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News Addict

Ryan Johnson — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 19:21:09 +0000

Here’s a cool app that brings together all the news sources that matter into one convenient, super easy to use, news app. News Addict, by TapMode gives you one touch access to 41 of the most relevant news sites and aggregates them into an extremely clean and user friendly interface. Why mess around with creating a ton of bookmarks or opening eight concurrent Safari windows when you can access 41 of your favorite news sites with a single touch? Makes sense to me.

With News Addict, picking and viewing your favorite news site is as simple as scrolling through a single page and touching the one you want. You can choose from a wide variety of major news sources including all of the major newspapers, magazines, television channels, and web resources (The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Fox News Channel, CNN, Yahoo, Digg, and on and on and on). It’s jam packed with every resource that matters to a news junkie.

In addition to one-stop-shop access to all the best news sources, News Addict also provides some additional benefits that give it a leg up over using a standard browser. Depending on your viewing preference it supports both portrait and landscape viewing (nothing new or revolutionary here). While reading you get to see 25% more area than when viewing the same site in Safari (nice). News Addict also allows you to hide the full navigation bar and options menu so 100% of your iPhone screen can be pure news reading bliss (double nice). While hidden you can navigate back to a previous page just by touching the bottom left hand corner of the screen (ding ding ding). To invoke the full menu all you have to do is touch the small tab in the bottom right of the screen.

Another great feature recently added to News Addict is Tilt Scrolling. If you ever get tired of swiping your finger to progress down the page you can activate the Tilt Scrolling feature and simply angle your iPhone to scroll down or up a page. To ensure that you can choose the perfect angle for Tilt Scrolling, News Addict allows you to callibrate the app with a single touch. To callibrate you just hold the app at your preferred reading angle and then press the callibrate button. That’ll essentially be your ground zero. From there all you have to do is tilt your iPhone slightly forward or slightly backward to scroll up and down a page. I love this feature. It allows me to be even lazier while reading!

All in all I really like News Addict. It’s a super simple app that’s not laden with gobs and gobs of bells and whistles that requires a tech savvy user to operate. For people who use their iPhone to stay on top of the latest news, and typically do so by accessing multiple different popular news sites, News Addict without a doubt simplifies their daily routine. Just open, touch, read, and tilt and you’re soaking up the latest news with the least amount of effort possible. How lovely is that! If you’re obsessed with the news, and use your iPhone to consume it, then you should definitely check out News Addict.

Version Reviewed: 1.2

Requirements: iPhone or iPod Touch; iPhone OS 2.2.1 or later

RSS Beacon

Ryan Johnson — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 17:33:45 +0000

There are tons of different RSS reader apps out on the market that let you search, find, and broadcast feeds from various sites of your choosing so why on earth would you care about trying out another one? Well, RSS Beacon, created by Get In Spring Ltd., brings a unique wrinkle to the traditional RSS reader app. With this app not only do you get a full RSS reader with complete manageability from your iPhone, but you also get the ability to create “beacons” that allow you to share information based on common interests. Creating a beacon is really easy, you just choose an RSS feed that you’d like to share to a particular person or group, then you add people to the beacon from your contacts list. Anyone added to your beacon will receive updates via email as they’re posted.

RSS Beacon is loaded with RSS reading and management features. Adding your favorite feeds and plugging them into your Twitter account couldn’t be easier. You can locate your favorite feeds just by entering the URL, but if you’re looking for new feeds and aren’t sure where to look you can use keywords and RSS Beacon will run a Google search and find you what you’re looking for. For each feed you can choose how many articles/posts you want to view at one time. You can view up to 100 posts in a single view if you want. From there all you’ve got to do is provide your Twitter account info and blam you’re auto tweeting! Yes I realize everyone in the Twittersphere should know how to do this by now, but believe me, I still see tons of people that are doing the ole copy and paste method so I had to mention it.

Let’s see, what other cool RSS stuff can you do with this app. Oh, you can add up to 30 feeds, can customize the look and feel of the app; change background color, beacon color, change views, etc. The in app menus are hidden to maximize the viewing area, but are easily invoked when you want them. You choose the color of your beacon, can create a custom description that can be broadcasted to your followers each time you update it, and can even drag and drop articles to share them with friends. There’s also a whole slew of other things you can do. It’s worth checking out the RSS Beacon App Store page for the full list of features.

If you use an RSS reader app now, or haven’t downloaded one yet, it’s worth checking out RSS Beacon. At a minimum it’ll have every feature that some of the other upper echelon RSS Reader apps have, but also provides you with some convenient customization options and the ability to create beacons.

Pros:

Great all-in-one RSS readers/broadcasting app
Beacons provide a more personalized RSS feed/information sharing experience
Ability to customize interface and views is a plus

Cons:

The app doesn’t support landscape view
When adding contacts to a beacon the number of contacts shown is too small, you should be able to hide the top menu to get a full screen view of the contacts list

Version Reviewed: 1.0.0

Requirements: iPhone or iPod Touch (2nd gen); iPhone OS 3.0 or later

Missing Children

Ryan Johnson — Thu, 14 May 2009 02:14:16 +0000

Missing Children really is an app that everyone should have. It’s your “take anywhere” missing children and Amber Alert reference. Missing Children let’s you quickly and easily view all missing children both locally and nationally. There’s a ‘Near Me’ feature that displays who from your area, or that’s suspected to be in your area, is missing.

Many of us have seen Amber Alert notifications displayed on the interstate or heard them broadcast over the radio while driving. The problem with those methods is that they merely alert you of the problem, give you a description of the victim, and ask you to write down the number to call if you see them. Well, not all of us have a pen and paper available to write down the number, and there are so many children that could meet that description that without a picture of the victim some may feel hesitant to call authorities without more proof. That bit of indecision or uncertainty could be the difference between saving a life and losing one.

How does Missing Children help? Well, in addition to providing you with a comprehensive list of all missing children, it provides you with an image of each victim and a hot button for one touch dialing to report a sighting. It’s so logical to own and easy to use that there’s no reason why all of us shouldn’t have this app on our iPhone. Missing Children provides you with what you need to potentially make a difference! Go to the App Store and download Missing Children today!