Today’s Best Thing Ever is also my favorite new appquisition of the week, and it’s called the Accidental News Explorer, and it was built by Brendan Dawes
It’s news, but not as we know it. For a start, there’s no list of headlines. Just a search box.
So, think of something that’s on your mind and type it in. But don’t assume that you’re going to spend the next 10 minutes reading solely about that subject – no, that’s not what happens when you’re exploring the news accidentally.
The ANE will dig out a list of articles that match your search term. You can read them in situ, or send them to Instapaper, or to Twitter. Having read one, you get a choice – go back to the last list, or hit a “Related Topics” button.
This one searches again, looking for tangents. You pick one, you see a list of articles, and repeat, ad lib to fade. Here’s a demo video:
From Obama to Efron – The Accidental News Explorer iPhone app from Brendan Dawes on Vimeo.
What I love about ANE is the delightful sense of “What’s coming next?” It’s a newsy experience, but one that’s more of an adventure than reading a newspaper or a magazine.
Just now, I did a test run. I started with a search for “New York” and found something about city politics. That got me to the Republican Party; then Idaho; then Oregon State University; then NASA; then Earth; then Bristol; then finally, perhaps inevitably, to Justin Bieber. Every time you open ANE, you get a new, unexpected, eclectic trip through the world’s news.
Only $2. Highly recommended.
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