Digtal magazine app News360 is rolling out a fresh update today that takes advantage of Apple’s newly released iOS 8.
News360 has over 5 million monthly active users and sees competition from rivals Flipboard, Pulse, and a handful of others. The app aggregates a collection of news articles based on several factors, such as your reading activity, specified interests, and what your friends are perusing. The more you can tell News360 about the content you want to read, the better your experience. It’s probably most similar to Zite, which saw its development merged into Flipboard as a result of its sale by CNN.
The iOS 8 update brings a complete redesign to News360 that should compensate for the two additional screen sizes available to iOS users thanks to the new 4.7-inch iPhone 6 and 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus. The startup has optimized the interface for use on televisions as well.
New features in the update include a new notification center featuring all the custom news articles specific to each user. The app also now lets you specify the type of news stories you’d like to follow via push notifications. News360 even gives you greater control to mute uninteresting topics, plus improved news discovery through social media connections.
But the new feature I’m most excited about is probably News360’s support for iOS’ “Handoff,” which is sort of like a universal bookmark. Handoff essentially allows you to start reading an article on one device, such as your iPhone, and finish up from the exact same place on another device. For long-form feature articles this will be extremely useful.
“More than a quarter of News360 users use the app on multiple devices, so [we expect] Handoff to be something that’s very useful. [It's] something I use on a daily basis,” News360 founder and CEO Roman Karachinsky said in an interview with VentureBeat. “So often I’ll be reading something on my phone while walking to the office, but then when I sit down to my desk I can continue reading on the desktop without much interruption.”
The News360 app update will be available via Apple’s App Store later today. Until then, check out the gallery of screenshots embedded below for a closer look.
