Ah, another source to feed my political addiction: today the New York Times sent me an email about its new Election 2012 app. I fired up my iPhone, downloaded the free app, and instantly thought Sweet!
The app will look particularly sweet to me, because I'm forking out $15 a month for unlimited online access to NY Times content. Many features of the app work even if you're not a paid online subscriber, but after I put in my log-in info I was able to access everything.
Like I said before, I'm happy to pay. It'd be horrible if the NY TImes went bankrupt, leaving news in the hands of clueless bloggers who wouldn't have any facts to found their rants on. And this Election 2012 app shows that the Times is committed to offering even more value for that $15 a month.
It's impressively designed. The main sections are "News," "Opinion," "Election Guide" (great summary of polls which meet the paper's methodological guidelines), and "Multimedia." The sole focus, naturally, is politics and political goings-on.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that the News section has an all sources option. This took me to several internal NY Times sites like FiveThirtyEight, plus the politics section on mobile web sites of quite a few excellent news sources: Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, MSNBC, The Atlantic, etc.
Great idea, New York Times. And great execution. Here's a Mashable post about the Election 2012 app.
Actually, it is not available to digital subscribers without extra charge. My husband pays $20 a month for iPad and web subscription, and he heard back from the NYTimes that he gets two "accesses" for that fee, which means the election app would count as a third one. This is so short-sighted that it's making us reconsider our subscription.
I subscribe separately for web and iPod Touch access. I won't bother to download the election app unless they sort out the fees. I'm glad to pay for the NYTimes, but this is getting ridiculous!
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Posted by: Cathy | February 19, 2013 at 12:45 AM