Local Alaska News App

The latest app to hit the streets is from KTUU Channel 2 here in Anchorage, Alaska. They announced the app on their news broadcast earlier this week and I went to check it out.

First off, the best news about the KTUU iPhone app is – it’s FREE. Giving something away is always a good way to attract tirekickers and followers. So the question is, is it worth it – even for free?

Searching for “KTUU” in iTunes app store was easy and obviously only gave 1 result, the KTUU app. Not putting the app under Alaska news might not have been the smartest decision, but if you already know KTUU – this is not a big deal. Okay, so the free install went as expected, nothing new here.

To some the terms and conditions may not be that big a concern, but this was one of the first apps I’ve installed that came with such a long legal agreement to accept. A minor negative for some and likely a non-issue for most…but what’s in that agreement anyway? So, now that I’ve accepted the terms that will never be read – they want to know where you are. Okay, I gave you my first born and gave you permission to track me…moving on, what do I get out of this deal?

My initial reaction to the interface was, “wow, nice”. Overall I think this off the shelf app from doapps (http://www.doapps.com/) is pretty slick. The menus are well sorted and smooth looking with a nice set of icons to represent the news, weather, sports, etc.

The news content is what you might expect from KTUU. It’s good, it’s local and it’s now inside an iPhone app. I did experience some problems with the app initially, categories not loading and some minor formatting issues that could be easily resolved (story images are too wide for the app).

Pros:

• Nice UI
• Relatively bug free
• It’s local Alaska news under a single button

Cons:

• Free = data mining and banner ads

All said, I would say kudos to KTUU for jumping in and putting it out there. Will I keep or use this app? Maybe, but likely not, only because I can get the same content more timely in most cases from other sources during my regular use of a desktop browser. I still applaud KTUU for doing it.

Get the KTUU app
Download the KTUU app from the iTunes app store.

Looking for a great Alaska iPhone app for travel?
Check out the Alaska HDTV travel app on the iTunes store.