I read a lot of news on my iPad, mostly through RSS feeds. However, I also use a lot a free apps like BBC, HuffPo, NPR, AP, et al. So, when I saw that the new The Daily app had been released, I was curious. There has been a lot of buzz about how the app has been built from the ground up and that millions of dollars went into its development. Luckily, the app is free for two weeks or else I never would have tried it. After the two week free trial, the app will charge $.99/week or $39.99/year. Much cheaper than a real newspaper, much more expensive than the numerous free news apps. Oh, and by the way, there are still ads (at least in the free trial version).
The opening splash screen is a horizontal carousel. By the way, it will rotate on its own if you just leave it alone. Along the bottom of the screen are news sections. A bright light shines beneath the current section. Tapping a section navigates to that section and leaves the carousel. Then, a sort of horizontal timeline at the top of the screen shows the current location in the "newspaper." The section splash screens contain links to some of the stories in that sections, apparently NOT to all the stories in the section. That seems odd to me. The sections are static and cannot be customized. Compare the FREE Huffington Post iPad app that is highly customizable.
At the top right of the main splash screen is a weather bug, which when tapped navigates to a weather page with a 5-day or 12-hour forecast, radar maps, and a daily horoscope. Really? Horoscope? Sheesh. Also along the bottom of the splash screen is an arrow that brings up six buttons: video, audio, forward to next story, random story, saved pages, and settings. There are very few settings in this iteration of the app (version 1.0.0).
What stands out immediately about this app is the creative interactive elements. At some points it is very disappointing. At other points it is exactly what the iPad is all about. For example, on the disappointing side, one might guess that the video button would play a video associated with the story currently being displayed. No. As best I can tell, it just plays the same daily summary video clip. Why? On the creative side, the app will display a lot of images in landscape mode, but switch to the text of the story in portrait mode. Also, I saw one story that included a 360 degree rotating image. Pretty cool.
What about the content. If today's edition of The Daily is representative, I would characterize the content as unserious. Ok fine. It is the day after the Super Bowl, and most newspapers are going to be football heavy. But The Daily offers "Gossip" as its second category. No, not World News. No, not Politics. Not even Local News, which you might think it capable of. Gossip! And the third section...Opinion. After that, you're getting into the deep sections of the newspaper, ones that tend not to be journalistic. Don't get me wrong, Arts & Life is a good read and can be educational but its not typically hard-hitting journalism. The Apps & Games section has daily Sudoku, Crossword, and articles.
In the end, The Daily is a flashy, interactive, shallow, and unserious news source that I will not be subscribing to.
No comments:
Post a Comment