What’s On (My) iPhone- News Apps

I was using a tablet pc when Google Gears and the New York Times’ Times Reader were first released. The tablet was my first step in a significant shift away from "dead tree" media that has resulted in my currently doing most all of my reading in electronic form. While size, weight and battery life were significant limitations, the advantages far outweighed the limitations. At least they did for me. Google Gears and the Times Reader meant that I could now save almost everything I might want to read with regard to news and RSS feeds for offline access.

Despite its small screen, when the iPhone came out it all but replaced my tablet pc for reading the news. The iPhone optimized Google Reader web app was excellent and, while the NYTimes did not have an iPhone site per se, their mobile site looked great on an iPhone. The iPhone had some clear advantages over the tablet pc. It was light, portable, cool (most tablet pcs can get hot!) and had excellent battery life. Unfortunately, at the time the device was so "locked down" by Apple that offline reading was not possible. All that changed on July 11th with the release of the 2.0 firmware. Now offline access was added to the other benefits, making the iPhone or iPod Touch an excellent means to stay current on the news regardless of whether or not a data connection was available.

So what’s news-worthy on my iPhone?

iTunes
When talking about catching the news, it is worth mentioning iTunes and the wide range of free news podcasts available. iTunes makes quick business of finding podcasts, automatically download them and sync them to your iPhone or iPod Touch. Everything from Air America to Fox News is there for the taking, so no matter where you are on the political spectrum, there is something for you. Best of all, most of the podcasts download without commercials.

NYTimes

The NewYork Times app is somewhat basic but works well and is a free download. It offers direct access to each of the paper’s various sections. It is somewhat customizable since there is the flexibility to set which four sections you want right on the home "page" while access to the rest of the paper’s sections is one tap of the "More" button away. Among the available sections are "Latest News", Business" "Opinion" and the NYTimes Magazine". Moreover, the app offers access to the various photos that appear in the paper.

The text is easy to read and is available in either portrait or landscape. Best of all, under "Settings" you can choose to download anywhere from 1 to 7 days worth of news. Each time you start the app, it quickly downloads that number of day for offline reading and .

The news on this newspaper app isn’t all good, however. The app doesn’t offer access to video or podcasts and the ads on each page consume a small but significant amount of the small screen. Perhaps the biggest limitation currently is the inability to email an article to someone else. Despite this, however, the NYTimes App continues to be my method of catching up on the day’s text-based news.

NetNewsWire
As I have written previously, my RSS reader of choice currently is NetNewsWire. RSS feeds are a key way I keep up to date and my list of feeds is continually growing. Having made the move to NetNewsWire’s desktop app a few months ago, using the iPhone version was a natural choice. Since it employs NewsGator to keep the desktop, iPhone and web data in sync, I don’t need to worry about seeing the same article more than once unless I want to. While a data connection is (obviously) neccessary to update feeds, they are saved to the iPhone or iPod Touch for offline reading.

While the initial version of the app was somewhat slow and buggy, the current version works quite well and is extremely stable.

The current version offers an easy way to mark all the new items in a feed as read, has a "Next Unread" button in order to move forward and presents an option to open an item in the Safari browser. All work well and as expected. In addition, at the bottom of each individual item’s page is an icon that, when tapped, offers the option to either Email the article or add it to your clippings for later access. and that is where my main criticism of NetNewsWire enters the picture. Unfortunately there is currently no way to access your clippings through the app. It is a major limitation and one I hope will soon be remedied. Despite this limitation, however, I strongly recommend the app. It has a permanent place "On My iPhone". In fact, it has a permanent place "On the first screen of my iPhone".

Instapaper and Evernote
While the final news-related apps on my iPhone are a rather new way for me to access the news, they are rapidly taking a central role in the way I access content. Moreover, they continue a trend toward my spending less time reading on my computers and more on my iPhone. (More on that in a separate post.) These days, when I come to an article on the web that I want to read I will often either tap the "Read Later" button on my browser and send it to Instapaper or the "Copy to Evernote" button on my Menu Bar to send it to Evernote. Both allow me to access the articles on my iPhone and while, of the two, I prefer Evernote since it is my "catch all" location, the fact that it does not allow for offline access (yet) makes Instapaper the current favorite.
  

So those are the key ways I get the news on my iPhone. Are there any you use that I don’t?