Wednesday, March 16, 2011

More ways to read the KNS

Personally, I think iPads are for women and children.

A real man lugs around a laptop. And preferably one that has nothing to do with Apple. Throw the Steve Jobs' stuff in the iToilet, I say.

(OK, that was stupid.)

Anyhoo, we – and by “we” I mean the people who run the paper and hopefully don’t pay attention to what I write about on this blog – are launching the KNS E-Edition iPad app. Apparently it’s in the app store now. Whatever that is.

For now, it’s free “for a sampling period,” although we’re going to bill you one of these days.

You can find the app (whatever that is) by searching for “Knoxville News Sentinel” in the app store. Apparently it takes a little while after the first time you download an edition of the paper. After that, it moves faster.

This fancy new product also lets users “flip through pages, zoom in by tapping a story with one finger, switch modes by tapping with two fingers and link instantly to hot-linked websites and e-mail editions,” according to an email the company sent me.

Please note, there was no mention on how in the world you’re going to be able to use this sucker as fish-wrap.

But, hey, it does store several editions of the paper (just no screams from the porch stuff).

We’ll also – within a week or two – begin adding a related video and photo gallery each day. And, we have some plans to use an RSS feed (whatever that is) to add breaking news to the app, too.

Like all online-related things that newspapers do, this continues to be a work in development and we’ll be adding more interactivity soon.

And somehow, someway, I just know this will mean more work for me.

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