Newsroom is a beautifully innovative newsreader by the creator of Atmosphere Weather

Kevin N Smith

New member
Mar 12, 2013
502
0
0
Visit site
Capture.PNG
Newsroom​
Newsroom is a beautiful and innovative newsreader that is coming to Windows Phone soon - by the creator of Atmosphere!​
Newsroom takes the design principles of Atmosphere - it's flat, fluid UI - and combines it with useful, easy to use features that can be accessed in a single tap. I worked to ensure Newsroom included the most fluid animations and the most intuitive interface i've ever created while keeping the application feature-rich and usable. Below, i'll explain some of the app's top features, beta, launch, and monetization.​

wp_ss_20141215_0008.jpeg

Features
The following features are exclusive to newsroom:

  • Live Updating
  • Hyperlinks in Articles
  • News is always relevant to your selected country
  • Local news from your town or city
  • Articles and topics are in a rotating spotlight for easy discovery
  • Search and add any topic to your feed in seconds
  • When searching, Quick Summary displays a summary of the topic you searched for
  • Gesture support
  • Live Tile
  • Drill down deeper and see multiple viewpoints on any story

wp_ss_20141215_0004.jpeg

When I built Newsroom, I placed emphasis on Search and discovery of content because when I read the news, I like to become engrossed in Search, Hyperlinking, and learning. I made sure to include these three features into newsroom in a way that they appear organically - when you want to see it - and go away when you don't.[/CENTER]

Quick Info
Quick Info is a card which is displayed when you search for something, someone, or something. If you don't already know about the topic you are searching for, you can read the card and learn about who or what that person, article, or location is, why it is newsworthy, and then proceed to scroll down and view top articles about that topic.

Discovery
When I read the news, I like to discover things that are interesting or newsworthy without laborious searching and guessing on what to type into the search bar. That's why I built Discovery, a curated list of articles and topics to read and follow - updated a few times per day (Not updated during Alpha other then during tests)

Interests
Interests combines the first two features into a simple, user-friendly system to follow discovered or searched topics. When you find something you want to follow, just tap "Add To Feed" or the Plus depending on the context of the situation and it will be added to your newsfeed.

wp_ss_20141118_0003.jpeg
Local News
Local News finds articles based on your current location, allowing you to see news that is relevant to your city. This isn't found in other mobile newsreaders and allows you to keep up on the smaller stories that are only relevant because you live in the area that they may have happened.

Article View
One of the core features of a mobile newsreader is the article view. Newsroom's article view includes hyperlink, image, and (possibly) video support. As one of the most advanced mobilizers ever, this feature can take most (99.5%) webpages and parse them into text that you can read on a phone. In case you are reading one of the 0.5% of articles that parse incorrectly, you can switch to the webpage view in a few taps.

Live Updating
*This is extremely early in development and will not be included in the Alpha
Newsroom is the only - and will be the only - newsreader to include live updating. What that means is that for every new article that gets posted when you're using the app, you'll get a notification at the top of your screen. This notification has been designed specifically to not be disruptive when reading. When you single-tap the notification, you will dismiss it. Double tap it to load the newly-posted article.

Beta

Newsroom is currently in Alpha and is being tested by a small group of about 10 testers. We did this because we want the beta to be as usable as possible when I open it up to the public - Alpha is still missing major features and is simply not ready for public use yet.

If Alpha goes as well as I expect it to, the Beta phase may be skipped. If it is, we will move directly into release phase. I'll ensure to update this section when I am closer to releasing Newsroom.

Launch and Monetization

Newsroom is expected to launch in the coming weeks - after thanksgiving but before Christmas. I may delay or shorten the launch window depending on Alpha progress. Newsroom will be heavily marketed at launch - I plan to request articles on most major Windows Phone news websites and launch an advertising campaign.

I have yet to decide a monitization strategy being that I am extremely focused on developing the app and getting it out to the alpha testers as soon as I can, however there are some strategies I am considering:

  • Ads in app with price to remove the ads
  • Ads in app with price to remove the ads. Ad-Free session if you click an ad
  • Fixed price with trial

If you would like to get live, daily updates on the development of Newsroom and Atmosphere, follow me on twitter at @Atmoweather!
 

Makm

New member
May 15, 2014
324
0
0
Visit site
Can you add the option to read news of different topics like the bing news app? For example when I search for the topic "windows phone" I don't want to follow news sources like wpcentral or the verge to read about that topic, I wanna read about that topic from all over the web.
 

Kevin N Smith

New member
Mar 12, 2013
502
0
0
Visit site
Can you add the option to read news of different topics like the bing news app? For example when I search for the topic "windows phone" I don't want to follow news sources like wpcentral or the verge to read about that topic, I wanna read about that topic from all over the web.

Yes, you absolutely can do that.
 

Kevin N Smith

New member
Mar 12, 2013
502
0
0
Visit site
Rebuilt the article view, scrapping the webbrowser used in most other news apps for a completely proprietary solution. This solution basically parses the HTML directly into rich text, with the following improvements over the WebBrowser system used previously:
- Fonts and font sizes controlled by the client, not the server, creating a unified experience across articles
- Article Summaries
- No more scrolling errors
- Articles no longer cut off for any reason, go on endlessly
- Page breaks for ads if I choose to monetize it in that way
- You can't scroll past the end of the article
- Anything other then text and images are filtered out; no large space between title and content.

Here's how it looks:
wp_ss_20141224_0001.jpg
 

Members online

Forum statistics

Threads
322,915
Messages
2,242,889
Members
428,004
Latest member
hetb