When it comes to apps designed to deliver a single news organization, there’s one piece of free software that is the gold standard not only for the content deliver but also its thoughtful, attractive user interface.

When I saw that there is a BBC World ($2.99 on iTunes) now available for the iPhone and iPod touch, I leapt before I gave it a second thought. I was really looking forward to having a way to turn on BBC World Service TV or radio and just leave it on.

Back in the day, BBC World (TV) was streamed exclusively via QuickTime and you could listen to and/or watch it all day, every day. Just fire it up and down it would come. Its throughput needs weren’t so egregious as to saturate the primitive “broadband” I had at time. Still, the quality wasn’t great—think a shimmering postage stamp with frequent buffering issues—but is was brilliant nonetheless.

Of course, today, you can’t get BBC World 24/7 in the US unless your television cable carrier has it and, well, Time Warner doesn’t offer it here in BFE, not that I’m in the market to pay them $1xx a month for it anyway.

Sadly, my haste to reconnect with the past cost me as BBC World for iPhone doesn’t offer any radio let alone TV content—it’s just a news reader. Moreover, although there’s a category called “In Pictures,” images don’t display (only an error message). The “In Sounds” page? Error message.

Yes, you can tailor which text content you download and read when you’ve got a connection. And, once you’ve updated, you don’t need a wireless or internet connection to read, read, read to your heart’s content, which is convenient. Still, 20 years after the CD ushered in the age of multimedia and about 10 years after the Internet killed the multimedia CD, you’d think BBC World for iPhone could at least manage pictures.

The gold standard

However, when it comes to applications designed to deliver a news organization on your iPod touch or iPhone the gold standard is The Wall Street Journal (WSJ, see also Get The Wall Street Journal on your iPhone, iPod touch).

Yes, you get free access to online articles with pictures, which would cost $100+ if viewed on a computer (go figure). Not just that, you also get short and not so short form WSJ video news and content—some really world class stuff—but also WSJ Radio.

Further, the WSJ for iPhone user interface is attractive and well designed. And, did I mention that it’s free?

Unless you’ve got a burning need to cast $2.99 to the wind, or need a way to read BBC news when off the grid, you should avoid BBC World—reading news on bbc.co.uk is more than palatable for the vast majority of news junkies and the broadcaster’s excellent podcasts page provides a huge array content.

So, for the time being at least, BBC World for iPhone will only be worthwhile for a very, very few people. Get a copy of WSJ instead, it’s better in every way…

What’s your take?

See also:
— http://www.flytunes.fm/ for BBC World radio
— http://ootunes.com/app/ for BBC radio content
— RadioTimes for iPhone (UK only, iTunes)

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Entry was posted on Saturday, June 6th, 2009 at 1:44 pm under Commercial Software, Free Apps, International, Internet, Review, iPhone, iPod Touch.  Print This Post

Read more entries by Ronald O Carlson.
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