Yesterday, February 2, 2011, News Corporation (parent company of Fox News and other media properties) released their "The Daily" application for the iPad. The app has been under development for some time, and a lot of resources have been dedicated to making it useful and successful.
Below, I will show you what the app looks like and describe some of its basic features.
Splash Page
The splash page you see when you open the app each time is pleasing to the eye, and features some subtle and effective animation and movement.
Main Page
The main page features a scrollable left-right movement between categories of stories. The section of focus spins to the front much like the cover-flow display seen in iTunes and many other media applications. It is an effective way to group categories of stories. You can also select some categories from the bottom of the screen. In the upper right hand corner, you will also see that it displays the current temperature at the location you have indicated in the general settings.
Pop-up Menu
Clicking the triangle icon on the bottom right portion of the main screen brings up the pop-up menu shown on the bottom of the picture above. The menu allows you to view video, listen to audio, see your saved stories, access your settings, and more.
Section Main Page
This is the main page of the Apps & Games section. It features a graphic that is related to the story, and the story tagline.
Story Page 1
The first page of the story features some more graphics, and you will see that the text is laid out in the fashion of a traditional news magazine.
Story Page 2 With Interaction
The second page of the story continues with the same formatting. In this particular story, there is some interactivity in the form of a poll on the right that you can interactive with and contribute your vote to.
General Settings
The settings are accessible from the main screen pop-up menu by choosing the icon that looks like a gear. The general settings, as shown above, allows you to toggle receiving pop-up notifications about breaking news, launch the daily anchor at startup, setup a horoscope, and set your location.
Account Information
The account settings page allows you to sign up for a free application account to personalize your settings, shows how long your subscription is valid for, allows you to manage your subscription, and also to reset your content settings.
Subscriptions
The subscription page (sub-area off off account settings) allows you to manage your subscription to daily issues of the application. As you can see, you can pay $0.99 / week or $39.99 / year.
Sharing
The sharing features the application (shown above) gives you the ability to share a news story via facebook, twitter, and email. It also allows you to save the story for later viewing from the saved stories section on the pop-up menu of the main application screen.
Conclusion
Out of the gate, The Daily is a nice looking app, functions well, and hasn't crashed on me yet. I think if the News Corp can keep up the solid content and make upgrades where needed, they will have a winner on its hands. I definitely recommend trying it out. The app is free to download, and there is a short trial that will let you try it out with new daily editions for more than a week before you need to fork over the cash for a subscription.
iPad users can download the app HERE
I'd love to hear your comments and thoughts on the application in the comment section below.
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