The global edition of The New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, is now available in app form for iPhone and iPod Touch.
The ad-supported International Herald Tribune app, which is free, offers up nine sections of news, including latest headlines from the Times, world news, sports, culture and style, video, and the day in pictures. Users can customize their front-page experience in settings by selecting the number of stories they’d like to see in each section, or choosing sections to ignore — or moving sections up the list.
When viewing a story, the text size can be increased for better readability on your iPhone’s smaller screen. You can also star a story to add it to your favorites list, or share it via in-app email, Twitter or Facebook. Overall, the IHT has a simple, easy-to-use interface, but I didn’t see support for enlarging photos or reading in landscape mode — features that some users may miss. The app does provide a search function, but it doesn’t seem to include archived material—only the current stories, which are few when compared with other news sources.
International Herald Tribune for iPhone is currently a free app, but requires a user account for full access to its content. Because of its affiliation with the Times, I was able to register for the app using my existing Times account—a feature I greatly appreciated. For now, the IHT remains free; however, users can expect some sort of paywall to appear in early 2011.
An iPad version of the app is also available.
