by There are plenty of unique and colorful ways to read news on the iPad. Pulse, Flipboard, Newsify, and Reeder — not to mention every major media outlet — all offer pleasant ways to get your daily news fix, with bright photos and constantly updating headlines to keep you informed. The Wider Image isn’t one of these apps. If you’re looking for up-to-the-minute headlines from Reuters, you’d be better off downloading News Pro. But for news junkies who want to digest as much of the world as possible, The Wider Image is possibly the most gorgeous way to explore exotic people and places on your iPad.
The Wider Image may be a news app, but it certainly doesn’t feel like one. Navigation is controlled entirely through images, and the landscape-only interface is as slick as the photos themselves, many of which are accompanied by articles that explain the action in far more depth than a caption ever could. Interactive features, including videos, panoramas, and slide shows, round out the stories, and everything can be searched by theme or date, though The Wider Image is clearly meant to be explored by locale. Crisp, vivid images cover a wide variety of places, with some delivered in such high resolution they can be zoomed to see things otherwise hidden way in the background.
While I thoroughly enjoyed the content in The Wider Image, I had some trouble getting to it. Since images are accessed remotely, a strong connection is needed, and loading hang-ups forced me to quit numerous times (and finally reinstall, which seemed to help). Also, Reuters claims its app is updated daily, but I couldn’t find much in the way of current news. Luckily, much of what is featured proves timeless in appeal.
The bottom line. The Wider Image is photojournalism at its finest and redefines what newspapers can be in the digital age.
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