NPR News iPhone App Upgrade Includes Live Coverage And More

We have just released a new update to our NPR News iPhone app. (v1.2, if you're counting; we sure are!) It's ready for download from the iTunes Store. Here are some of the updates we've made to it:

Listen Live: Although NPR is not a radio station, we do "go live," over our member stations' broadcasts as well as from NPR.org, for major scheduled or unscheduled news events. With v1.2, we have now extended this capability to the iPhone; if NPR is in live coverage, you will receive a start-up alert inviting you to tune in. Down the line, we will improve the ways in which we notify iPhone app users about live coverage; we also anticipate presenting NPR Music live concerts.

A Better Audio Experience: v1.2 offers two improvements here: improved audio streaming in low bandwidth scenarios, and greater Playlist stability.

Sharing: We have added the ability for users to share, not just individual stories, but also many of the program episodes via email, Twitter and Facebook. We have also improved the Twitter share screens in particular.

Story Page and Images: We have improved the layout of individual story pages. And, if you enlarge any photo on a story page, you will now see an overlay presenting the full caption.

All in all, v1.2 offers a total of 32 improvements. Many of these are in response to your feedback via the NPR Facebook page, Twitter, other posts on this blog, iTunes reviews, etc. So, please, keep 'em coming — we are already working on v1.3.