iPhone Round-Up: CBS News, "Dancing with the Stars," HAVA, YouTube

Submitted by tracyswedlow on October 19, 2009 - 1:38am

CBS's CBS Mobile and CBS News arms last week announced the launch of a CBS News application for the iPhone and iPod touch. According to the broadcaster, features of the new app, which is available for free in the Apple App Store, include:

Breaking news from CBS News and CBSNews.com.
Dedicated homepages for CBS News shows such as "CBS Evening News with Katie Couric," "The Early Show," "48 Hours Mystery," "60 Minutes," "Sunday Morning," "Face the Nation" and "Up to the Minute." In addition to articles and features, four of the sites--"CBS Evening News," "60 Minutes," "48 Hours Mystery" and "The Early Show"--feature full-length on-demand episodes.
Dedicated homepages for CBSNews.com original video Webcasts, such as "@KatieCouric," "Washington Unplugged," "The Tomorrow Show" and "Doc Dot Com."
Over 40 CBS News Twitter feeds. According to CBS, users can navigate the feeds by specific reporters or shows, or by topic through a "News Trends" section that also aggregates top stories from feeds across Twitter. (Note: according to CBS Mobile VP, Rob Gelick, "The CBS News mobile application is the first app to integrate Twitter feeds from users around the globe alongside feeds from our own news personalities to offer a well-rounded and unique perspective on the day's breaking news.")
Integration with a range of social networks, including Twitter, Digg and Delicious, allowing users to share stories, photos and videos with their online friends and followers.
Real-time and extended weather forecasts, targeted automatically by each user's location (note: users can also check weather conditions in other cities).

CBS Mobile says that it partnered with Treemo Labs to develop the application, and with Transpera to power its video and advertising capabilities. A version of the app is already available for the BlackBerry, and CBS Mobile says it will launch apps for Android OS and Palm Pre later this fall.

In other iPhone/iPod touch news:

ABC last week launched a free iPhone/iPod touch application for its reality show, "Dancing with the Stars." According to the broadcaster, the app, in addition to providing viewers with another way to vote for their favorite contestants each week via SMS, features 1) instant updates about who was voted off the show, as well as video results; 2) photo galleries; 3) bios of the show's stars, professional dancers, judges and hosts; 4) information on the various dances featured on the show'; 5) "first-hand knowledge" of how voting shapes the show; and 6) a game called "iJudge" that is billed as giving users access to the show's "scoring paddles."
Monsoon Media has launched an iPhone/iPod touch mobile player application for its HAVA TV place-shifting platform, which it says will allow customers to use their Apple handset to view and control their home television service, including cable, satellite, DVD and TiVo, from anywhere in the world via a WiFi connection.
A company called Active TV has launched an iPhone/iPod touch application for YouTube. "Browse video Standard Feeds, Categories, Channels and Playlists," the company writes in its promotional materials for the new app. "Then organize new videos into your own favorites and playlists. Make playlists private or public. Subscribe to other users' playlists and video collections for future viewing. Subscribe to videos matching search-words. Look at publicly viewable favorite videos, playlists and subscriptions based on your YouTube friends, family and contacts. Send and receive video recommendations with YouTube contacts via YouTube video messages. Search for new videos tagged for your language or geographical region, using local keyboard. Explore for new videos via easy switching of user ID to the owner of interesting videos--then explore their world." More information is available here.