainment news. Both the sports and entertainment tabs have their own photo and video galleries. The videos display via integration with the iPhone’s YouTube application.

There is also a “More” tab that lets you view news specific to politics, business, lifestyle and a dozen other topics as well as reading your saved articles and performing a search of the available stories.

Most of the pages within the application display a small advertisement at the bottom. When you first load a page, such as a story, the ad appears over some of the text but vanishes after a couple of seconds, moving itself to the footer of the story or the end of the headline list.

The AP iPhone application is a solid product and provides a great example to other news application developers as how to build a simple, but powerful news reader for the iPhone. Best of all, it is filled with great content from the AP.

BBCReader

Current iTunes Rating: 2.5/5 Stars

BBCReader is an unofficial iPhone application that integrates with BBC content via RSS feeds. The BBC itself does not have an iPhone application. Instead, it provides an iPhone-friendly version of its site that functions very similar to one. However, the BBCReader application gives the appearance of a professional application. As with both the AP and Le Monde, the application loads up with a collection of over 30 headlines with and image thumbnails for them. But the BBCReader also includes a brief snippet of the article itself.

One unique feature is the ability to switch between a generic news front page, a page with only stories for the UK and another with only stories related to the Americas. You can also choose what three tabs are shown, choosing different regions of the world.

The application offers a “Pictures” tab, which lets the user scroll through the various images and click through to related stories. The application also offers a history function, which lets users look at the stories they previously opened. An “Info” tab that allows users to manage the content they’ve downloaded, including what they can view offline.

As with the other applications, the “More” tab allows users to access additional sections such as additional regions, sports, technology, entertainment and so forth.

Although the BBCReader application introduces several new and interesting features, the drawback is that, since it is not an official BBC application, clicking the headlines does not open the story up within the application but rather brings up the page on the BBC site with an integrated browser. This greatly slows down the reading experiences by requiring users to re-size the page to make the text legible and causing the browser to load elements, such as navigation bars, that are not a part of the story.

Furthermore, the application itself simply feels slow. Scrolling through the headlines seems sluggish, likely due to the large number of headlines presented, and loading images and stories takes longer than both the AP and Le Monde’s app.

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Flickr images from users N’ayez pas peur !! La Fabrique de Blogs, bertop, NevilleHobson

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