NBC Politics Launches Free Elections App for iPad and iPhone

NBC Politics Launches Free Elections App for iPad and iPhone
May 3, 2012 by Alex Fitzpatrick on Mashable

NBC Politics launched a new iPad and iPhone app Thursday that lets users keep tabs on the latest news coming out of the 2012 race to the White House.

The app, which is free, first opens to a page of recent headlines. Users can tap a headline to get the full story, including images and video. A daily “tip sheet,” which is a round-up briefing of the latest political news and headlines, is also included in the app. Candidate profiles give users full biographies of the presidential candidates. Also featured: Video clips taken directly from the latest episodes of NBC’s many news shows.

“With all eyes on the 2012 election, the NBC Politics App delivers the best political content and reporting -– wherever you are,” said David Gregory, moderator of NBC News’ Meet the Press. “This all-access, easy-to-navigate resource puts the full power of NBC News in your hands, from the top headlines and stories to innovative features that allow serious political junkies to dig even deeper.”

For you political geography geeks out there, the app has two different sets of maps: one that shows real-time results from primaries and, eventually, the general election, and another that’s a game-based election simulator.

The real-time results map is visually inviting and simple to use, although the county-by-county results pull down from an outside web page, which can feel awkward and is occasionally buggy. However, if the data gets updated promptly on election nights, it could prove to be an excellent poll-watching tool.

The simulator presents a national election map, then challenges users to guess which way each of the 50 states will lean – heavily Democrat or Republican, slightly Democrat or Republican or neutral. Depending on your guesses, either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney is bestowed the presidential seal.

The truly nerdy amongst us will be disappointed to know that you can’t — yet — predict results on a county-by-county basis.

There’s a sharing element, too — users can easily post articles or video from the app to their Facebook or Twitter feeds.

NBC’s new app was designed by Method, and is available for download in the App Store.



Source: Mashable.com

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CloudOn Brings Microsoft Office, Adobe Reader To Your iPad

CloudOn Brings Microsoft Office, Adobe Reader To Your iPad
by Emily Price on Mashable

In January CloudOn launched its iPad app allowing you to access and work with Microsoft Office documents directly on your iPad, saving those documents to DropBox. Tuesday, the company took its app a step further, adding support for Adobe Reader as well as the ability to also store and access files on Box.

CloudOn gives you access to all of Microsoft Office’s features, including the ability to track changes in Word documents, pivot tables in Excel, or view PowerPoint presentations in full presentation mode. You can also use the app to display, edit or create charts, insert formulas, change formatting, spell check, or insert comments into any Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint document. With the update, documents you work with in CloudOn can also now be emailed to others as attachments without ever leaving the app.

Documents you work on are saved and synced from DropBox or now, Box. If you currently have a Box or Dropbox account you can log in directly from the all, and open, edit, share, or auto save documents. CloudOn doesn’t store any of your content on its servers, making the service in many ways more secure than some competing services.

Tuesday’s update adds support for Adobe Reader, something that wasn’t available in the initial release of the app. The app can read everything from simple forms to complex 3-D documents, and users have access to a universal viewer for any file, ranging from raw Photoshop images to everyday image files, including: PNG, JPEG and GIF.

“We’re seeing a departure from the Windows world that corporate America and users have lived in for the past 20 years,” Milind Gadekar, CEO and founder of CloudOn told Mashable. He says that one of the main challenges in creating the app was taking programs that were developed for a mouse-based interface and making them really useful in a gesture-based environment.

“If I’m on an iPad I shouldn’t have to connect to a Windows machine. I should be able to get an iPad experience,” says Gadekar. CloudOn offers gesture-based controls that make Microsoft Office and Adobe reader feel like they’re native applications on your iPad.

After its initial launch in January the app quickly rose to the number 1 free iPad app in the App Store, and has garnered close to a million downloads over the past three months. “Even after a million users we’re still responding diligently to emails and feedback,” says Gadekar. “The initial positive response validates the progress we’ve made so far. And this launch makes it even easier for our users to get to their information, use familiar applications and share their work.”

CloudOn currently only supports the iPad, however, the company has plans to support other tablets and phones in the future. The company has also had several companies reach out to it to be included in future updates of the app, something the company intends on doing. Today the app is free, however, as support for more software gets added over time, it will likely evolve into a free version and then a premium paid version with more functionality.

Have any of you tried out CloudOn? What do you think about the app? Tell us your thoughts in the comments.

Source: http://mashable.com/2012/04/10/cloudon-v2/