The NPR iPad app is on the App Store and has been selected by Apple as New and Noteworthy for the launch of the iPad. This is a great honor for all of us at Bottle Rocket Apps and we’d like to thank NPR and Apple.
NPR TAPS INTO iPAD, TWICE: LAUNCHES NEW APP AND OPTIMIZED WEBSITE
April 2, 2010; Washington, D.C. – NPR today announced the launch of the NPR iPad App and a fully optimized website for the iPad. The site and app are both free of charge and offer two entirely new and distinctive ways to access and experience NPR’s signature multimedia content.
Using a magazine-style presentation, the NPR iPad App highlights News, Arts & Life, and Music content, all core editorial strengths for NPR. It is also the ideal destination to discover hundreds of NPR stations and their programs. The website features all of NPR.org’s content, including its signature photo journalism, but has been optimized for the touch screen and given a more prominent audio player on the assumption that listening will be a key part of the iPad experience.
“Our surveys indicate that a large number of NPR listeners will also be heavy iPad users, and so we aggressively pursued a web/app experience for launch,” said Vivian Schiller, president and CEO of NPR. “Both the iPad App and website extend the personal relationship our audience has with NPR in an engaging and compelling new way.”
The app and site each load audio players created exclusively for the iPad, making listening easier and giving users more control with play/pause, resume and scrub options. The audio players can keep stories in play mode while users explore other aspects of the app or site, including reading stories or viewing images or photo galleries. In both the app and site, the player remains visible whenever audio is playing, providing a constant companion listening tool that references the story or stream as users browse.
“The iPad represents the perfect marriage between our online and audio storytelling,” said Kinsey Wilson, senior vice president and general manager of NPR Digital Media. “We’ve created an immersive experience that gets us closer to the classic NPR driveway moment than anything we’ve previously done in the digital space. And thanks to some of the technical innovations we’ve made in the past year, we were able to be up and running at the launch of iPad.”
Following on the success of NPR’s award-winning NPR News App for iPhone, NPR turned again to Bottle Rocket Apps to develop the NPR App for iPad. The NPR News App for iPhone (now in version 2.0) has remained among the top three free news apps since its August 2009 launch.
MEDIA PLEASE NOTE: Screen shots, video and extras are available at: http://npr.presslift.com/npripad
Download the NPR for iPad app for free. It’s already the 5th most downloaded iPad app on the App Store!
You have to look quick, but there it is. The HD Radio iPhone app icon is shown in the “Family Man” Apple TV Commercial.
Thank you Apple for selecting 
