Is a iPad ever REALLY idle? If it is sitting on your desk between meetings, it can be providing you with a stream of information… if you like that sort of thing. You can use the iPad as a very nice photo slideshow presenter of family photos. Or, there are a couple news agencies that steam out their latest news photos that makes staying up to date pretty slick.
You do not have to sit and read headlines from a newspaper, instead photos will flip by automatically on your iPad screen. When you see a photo of interest you can stop and drill in to see more information on that subject. Nothing says ‘big volcano’ than an image of a mountain flowing lava.
Two agencies that have jumped in with high resolution images is The Guardian Eyewitness and Thomson Reuters. Both are free offerings.
The Guardian Eyewitness is tied to Cannon for quality photos. The photo slides have a start/pause. There is a bit of descriptive text on each full screen photo so you don’t have to stop the slide for basic information.
Pausing the images from progressing forward give you time to share the image out to your friends, family and coworkers via email or post to Facebook.
There is also the pull down to see photos that are in the future or past so you can jump back if you missed the pause or forward if images are bit sad for the day.
The Reuters News agency starts with a few images that are the top of their list.
Starting the slide show of images results in a full screen image without any text or other ‘distractions’. Making this option more of a picture viewer until you drill down.
Tapping the image brings up the option bar along the top to start/stop, view a page of thumbnail images and share out to friends via Twitter. Along the bottom is very small images that allow you to slide though the images to jump ahead/back.
The thumbnail view shows the same images the previous screen did across the bottom but larger. Tapping an image jumps to the full screen view of that image.
One note on the Reuters option, there is no way to set the amount of time each slide shows and they are flipping past pretty quickly. The solution is really more about getting the news to you than enjoying a high quality picture.
While there are many options for text news via different agency’s apps or RSS readers. Above is a couple ways your iPad brings you closer to the news, visually.
