NPR News iPhone App Upgrade Includes Sharing, Audio Controls and More

The NPR News iPhone app launched on August 15 and the feedback has been tremendous! But we are not content to leave well-enough alone... Today, we launched our first upgrade to the app (version 1.1). Many of the changes in this version were implemented based on your feedback via the NPR Facebook page, Twitter, other posts on this blog, iTunes reviews, etc. We built this app for you, the users, so we took your comments to heart.

This release includes a lot of improvements. Most of these are "behind-the-scenes" changes to improve performance, minor layout issues and smaller feature enhancements. But there are some major additions as well, including:

Sharing Tools
With this release, you are now able to share stories via e-mail, Facebook and Twitter. All three sharing functions are performed within the app itself, so you can continue to listen to the story while you share it.

Audio Controls
One of the most frequent comments about the app has been that there was no way to pause the audio and continue where you left off. This version adds the pause button to on-demand audio, such as programs and news segments. We also added "scrubbing", which allows you to fast-forward or rewind within either program- or story-audio segments.

Image Enlargement
For any story that contains a photo, we have added the ability to tap on the image to see a larger version of it.

Again, most of the changes for this are directly a result of your feedback. If you would like to see other features in the next version of the app, which we are already working on, please let us know. You can write us directly at techcenter at npr dot org, tweet us at NPRTechTeam or post comments to this blog.