Ongo
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Ongo for iPad is a good start, but it's far from a home run
We told you yesterday that Ongo was on the way to the iPad. It's now on the App Store, and I've had some time to play with it. Ongo is a joint venture by several newspaper companies to create a paid, ad-free news aggregator that is easy to use and will appeal to the news junkie. After some hours using the app, I found it attractively designed and easy to use. You can see and share top stories from several publications like the New York Times, USA Today and the Washington Post. The app doesn't cache much, so reading offline does not appear to be an option. You can save stories, called clippings, but once saved, I could not retrieve them without a data connection. The app allows you to sort news by type, like US or Arts and Entertainment, but there are no sections for tech (!) or even politics. It seems a glaring omission. You can certainly read stories on those subjects, but you can't sort them on your own. All the news in Ongo is created by a staff of five editors, so you're not getting the full NYT or USA Today. The staff choose what will be available, which I found troubling. Also, when searching for "Opinion," I only got material from the Washington Post. Worse yet, Hints from Heloise came up under the "Opinion" heading, with tips on cleaning pewter. Sorry, but I don't think that was a good editorial choice. There is a search function, and a query for Steve Jobs brought up many stories, none of which were relevant. They were just stories that mentioned someone named Steve and had the word "jobs" somewhere in them. An identical search in Google News worked perfectly. %Gallery-115241%
Ongo News app coming to iPad
Ongo is something new for news consumers. It just launched on the Web this week and has just been released for the iPad late this afternoon. It's a collaboration between The New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today and others to provide a subscription news service for US$6.99 a month. The aim is to provide readers with the best of those papers and other media outlets that join up. They already have the Financial Times and newspapers from Boston, Charlotte, Louisville, Detroit, Des Moines, Indianapolis, Kansas City and Miami on board, among others. Some of the content providers provide complete access. Other content is curated. Some content is an additional $0.99 a month, but other publications can cost up to $14.99, which is just a tad pricey. You can sign up for a free day pass or get 30 days free if you want to test drive the concept. I tried the web version on my iPad, and generally it worked well just using Safari. You can change the size of the text, save and share stories and search for topics. I had some trouble launching stories, as the app sometimes failed to register a finger tap. Ongo will be in competition with Rupert Murdoch's new publication, The Daily, which is due this month at almost half the price. Ongo is ad-free, and it will be interesting to see if people are willing to pay for news that is generally free on the Web. The browser interface is intuitive and a nice environment to read in, but ultimately the consumer will decide how it all shakes out. We'll review the iPad app soon. %Gallery-115155%
