How would you like reading all local stories from all Ugandan Newspapers on mobile all in one place? If you’re familiar with news aggregator sites like Hacker news, Digg, Reddit, Popurl then you will find a striking resemblance between the Uganda Newspaper app and these websites. The app so far aggregates content from up to 18 different sources including the New vision, Daily monitor, The Independent, Bukedde, Observer among others. The App also picks content from online sources like the Kawoowo sports, Urban Legend Kampala, Uganda Picks and soon the TechPost.
Easily scroll through the headlines
After discovering the App on the Play Store, i immediately downloaded it to my android phone anxiously ready to have a feel of it. The App has the Headlines and Events sections, so I tapped on the headlines.
I was really impressed by the format of the story headlines that consists of a story title and a small except from the story which gives you an idea as to whether or not you would like to continue reading the story.
All is good until you actually want to read a story
Once you tap on a particular headline, the App immediately throws you out of its space to the content owner’s website opened by the default browser of your phone. The problem with this approach is that chances are that you might never come back to the App as you might be taken up by more content on the content provider’s site. And it’s just hard work to flip back and forth between two different Apps — the News App and the browser. If you’ve used a news aggregator App like Pulse or Flipboard, then you know that all the content can be accessible within the App itself rather than from the news providers website which gives the user a better reading experience.
Don’t blame the developer, blame the News providers
For the all the content to be displayed in the aggregator App Flipboard style, the developer needs an API(Application Programming Interface) which allows his application to automatically pick content from the content owner’s system automatically. So far, I do not know of any content provider that has or provides it’s API to third party developers. So we are kind of lenient on how content is consumed on the App.
Conclusion
This App is spearheading a new way that Ugandans will consume local content on their mobile phones. By aggregating content from various providers in one place, the App makes it easy for users to easily keep in touch with the latest content from their favorite sources.
Download it here.
