Both The Daily and Photogene received major updates.
The Daily and Mobile Pond’s Photogene are two apps I’ve covered extensively here on Journographica. While I’ve been pretty kind to Photogene, I panned The Daily on many technical and journalistic fronts.
Both pieces of software saw some major updates last week, and in the case of both, it actually changes the game, though more for Photogene than the Daily. Let’s take a look at why.
Revisiting an old friend
Photogene has been a favorite of mine for photo editing on the iPad, easily beating offerings from more established names like Adobe.
One thing that was noted to me in the comments of the initial review by commenter Rob Sylvan, was that total output of the photos was limited to about 8 megapixels. My testing revealed that number to be 7.1 megapixels. Not bad for editing your fun photos, but it meant you were throwing away resolution if your camera shot more than that.
This essentially ruled out Photogene for any serious photo work. Mobile Pond said it was because of memory limitations on the first iPad.
But the latest version, 3.1, released July 12 changes that. The app can, according to the App Store, now support up to 21 megapixels when used on an iPad 2. My tests confirmed this, using all 21 megapixels of my 5D Mark II.
At last, journalists have an incredibly powerful tool for use on the road. I’ve even gone so far as to let my students use Photogene instead of Photoshop if they choose. It’s that good.
The price tag – $12 with a pro upgrade – is hard to beat. If the comments from the previous review scared you away, now’s the time to give Photogene a second look.
Revisiting an old friend(?)
The Daily upgraded to version 1.1.0, bringing with it one of my most desired features – the ability to pick up right where you left off when you switch apps.
Why it took this long to implement this feature is perplexing.
The Daily's newer, simpler opening screen. It seems to still think it's being "delivered" in the way a newspaper would.
About that – yes, The Daily has moved to the home screen of my iPad and yes I am still paying $0.99 a week for it. I’m still waiting to get my money’s worth.
Shoddy programming
Even after the update, The Daily wasn’t an entirely smooth experience. Whereas it used to give me access to the page carousel right away and load while I was reading, it instead now hangs a bit on a darkened front cover while content loads. It’s not bad, but the goal should be to make the app faster, not slower.
There’s also still a heavy reliance on wire photography as well, though there is a bit more in-house video content than there was at the start. Too bad that the app still won’t let you access video offline – but at least it gives you a message telling you this time.
My issues with archiving remain – there’s still no way to read something from even just the day before, let alone earlier issues.
Still, despite these technical issues, it is a far better publication than when I looked at it after it was just released. There’s a lot more to read, anyway.
There was one story, however, I was surprised I couldn’t read in the daily – news of Rupert Murdoch’s visit to the British Parliament to address the News Of The World phone-hacking scandal.
What was front-page news everywhere else - the Murdoch Scandal - didn't even make a brief in The Daily.
The quick recap: One of Murdoch’s premiere British publications had been found out hacking the voicemail of celebrities, politicians, ordinary citizens and, in one case, a murder victim. The News Of The World was shuttered by Murdoch in response, and Parliament wanted to find out how much the top brass at News Corp. knew about it.
On Tuesday, July 19, where other publications live blogged about it, had many sidebars on the story and anchored it to the front of their websites, the Murdoch-owned Daily was conspicuously quiet about it. I took a few screen shots of the front page of The Daily and the table of contents as well. I went through the entire issue looking for something on the scandal, but found nothing.
I guess that shows what type of journalism The Daily is engaged in.
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Link to the latest The Daily app on the iTunes store.
Link to the latest Photogene app on the iTunes store.