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BREAKING NEWS & VIEWS
Sporting News Powers Up with Personalized iPad AppWednesday, September 14, 2011 The Sporting News is serious about not looking like just another print magazine app. At the first load of its new iPad app Sporting News for iPad asks the  users to fully personalize the experience with their favorite team news as well as local TV listings for programming. The resulting front page of headlines conforms to your preferences as does a nearby "what to watch" page, which lists your local sport programming and even teases out the air times for games involving your favorite teams.The aim of this free, ad-supported app from TSN is to blend dynamic Web content with material from the venerable magazine, but to do it all in a personalized package for the device platform. A fresh issue of TSN branded content drops each morning at about 5 am, while an update timed for prime-time reading drops at 5 pm. Scores, blog posts, Twitter feeds and breaking stories are refreshed dynamically throughout the day, however. Honestly, almost everything about the app is just a little bit different from print brand apps as we know them. The app emphasizes the full screen experience, so the menu structure only fades in at a tap and brings up a top line lateral scroll through major content categories like columnists and bloggers, air times, etc. This gives the user a quick jump to a broad array of content like the Fanhouse community of fans and even the news from your declared favorites. A Scores tab accesses live score feeds across sports types. And the My Teams tab pulls down only news from your preferred teams. A bottom line menu offers links to Facebook and Twitter sharing. Alas, in an app whose ambitions tend to outstrip its technical polish, the Facebook and Twitter links are still pending. Ultimately, TSN plans to use Facebook as its article commenting platform, just as it does online. As well, the fade-in, roll-in menus are a nice effect, but their performance was often halting and rough. Similarly, the app encourages a print-like page flipping interaction, but the pages themselves tend to halt for a second in mid flip, only adding to the unfinished feel of the app. But the strength here is in the content mix and the overall design ambitions of the app. The engine pulls together the qualities of a branded media source with the powers of tablet aggregation. They have ranked columnists from around the country, blogs, twitter feeds and team web sites to gather relevant content into a personalized package. SI's Dan Patrick and stories from ESPN are prominent in the mix, for instance. The TSN voice and identity are still front and center, but the app goes farther than any media brand we have seen to embrace the spirit of aggregation in an app. The interface gives the sports fan immediate access not only to the latest scores and news but to resources like the league standings and schedules. They have leveraged well the tablet format to turn a sports news brand into something closer to a hybrid of news and reference, resource and tool. At the same time they allow for two different modes of consumption - a lean-in drill for the latest news and stats, and a lean-back page-flip mode for more leisurely magazine-like immersion. In addition to a good dose of lubrication to ease the sheer creakiness of almost all operation in the app, TSN for iPad could use more interactivity. It is a true puzzlement to us how an app that is so sophisticated elsewhere cannot implement even email/Facebook and Twitter sharing in the first build. Also missing here is community generally. The commenting function, which is core to the TSN brand, will be a great addition. While perhaps a point release away from market readiness, Sporting News for iPad is a genuinely thoughtful and potentially powerful view of what personalization can do on mobile platforms. We look forward to version 1.1.  If you have breaking news to share please contact Steve Smith at ssmith@accessintel.com
Take min's fun quiz and find out how magazine-savvy you are! COMMENTS
1.
I think it's pretty decent first version; I mean it could use a bit of performance tuning but it's a really good looking e-magazine. Plus you can customize it and jump around easily and play video and stuff so it's really better than a magazine. And it's FREE (unlike a magazine!) :D
Posted by Timothy on Tuesday, September 20, 2011 @ 11:20 AM
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