With the whole world seemingly going iPhone app crazy (over 1 billion app downloads to date and counting) we thought we'd get in on the act and build our own one.
The Flightglobal app is now live and available on the iTunes app store (search for "Flightglobal" in the App store on iTunes).
It features several different tabs allowing users to access various types of content from their iPhones.
These include:
- the latest and breaking news stories from anywhere in the world
- the latest aviation trends from Flightglobal's blogs
- the latest video highlights, including exclusive interviews, event reports and aerial displays
- follow our journalists on the road in our Twitter section
- the newest and latest aviation and airline jobs from all over the world
- the option to forward links of your favourite items to your friends via email
Obviously this is the first Flightglobal mobile app that we've developed, but we do intend to produce more applications focused on specific activities and topics within the aviation and aerospace communities.
If you've got a good idea of what you'd like to see in a future app then please drop a comment onto this post and we'll take it on board.
on November 11, 2009 5:02 PM | Reply
I'd like to recommend the following improvements for updates.
1. Picture of the day.
2. The ability to view the content on the app offline. I use the app on my iphone touch. I would like it if the app upon launching would try to synch with the flight website and update all the articles. If the app for some reason wasn't near wifi in order to synch, then it could still read the articles still on the app.
3. Besides the iphone, I'd recommend making this app available on palm pre's, google androids, and blackberry phones.
4. Another feature to add to it would be the annual big lists of companies you do(Top aviation companies, Top defense, etc...). See about incorporating that data into the app.
5. You could morph the app as well into the defacto wikipedia for aviation with all your sister aviation magazines by creating a database just of aerospace.
6. Integrate your podcasts into the app. For an example, look at the npr app on itines.
7. Stats. You could create a fun feature of the ability to compare aircraft with each other. For instance, a user could pull up information on the basic characteristics between two aircraft(biz jets, commercial jets, fighter jets, transport jets, etc...).
8. I'd like for the image interface for flight to be a bit more cleaned up. A good example of a good looking interface for an iphone app is time magazines app. The other good one is the financial times.
9. You could include stock prices into it.
Hopefully, that will keep you busy. Great first effort. Can't wait to see what the future holds.
on December 2, 2009 1:40 PM | Reply
Flight global this was very timely, i normally access your content while on the move using Edge thus the speed of reading the stories was not good probably due to all the graphics on the web page thus this worked a zillion times faster
I generally agree wiht the comments raised so far and would like to re emphasise as follows
Offline access should be supported
The content in the app is too brief, requiring one to go to the web page to view the full story, could you add more beef to the content accessed via the application
Lastley the biggest stories of the day (787 status update) dont seem to be available via the application, was this intentional?
on October 8, 2010 1:42 AM | Reply
The app was certainly something that Flightglobal was missing so a very welcome addition indeed!
Like anything new though there's always room for improvement. I've therefore put together a couple of comments and suggestions for your consideration:
1. It seems to me as if this is work in progress rather than the finished product. There are other news apps e.g. BBC News that have been very polished and sleek since they were first introduced. The Flightglobal app provide an opportunity to not only provide concise access to the content found on the website but also to present it in a different way. The BBC News app has a screen showing its logo while the app loads for example. Why couldn't the Flightglobal app show a picture of the day?
2. Why do the main stories only include an abstract which requires the website to be opened to read the rest? It defeats the purpose of the app! Blogs are fully readable in the app but news stories, the main focus of Flightglobal, are not which is a big let down that diminishes the usefulness of the app.
3. Pictures are missing from the news within the app. In general, online multimedia content seems to be the exception rather than the rule. I think this is something that needs to be addressed both in the app and also the website too. It feels like a treat when there are news articles with pictures and videos when it shouldn't be so!
Looking forward to see improvements in the app (and the website too)!