Comments for

Breaking News Online: The iPhone App is Live & Worth Buying

2009-08-03T18:57:25Z

News junkies rejoice, the much anticipated iPhone app from Dutch 19 year old Michael van Poppel's scrappy and wildly popular international reporting network Breaking News Online (BNO) has been released (iTunes link).

The app uses the iPhone's new push notification service to deliver important news updates from around the world to your phone with some control over priority levels and a delivery shut-off time scheduling option. It isn't perfect, but is it worth two bucks to get important world news updates pushed automatically to your phone? You bet it is.

]]> We wrote last month about van Poppel's ambitious project and bizarre story. He's gone from selling a mysterious tape of Osama Bin Laden to a news agency when he was 17 to now running a small, Twitter-centric network of reporters around the world - aggregating breaking news and doing original reporting faster than nearly anyone else on the web. Now you can get the group's output pushed to you automatically. It's a smart move and one that BNO says readers have been requesting loudly.

The app is a stream of very short news updates, some with links but most without. Not all notices are marked for push notification, but you can turn on push for low priority messages. In the last two hours, for example, BNO has pushed out eight news updates and five of them have been marked high priority. Three were about an unusually intense wave of earthquakes off the coast of Mexico, which seems like pretty high priority. Both the official news updates and the team's personal Twitter updates demonstrate that the network is made up of humanitarians.

Audio notifications can be turned on or off and you can set times during which messages aren't delivered. That's nice. We'd really like to see other services offer this kind of functionality for more niche news topics, or RSS feeds of our selection.

BNO isn't the only news app that uses the new push notification, but it does appear to be the most prolific. The Associated Press app, for example, seldom pushes out more than a few notices in an entire week. The BNO app isn't super polished or complex; it isn't a good way to read in-depth news, but it is very fast and quite well-suited to the modern news addict. It's well worth the $1.99 price tag.

Update: Andrew Nystrom from the LA Times leaves a very interesting comment below reminding us of this app's plan to charge a monthly $1 subscription fee, something that was mistakenly left out of the iTunes app store description! Is the app still worth it? We have no doubt that it is. One dollar per month is a trivial fee for a mobile push connection to the freshest news on the web. Not everyone will feel that way, though.

Comment from Scott on 2009-08-03

2009-08-03T19:20:42Z

Why pay $1.99 for this app when you can get the feed for free via free Twitter iPhone apps?

Comment from Marshall Kirkpatrick on 2009-08-03

2009-08-03T19:23:31Z

For the push notifications, variable prioritization and scheduled off-time. And because you're worth it, buddy.

Comment from Padraic on 2009-08-03

2009-08-03T19:28:03Z

Probably because this works without opening any Twitter app, scrolling around forever, loading more messages several times, and finally giving up because it's buried in 200 other tweets... And the app pushes it to the screen immediately with a little notification source even when the iPhone is locked?

Of course, I could be completely wrong...

Comment from Andrew Nystrom @ LAT on 2009-08-03

2009-08-03T20:08:04Z

@Marshall: You neglect to mention the $.99/month subscription fee -- isn't it a bit premature to tell if this app will be worth $11.88 a year? Are *any* apps currently worth a reoccurring subscription fee?

Watch for my review on the L.A. Times Tech blog, after I put the app through it's paces for a few days.

This just in via BNO press email:

"It came to our attention yesterday, when the BNO News App hit the Apple Store in some parts of the world, that the application description contained in the App Store was not the description we intended to launch with. We immediately updated the description to make note of the subscription costs and assumed it would propagate to the Apple Store before launch, as our release date had already been set. Unfortunately, this propagation is not taking place as fast as we assumed. We are working feverishly towards fixing this inconsistency and finding a resolution to this issue for all involved, although our official announcements have always said there would be a monthly fee with the service.

"The current description in the App Store is missing the following paragraph:
As part of your purchase, you will receive a free month of unlimited notifications from the BNO News Headquarters. If you choose to pay the subscription fee, these notifications will continue. Even if you choose not to pay the subscription fee, you will still get a free notification each day (which you will be able to disable). The subscription fee is the current minimum product price in the App Store ($0.99 in America)."

Comment from Marshall Kirkpatrick on 2009-08-03

2009-08-03T20:13:00Z

doh! andrew, good point and thanks for that text. is it still worth it? I say yes, clearly. That does complicate it though I suppose.

Comment from Andrew Nystrom @ LAT on 2009-08-03

2009-08-03T22:44:29Z

NB: BitMethod Director of Business Development Daniel Shipton was just kind enough to call me to advise that, due to push notification limitations when the iPod Touch is out of WiFi range (aka asleep), the app only works on iPhones.

The App Store description does note under Requirements that the app is "Compatible with iPhone" and "Requires iPhone OS 3.0 or later" but I add this since the lack of iPod support is not mentioned in any of the other official app announcements that I received.

Comment from Joe on 2009-08-03

2009-08-03T22:59:12Z

Hmmm, I can sign up on their website and get email notification for free to my iphone. Doesnt seem worth the money.

One app worth a subscription is sirius xm radio app.

Comment from Luke Grange on 2009-08-04

2009-08-04T09:38:47Z

In my experience get the followers and develop the community then ask them if they would pay for the content. Give us a year of six months to get used to it.

Comment from Adrain on 2009-08-04

2009-08-04T10:02:41Z

I haven't seen much of Subscription based apps but this one is really cool. Must be twitter engine at back :)

I also bought IWound app on fashion and arts few days back. i wounder if this apps has any fashion category or it still oeking

Comment from Carrie Buchanan on 2009-08-04

2009-08-04T14:06:06Z

And isn't it worth a bit more to compensate the journalists who actually produce the news? When are these aggregators going to start paying what it really costs for news?

Comment from Mgrad92 on 2009-08-06

2009-08-06T19:25:03Z

I should let this guy pocket my buck a month off the backs of the journalists actually gathering his news? (The same journalists working under threat of layoffs in the toughest news industry economy since ... well, ever?)

Comment from nusret on 2009-08-06

2009-08-06T22:30:36Z

thanks for article very

Comment from Marshall Kirkpatrick on 2009-08-13

2009-08-13T15:09:43Z

people keep asking why they should buy the @breakingnews iphone app if they already follow on Twitter: push & controls http://bit.ly/h9PFs [from http://twitter.com/marshallk/statuses/3109805248]

Comment from jondillon on 2009-09-11

2009-09-11T14:42:41Z

Well that App didn't last long apparently BNO is no longer supporting the app http://twitter.com/BreakingNews/status/3910965643