 "IBNLive iPad app: A lot of content to bite into")
The new IBNLive iPad app is now available to download free from the iTunes Store bringing its award winning broadcast content to the popular mobile device.
The app sports a full home screen with top stories from all sections, including business, world, India, Bollywood, politics, cricket, movies and more. A ticker at the top of the home screen features breaking news, and above that, a menu bar gives you access to all the main sections, live TV, social features, favourites and settings.
The app integrated photos, text and video for each article on a single page, so you can swipe your way through a photo gallery or watch a video without losing site of the story’s text. Each article can be favourites - favourites are available throughout the app from the menu bar at the top - as well as shared on Twitter and Facebook or sent by email.
[caption id=“attachment_123455” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Screenshot for the iPad app”]
[/caption]Related articles are not only listed in an overlay on each article, but they are also readable there. That’s great if you want to work your way through the list, but not so useful if you want to see any associated video or photos, as only the text is displayed and there’s no way to view the article on its own page.
If an article has comments, you can see those too without leaving the page. Unfortunately, there’s no icon telling you whether there are any comments to view, either on the pages itself or on the section front, which is a bit of a drawback as it’s hard to get a sense of which articles are getting a response. You also can’t post a comment, which means if you want to start or take part in the conversation, you’ve got to find the article on the IBNLive website and comment there.
The app allows you to stream TV from CNN IBN (English), IBN7 (Hindi) and IBN Lokmat (Marathi), with pictures delayed by only a couple of minutes from the live broadcast. The TV automatically views at half-size, but you can go to full screen if you want. The sound has rather compressed quality compared to similar apps, such as Al Jazeera’s live stream, which does detract somewhat.
If you want to see a particular video bulletin, these are all archived and accessible via the drop-down section menu, where you can access not only the sections, but all photo galleries, blogs, news and weather by city, live cricket scores and @IBNLive on Twitter. It’s a smart move to integrate the @IBNLive Twitter stream, but it’s a shame that you can’t click on the links or see any of the media they Tweet - all you can do is reTweet.
Blog can be read either by top posts, latest posts or most-viewed posts. You can flick from blog to blog, or work your way through one blog’s posts in order, although the navigation can be a bit awkward as you have to go back to ‘all blogs’ in order to move between them, whereas other sections give you a pull-down sub-menu at the top of the page.
The app sports the standard iOS pull-down-to-refresh functionality, which is a nice touch, although if you wait a bit it will autorefresh for you.
Design-wise, the app closely mimics the IBNLive website, with a strong grid-based layout and an emphasis on visual elements such as photos and video. Typographically, a bit more thought could go into the way headlines are formatted, as it’s unclear why some get a clean, clear treatment and others are shrunk to the point of being barely a sub-header.
Overall, it works pretty smoothly, and there’s a lot of content to get your teeth into!
Note: Firstpost is part of the Network 18 group that also owns IBN Live