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BREAKING NEWS & VIEWS
New Yorker Offers Free iPhone/Android City Guide…With VocalsTuesday, August 9, 2011 While most major magazine brands are looking to the paid and subscription app model for digitizing and  enhancing their full magazine content, some titles are carving out chunks of their front matter and other notable editorial sections as free apps. The New Yorker has mobilized some of the best material from its front of book listings sections into a handy mobile city guide for iPhone and Android platforms. The Goings On app carries the magazine’s latest event listings, reviews and recommendations for New York area movies, art, music, dance, theatre, nightlife, readings and restaurants. And it is all free and ad supported, in this case with a sole sponsorship from MasterCard.The app extends the familiar cartoon illustration style of the magazine to the app interface. The user meets a nine-cel grid that taps into one of the major event categories. From there things get a tad more modern, or perhaps retro modern, with rotating dials that filter the search for categories like Art by areas (Midtown, Uptown, etc.) and types (galleries, museums, etc.). The listings include recommended items and short reviews as well as a map that can link you to directions. A click-to-call link is present for direct dialing most venues as is a direct link to online ticketing. The ticketing function is uneven, since this link in the chain leads to the respective venue’s Web site and whatever online ordering/reservations they offer. And at the bottom of each listing the user can save the item as a favorite, view other events at the same venue, or share via email, Twitter, Facebook and foursquare. Following the very smart mobile design principle that every app should have a unique value proposition and mobile-specific feature, Goings On offers voice as a special treat on top of the core city guide functionality.  Audio tours by Calvin Trillin of downtown eateries, Patricia Marx on vintage shopping, Peter Schjeldahl visiting the Frick Collection and Peter Goldberger walking the new elevated High Line park are included. In addition to audio, there is a section of personal essays reflecting on writer’s favorite places in New York. Each of these reflections, too, is linked to sharing tools and maps. While these are welcome touches that communicate The New Yorker's distinct editorial brand, the app leaves unclear how often these features will be refreshed. The general search function in the app makes Goings On more like a location-based city guide than magazine front matter. The app accesses your phone’s GPS to show what is going on around you, and a calendar interface can help you search by date. Both search functions use the dial interface to filter by distance and event types. Unfortunately the push pin listings on the map interface do not give direct access to the full listing, so the user has to toggle between the map and listing interface to get the information he needs. Otherwise the mobile design is smart in giving the user multiple ways of browsing and searching the content. The Goings On app needs at least one technical tweak in the area of download responsiveness. Even when sitting on top of a WiFi router, the delay in retrieving new information, such as audio streams, was unnecessarily long and irritating. In fact, when we accessed the app over the course of two days, the morning download of new content almost had us ready to bail from the app. Also, the ad execution for sponsor MasterCard is disappointing. While the banners on most pages call up a pleasant and contextually relevant page of images on the experiences of New York, the click through to a MasterCard landing page dumps the user into the standard full size Web page. It is hard to believe that a sponsor as mobile-aware as MasterCard goes through the expense of supporting a major magazine app like this and fails to see the need to provide a seamless end-to-end, mobile-optimized experience for the user. Overall, however, this is a superb blend of mobile technology and magazine brand style. The New Yorker Goings On app has found a way to embrace the LBS trend in mobile without sacrificing its core critical attribute, devotion to Culture with a capital “C.” In fact, the app demonstrates how publishers need to assert their magazine’s editorial sensibility more forcefully onto the technology to achieve something singular. It would have been all too easy for a local guide like this to adopt the visual and interface conventions of a Yelp! or foursquare and feel like another LBS city guide with a New Yorker skin. This app required more effort, and the result is a utility that stands a good chance of actually being utilized rather than admired and forgotten.  If you have breaking news to share please contact Steve Smith at ssmith@accessintel.com
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