Apps for news junkies
By Meg Rivera
FOR about three years, I lived in a few houses that had no cable TV connection. We could get satellite TV, but that was only if we were willing to clamber up the roof and adjust the dish with a fork.
And even then, we were lucky if we were able to get a clear image of anything but an amorphous blob onscreen. So clearly, the 6 p.m. news in our house was a no go. We would rather watch the microwave heat up dinner first over watching that hot mess of a TV channel.
However, despite our primitive TV situation, I was still lucky to have a decent Internet connection, so I’ve used online news apps to get tuned with the rest of the world.
Of course, nothing in the world will ever replace a physical newspaper (ever tried cleaning a mirror with your iPhone?), but these apps were (and still are!) invaluable to keeping up with what was going on.
This week, we’ll be looking at some of the most comprehensive international news apps that keep us TV-less kids connected to what goes on beyond our shores.
Name: Al Jazeera
Developer: Al Jazeera Network
Easy to use?: This app was clearly designed for someone who is not a digital native. The stories are in neat little boxes that need no scrolling to get through, and the layout puts the most important stories right up top. The features and opinion sections are discreet and do not take attention away from the main stories, but are still easy enough to scroll through and find.
Available on: Android, Apple
Overall comment: This app doesn’t win any awards for flashy graphics, but in terms of functionality it takes the shelf. All the features are placed in the middle for your scrolling discretion, but the extra features are placed at the bottom for when you have a bit more time to explore. Four clicks out of five.
Name: BBC News
Developer: BBC Worldwide
Easy to use?: The layout could do with a little fine tuning. The contrast of the BBC red white and black make the overall effect quite overwhelming. The stories are grouped by section, with about a third of the screen dedicated to the top stories. The space economy isn’t great, and it’s easy to get put off by it all. Two clicks out of five.
Available on: Android, Apple
Overall comment: BBC has always been such a reliable source of news, which is why I still use this app. It looks messy and complex, and there is too much going on. However, one of the biggest features puts it slightly ahead of the game. There is an option to submit a story on this app, which falls in with BBC’s tradition of taking stories from viewers all over the world. The news stories are good and relevant, but somebody needs to get a better app designer if they want to keep people dedicated to this.
Name: AP Mobile
Developer: The Associated Press
Easy to use: It’s worth going through the mini-tutorial that you get at the beginning, because then you really get to fully customise this app to display the stories you are interested in getting.
Available on: Apple, Android
Overall comment: It’s the perfect mix of design and news. The tiles function lets you customise what part of the world you want to see stories from and it’s easy to put them together. The sections slide to reveal more details of a story, which makes it sleek and great to navigate. I think this app would be the happy medium between the clunky BBC app and the idiot-proof Al Jazeera one, and it would make more than just the news junkies glad to use this.
