Should the idea of a soothing British accent reading you the biggest news headlines of the day sound appealing, then you’ll want to make Snackr the next app you download. Available for iPhone and iPod Touch users, Snackr gives you the news you need to know, when you don’t have time to read it yourself.
Snackr’s standout is its Snackr report, which compiles the top news headlines of the day into a five-minute segment. Snackr’s British narrator reads you the headlines and the first paragraph of each story so you can get an overview of the day’s events. You can opt to email a story to yourself for later reading, or you can mark it as a favorite. These items will also be emailed to you, but you can turn off this setting. I prefer to access stories through the favorites panel. Here you can open web links of items you’ve favorited, or view your entire Snackr history.
In addition to the Snackr report, you can create custom channels to get more news about a specific topic, such as entertainment or business. There’s no support for customizing specific sources or feeds, but as this seems to be the primary complaint about the app I’m betting we’ll see the feature added soon. Snackr’s voice is pleasant to listen to, and mostly accurate in its pronunciation. It stumbled over Louis Vuitton but hit Young Jeezy on the mark.
Snackr recommends you connect to the service through Facebook, but, and this was a tad strange, you’ll still have to register for a Snackr account. I haven’t seen much benefit yet in connecting Facebook to the service, but the app boasts that it uses the information to personalize your news and to provide you reminders of friends’ birthdays.
Snackr is ideal for catching up on the news in a passive manner and its free price tag makes it a no-brainer to check out.
