→ Interesting For iPhone: Simple News

Interesting For iPhone: Simple News

Nice new app by Mike Rundle: Interesting is a super-simple $0.99 aggregator of news for iPhone organized in four sections. Interesting collects new articles from a variety of sources and displays a list of entries in reverse chronological order. Tapping on an item opens an embedded web view, which has a toolbar for navigation, refresh, and sharing options. Sharing includes Pocket and Twitter integration, Copy Link, Open in Safari, and Mail Link. Interesting has four sections: Design & Technology; News & Politics; Entertainment & TV; and Sports. The built-in list of sources includes websites like The Next Web, Wired, SBNation, CNN, SPIN, and various sub-reddits.

Interesting has some great details. For instance, Mike has used the iOS 6 status bar tint in a way that’s not too bad, but that actually contributes to better identify sections visually: each section has a different title bar color, which consequently changes the color of the iOS status bar. I like the color choices. Further, tab bar icons have a nice animation when you tap on them, and I don’t mind the custom font and pull-to-refresh animation.

As Marco Arment learned with The Magazine, completely avoiding settings is a tricky decision. Interesting is very easy to use, but you can’t pick a different read later choice (only Pocket has native integration in the sharing menu and with tap & hold) and you can’t, say, set a different browser for opening links. I appreciate the simplicity; on the other hand, I wish the app had at least some options in the iOS Settings app.

As you know, I already use MacHash as an Apple news aggregator on my iOS devices. Interesting is a cool option for other kinds of news — TV is especially useful to me — and it’s only $0.99 on the App Store.

Posted by Federico Viticci on – ∞
Feb
16
2011

Shazam’s Music Sourcers Add Jobs To Music Industry, Give Music Lovers Their Ultimate Job

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Shazam the popular music-identifying app on mobile phones is giving some music aficionados their ultimate job, listening to new music all day as a ‘music sourcer’. The New York Times spoke to one such person working for Shazam, Charles Slomovitz whose job requires him to hunt down new music and artists to ensure Shazam’s music-identifying engine can identify song that its users may hear.

Shazam has grown to a user base of over 100 million users who ping the service 3 million times a day, and Andrew Fisher, Shazam’s chief executive says that “when people use a service like Shazam, they expect it to work all the time”. As a result Mr. Slomovitz and others around the world who find new music are vital to ensure the accuracy of Shazam, which is available in over 200 countries. Similarly Pandora has also created new jobs in the music industry with its so called ‘musicologists’ who analyze songs on the basis of numerous characteristics to give users the ability to find similar music.

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