The latest entrant in the iPad newsreader category, Editions does bring a very attractive design with it. Very customizable as well, and delivers your daily news packaged as an edition at a preset time daily.
The Editions by AOL app is entering the same town in which Flipboard and Zite walk with their heads held high. Not to say that it is an impossible task, but the AOL app will need to offer something that much extra. But does it have that bit?
Setup & UI
Download the Editions by AOL app from the Apple App Store - the size is about 20MB. Once the setup is done, you are immediately asked to connect to a host of social networks - Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, AOL/AIM and Instapaper. Once you set this up (or skip it altogether, depending on your preference), you will be asked to customize the Sections that you want in your daily edition. By default, you will be given six news topics, but you have the full freedom to add to these, or remove all of these and use a bunch of completely different ones. Once you set these up, you are pretty much good to go.
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Features & Performance
Even though this feature only works in the U.S. and Canada at the moment, the weather report is something that should be an interesting add-on for anyone and everyone. The Facebook integration shows up quite a bit - even on page 2 of every edition with the Birthdays of your friends. However, any changes that you may make as far as the edition setting or social network integration is concerned will reflect only in the next day’s edition.
The interface is absolutely gorgeous. On a white background, it is extremely comfortable to read with this bunch of font styles. A little niggle is that the text size of the story (not the headline) is a little small for some readers. You flip through the daily edition like a magazine, and click on any story that you find interesting. Every page has a headline, some pictures and a part of the story. To read more, you will click on that story and that’ll take you to the original story link, within the app. The web browser doesn’t open separately - quite neat.
Even though you may have decided the category section for your Edition in the initial settings, you have the freedom to add your specific websites within each section.
Flipping through the daily edition is a relatively simple task - like turning over the pages in a book. However, there are the occasional stutters. Interestingly, some of the adverts within the edition are 3D. See the screenshots below of this BMW advert that we encountered.
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You have the freedom to set the time at which you want the daily edition to be downloaded to your iPad. Everyday, a new edition is downloaded, and the previous ones also remain for you to read.
Our Take
Even if you are using any other newsreader apps on the iPad, we would suggest you download this as well. It does offer a very magazine reading-ish experience. The daily edition delivery is faultless. Content is downloaded so that you can read it online. Worth a check out - it is free!
Price: Free
Download: Apple App Store
Specs:
Newsreader app; multiple sources and sections; social network integration; daily delivery of edition; bookmark content; compatible with iOS 4.0
Ratings
Features: 8
Performance: 7.5
Build: 7
Value: 8.5
Overall: 8
