CNN has released a new Apple iPad app and the news program is actually a pretty cool way to get your news in a visually-appealing way.
The CNN iPad app aims to give you a visually-appealing, immersive take on the news. The program gives you three ways to view the content – broadsheet, list view and slide show – and it includes strong integration with social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.
As you would expect, the CNN iPad program takes advantage of the extra real estate of the tablet by laying out the stories in a unique way that’s different from the website. The comments, videos and additional content are integrated into the stories and it updates in real time and you can even get headlines with the push-notification features.
“One of the things about the app that excites us most is the ability to serve the news needs of iPad users while also exposing them to original, enterprise content from CNN that will surprise and delight them,” said Louis Gump, vice president of CNN Mobile, in a prepared statement. “The CNN App was built from the ground up with our consumers in mind, and we are proud of the new CNN experience we’ve created for the device.”
This is another interesting move by an older media company on to a new platform and technology. This program is about as pretty as the Virgin Project magazine, but it’s not just sandboxed as an app, as the news program still feels connected to the web and it can be updated often.
The news program is free for your tablet thanks to a sponsorship from Lexus. This also means there are some fairly large ads within the program itself but this doesn’t impact the news itself, so I’m fine with that car company footing the bill.
You can download the program for the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch here (iTunes link) but I’d recommend giving it a go on the tablet.
[Via CNN]