Irish Times iPhone App – what would you like to see?
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News this morning that the Irish Times will shortly be launching an iPhone app. Surprised it has taken so long to be honest. It will see the newspaper catch up with their main rival, The Irish Independent, which has an app available for some time now. As the article points out, with Vodafone offering the iPhone in the Irish market from next week there’s going to be a lot more eyeballs to catch.
The first line in the article in the paper says :
As more newspapers launch apps, they are trying to avoid eating into their core business
The big challenge the Irish Times and other newspapers face is that when you offer an app for a few euro that has all the articles from the print edition, there is no need to visit the newsagent. This ability is already available of course. All a person needs to do is add the Irish Times RSS feeds to their news reader and bobs your uncle.
That’s not the whole story though. When I consume news on a mobile device (in my case the iPhone), I skim through articles and find the ones that interest me. Same way with the printed newspaper. There’s a lot in there I’m not interested in but I have to buy the whole newspaper anyway. I don’t want an app that dumps every page of the print edition into my hand. I’d like a more intelligent app. One that knows what I’d like to read. Something with the intelligence of my6sense.
my6sense is an iPhone app that I’ve been use for quite a while now. Over time, it learns what type of articles and news I like and presents those relevant articles to me. I can still see all the news items from my feeds if I wish, but the app does such a good job I don’t feel as if I’m missing anything. This description from another my6sense user says it all:
“… I have been using a tool to filter hundreds of feeds, thousands of posts! The results are so tailored and specific to my needs, they are as if handpicked by a mighty army of mind reading Oompa Loompas bent on making me the most informed man on earth.”
What I’d like to see the Irish Times do with their app is make it intelligent by offering a premium version. A premium version with a monthly sub that would offer the following:
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Newstand account on the Irish Times website along the lines of Shelfari. It would allow me to flag articles of interest and store them on a “shelf”. When I get home in the evening, I can read the articles full screen at my leisure.
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Like Shelfari, the Irish Times could offer a community feature on the site where I can see who else is reading the same articles as me and allow me to connect and discuss issues if I so wished.
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Daily/Weekly/Monthly digests. I would love a properly formatted version of the articles I’ve found interesting compiled into a downloadable file that I can view on my ebook reader, iPhone or iPad (when it arrives).
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Print on demand. If I want a printed version, I should be able to go into my local newsagent and get a personalised copy of the Irish Times printed while I wait.
Bottom line is that newspapers should think beyond dumping everything from the print edition into another format. They ought to be offering a way to shape the news and tailor it to fit the individual. Maybe then they can start to make some money from their online efforts. Until then, I’ll stick with my6sense and an instapaper account. It allows me to create a truly personal newspaper that I can read on multiple devices.
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Video above I posted on my posterous account earlier. The guy at 21 seconds is clearly Irish and does an impression of Borat for the camera. RTE crew had to have copped on that he was taking the piss. Funny guy though.
I stumbled on a post by Big Mental Disease about the parade in Durrow. Blink and you’ll miss it but it looks like the guy playing Tiger Woods for the day has “blackened up”. Is this a total no no nowadays? Is there not a free pass for it on a day when the world goes round wearing leprechaun costumes and shouting “top o’ the mornin’ to ya” ?
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Paddy Power goes to Hollywood in Cheltenham
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You have to hand it to Paddy Power – he knows how to do publicity. The bookmaker unveiled the “world’s longest free standing billboard” yesterday on Cleeve Hill overlooking Cheltenham. It’s bigger than the Hollywood sign in LA. Speaking at the unveiling, Paddy said :
“Cheltenham is the biggest and the best race meeting in the world so we wanted to build a monument to reflect and celebrate that. Everyone knows how much the Irish love Cheltenham, so we are delighted to finally have built them a sign to celebrate what many people call the Irish people’s second home in true Hollywood style.”
Some Vital statistics about the sign:
• 270 feet long (82 metres)
• 50 feet high (15 metres)
• Almost 100 tonnes in total
• 60 man build crew
• 3 years in the making
• Over 1000 man hours to design and build
• Landmarks dwarfed by the Paddy Power sign:
• At over 270ft wide that’s longer than the world’s largest free-standing billboard in Manila, Philippines (160ft)
• Taller and bigger than the Hollywood sign (45ft by 200ft)
• Longer than the famous Cerne Abbas Giant in Dorset (180ft)
• At over 50ft high that’s taller than three double-decker London buses stacked on top of each other
Pity he didn’t make it a DISCOVER IRELAND.IE sign instead. You know, for the good of the country and all that. Still, there’s nothing to stop Fáilte Ireland going one step further and finding a suitable location and beating Paddy at his own game.
UPDATE from the comments below :
“I don’t know where you got your facts from, however they are wrong. i with the other crew from utopium lighting i built that sign. It is 85m long it took a 10 man build crew and it was about 3 weeks in the making. so get it right”
Paddy Power obviously losing the run of himself and getting the facts wrong.
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Dancing at the crossroads of the knowledge economy
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Maths was never my strong subject in national school. I struggled. I was labelled a “slow learner”. While the rest of my classmates worked away on incomprehensible maths problems, the teacher took myself and some others to a separate part of the room for special attention. In secondary school, physics and maths were still my Achilles heel. I loved English though. I was a good student overall. A bit above average I guess, but not a star pupil by any means.
I will never forget the day I collected my leaving cert results. A big day in the life of any teenager. I arrived in to the principals office. The head brother (I went to a De La Salle school ) looked down through my results and pointed out my disappointing maths and physics scores. Nothing about my wonderful result in English. I left feeling deflated. I’d done the best I could. My mood wasn’t helped by the fact that as I left, a “star pupil” was next in line. I could hear the enthusiastic voice of the principal as he congratulated the maths, physics and everything else superstar on his results. I walked home under a cloud.
Roll forward to today, I find myself thinking again about education. The various reports about grade inflation and the need for science and maths in schools is a topic exercising many minds. The former head of Intel, Craig Barrett, spoke at an economic think tank in Farmleigh about one of the reasons the company came to Ireland. It was education.
He told the audience that the Irish aren’t as clever any more and we needed to do something about it. Fair enough, we need to sit up and take notice on hearing a wake up call like that. Unfortunately, there is a danger in listening to someone like him that we lose sight of the people that actually matter in all of this – the student. Is it unrealistic to want an education system that is truly interested in unlocking the potential of each and every child rather than preparing them as cogs in the machine of American imperialism? Is it right to force a child along a career path that maybe they don’t have the aptitude or real passion for? Shouldn’t we aspire to living in a country where every child is equally valued and cherished no matter what their academic ability or how much money is in their parent’s bank account?
You may have heard of Gillian Lynne, the celebrated ballerina, director and choreographer. She is famous for her work on Cats and the Phantom of the Opera (the longest running show on Broadway). The following is an extract from her Wikipedia entry:
Lynne had been underperforming at school, so her mother took her to the doctor and explained about her fidgeting and lack of focus. After hearing everything her mother said, the doctor told Lynne that he needed to talk to her mother privately for a moment. He turned on the radio and walked out. He then encouraged her mother to look at Lynne, who was dancing to the radio. The doctor noted that she was a dancer, and encouraged Lynne’s mother to take her to dance school.
One wonders how many people are doing jobs today because they were pushed into it?
Maybe, just maybe, the key to Ireland’s future recovery is allowing the dancers to dance and the singers to soar.
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Discover Ireland – The Fun Starts Here
By · CommentsThis new ad from Fáilte Ireland has grown on me. The music, by The Heathers, is a great choice – dynamic, energising and different from what you’d expect in an ad like this. With hotel prices in Ireland now the cheapest in Western Europe, there’s never been a better time to take a break at home. The fun definitely starts here.
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