Look what I've been making: The Times iPad app
I've been working on a contract at News International for the last two months - specifically on the Times iPad application. It launched last Friday and I was rather delighted to see this at Liverpool Lime Street station on the Saturday morning:
I've got another month to run on the contract - but meanwhile if you have an iPad and a tenner to spare give it a spin...
I'd love to write a much more lengthy set of thoughts about it - both in terms of the tech and the overall strategy of NI... But for the time being I'll try and keep my comments reasonably pithy.
Some of my favourite things about it:
- The swooshy effect when you navigate to a distant page (not one of mine but it's great)
- The clock on the leaders page, which (while they made it a bit too small) tells the real time
- The image/slideshow/video handling stuff (which I spent way too long working on)
- The text rendering and layout on the article pages - which while there is room for improvement is really quite pleasant to read
And (if I'm allowed just one) the thing I really don't like about it is the way it takes forever to download an edition over 3G. This sadly isn't something I can do much about from where I'm sitting - but I'd hope it gets sorted in the long run.
Oh yes and as someone who got access to an iPad much earlier than most, yes, they are lovely though I do still feel like I'm being eyed up somewhat when using it in public. I've been playing Enviro Bear 2010 on it rather a lot and even though it's an iPhone game scaled up it's utterly awesome. Watch out for badgers.
