Flipboard is stepping into smaller screens with a new iPhone app. Their iPad app is getting squeezed down into the size of an iPhone or iPod Touch. It still looks the same, but now is more portable.
Flipboard Supports Many Social Inputs:
Flipboard made a big splash when it was released for the iPad around the middle of last year. Now they created an extension of the news aggregator for the smaller screen of the iPhone and iPod. This will allow an iPhone user to see many updates at one time.
Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader, Instagram and others will be displayed on the smartphone screen. Steve Jobs really liked this in its iPad form. He probably would like this version just as well. It comes with the same great graphics.
The iPhone App Works Like A Digital Magazine:
The visual acuity of this app is what sets it apart. National Geographic, travel sites, interior design sites all come alive with the color of the web. The Flipboard iPhone app makes it attractive to look at in the retina display. The app is designed to use in “normal” portrait mode and flips up and down in this form.
It can also work in the landscape mode as well. The Flipboard boss, Evan Doll, stated Flipboard tried to make this as fast as flipping a page in a regular magazine. To do this, the app loads a new page under the one being viewed, making it ready for the next “flip”.
No Problem Going From iPhone To iPad:
The Flipboard iPhone app is of course socially motivated and all the details can be shared with your own personal network of contacts. Adding comments is included. A very thoughtful feature is the synchronicity of the new iPhone app with the older iPad version. All personal preferences can be saved on the iPad if the iPhone user wants to transfer them from the iPhone.
The App Gets Smarter With Use:
One new feature is on the iPhone version that has not been on the iPad version of Flipboard. The “cover stories” option is new. This is the first thing that pops up when viewing Flipboard. It is a part of the app that learns what the user likes. The interaction between the user and the app is recorded and used to augment the performance of the program. This app is free and is popular with around four million people. Flipboard reports that users of their app are making 650 million page turns or “flips” every month.
