Editor’s Note: AppleNApps and AppTudes are venturing into a new partnership, so both sites can bring you more of what you love. This review is written and reprinted with permission by Trevor Sheridan.
Prismatic (iPhone/iPod touch) by Prismatic is the latest in a long list of news reader apps for iOS. Of course, the highlight of all iOS news apps is personalization, and that’s exactly what Prismatic delivers. Considering its feature set and free price, this is definitely one of the best apps of its kind.
The app tracks a user’s interests based on the stories they read, connecting to their social media accounts, current location, and any interests explicitly provided. Users can pick particular topics for your interest, or simply mark stories interesting or not interesting to improve news results, Pandora style. Within a few days, the news feed transforms from the same listings of news across the internet, into a unique, personalized experience.
The app is a lot like Zite, and that’s definitely a good thing. Prismatic takes a cue from Zite for social media, adding its own exploration flavor for a unique experience. There are so many paths to keep branching out through news to discover new topics, interests, and ultimately news stories.
The best part is that the more you explore, the more intelligent the news mix becomes to get truly interesting news stories and not just an aggregation of stories from all over the internet. It really gives the news a personalized feel, like having a digital newspaper created exclusively for your own iOS device. With the smooth interface and quick updates, it’s just too bad the app isn’t available on the iPad at this point in time.
The user interface is also worth commending due to the smooth nature, making it effortless to move through all of the content. Once a user is deep into a specific section, simple swipes across the screen left to go back one section, or swipe right to return to the main menu.
On any article, you can tap and hold to bring up the mini menu to mark an article as interesting or not as well as share that article. The entire app is extremely clean as well allowing you to focus on the news, instead of clicking around, typing in web pages in Safari and scrolling through multiple pages of news just to spend more time sifting through stories that don’t hold any personal interest.
Prismatic is a great utility to have to keep you updated on a wide variety of topics in a very streamlined way, mixing formal news feeds, social networks, and other news sources into a personalized experience.
