Here’s a partial extract of that story:

Quit Facebook or be expelled, school says

A Queensland primary school principal is threatening to expel students aged under 13 who refuse to delete their Facebook accounts, in a bold bid to stamp out cyber bullying at her school.

…

Leonie Hultgren, the principal of Harlaxton State School in Toowoomba, Queensland, has explained the school’s new policy in its latest newsletter.

Ms Hultgren wrote that the school expected students would adhere to the Facebook guideline that users must be 13 years old to create an account. It is not uncommon for primary students aged under 13 to falsify their birthdates to set up a Facebook account.

Ms Hultgren said it was school policy that students and their parents would obey state and Commonwealth laws, as well as the guidelines set by social networking sites, with regard to children’s use of such sites. Therefore, she stated, no Harlaxton student aged under 13 was to have a Facebook account.

“Parents should understand that a student who contravenes the law or rule in a digital scenario may need to meet with the Principal to discuss this issue and their continued enrolment at Harlaxton,” Ms Hultgren wrote.

…

In her letter to parents and students, Ms Hultgren applauded those who had refused to allow their children to set up a Facebook account before they turned 13.

“There is a reason why the legal age for Facebook in Australia is 13. There is an assumption that by that age children will have been taught (and understand ) the implications of using social media. It is anticipated that the child will have gained a strong moral purpose and be able to differentiate between what is socially acceptable and lawful and what could be considered libellous and unlawful.

“We have spent the last five years teaching our students about respect, relationships and resilience. It may seem insignificant to lie about your age to gain access to a social media site but where does it stop?”

If you’re so inclined, you can read the school newsletter which contains Hultgren’s letter to parents.

I have a serious problem with this situation. Who exactly does this principal think she is that she can dictate to students what they can and can’t do in their own time?

To be fair, I don’t know much about the school. I don’t know if they have an existing bullying problem or of this is simply a proactive measure. But reading what background I’ve been able to dig up it seems this policy amounts to nothing more than the “fad of the week”.

Before I go on, it’s important to acknowledge a few things. First, it’s true that Facebook has a policy that users must be over the age of 13. This is made clear in their terms of use:

Registration and Account Security

Facebook users provide their real names and information, and we need your help to keep it that way. Here are some commitments you make to us relating to registering and maintaining the security of your account:

You will not provide any false personal information on Facebook, or create an account for anyone other than yourself without permission.

…

You will not use Facebook if you are under 13.

…

Secondly, yes, many kids are using Facebook in contravention of these terms.

I am not in the legal profession, nor have I had any legal training. The extent of my legal education doesn’t extend beyond Year 11 legal studies and what I learnt from Boston Legal (Denny Crane). However, I do know enough to know that there is no “legal age” to use Facebook. Hultgren is seriously misinformed if she believed that this is the case. Although the Facebook terms specify a minimum age, this is nothing more than a rule created and enforced by Facebook. In fact, in Australia persons under the age of 18 cannot enter into agreements of contracts, so it’s fair to say that any such terms are null and void. It’s a double-edged sword, but hopefully you can see where I’m coming from.

Kids want to use social media to stay in contact with their friends. Like it or not, that’s the way the world is these days. I can’t help but feel that this move will do nothing more than create a wave of fake accounts amongst affected students, and possibly resentment against the principal involved. It also sets a dangerous precedent: where does it stop? Schools dictating which tv shows and movies kids can watch, who they can socialise with or the clothes they wear?

If anything, the school should be working with the kids AND parents to encourage responsible online activity. Teach them to not only behave responsibly but to identify and deal with risks that may cause them or others harm. A comprehensive program built in to the curriculum is probably a much better solution than to threaten students with expulsion if they don’t comply some ill-conceived rule. I’m going to go ahead and say that working with kids in a positive learning environment will have a better outcome.

Hultgren probably means well in this endeavour, but needs to seriously rethink her approach. Although I don’t like pulling rank, she’s a public servant. If I had kids at that – or any – school that tried this on I’d have no hesitation in telling whoever tried to enforce this backwards rule where they could go.

Last night I was going through my wallet and found the receipt for the transaction. Glancing at the receipt, I found that my credit card number (well, debit card, but the purposes of this we’ll say credit card) was printed in full at the top of the receipt. Just below that was the card expiry date.

The credit card companies and issuers are doing all they can to push card security right. I’ve seen literature from one bank that says a customer should not hand over their card at all (instead swiping or inserting it themselves). Another suggests that if the card leaves your sight at any time it should be considered comprised and be reported immediately to the institution. Consumers are constantly told to be wary of performing transactions over the internet. Visa and MasterCard have adopted new technology to reduce fraud.

Earlier in the year I was on a crowded train during peak hour. A young female was paying a bill over the phone, and read out all of her credit card details to the operator she was speaking with. Her full name, card number, expiry and CVV. I was quite shocked that she was so willing to do this in a crowded train, and pointed out to her that anyone could have written down those details and taken full advantage. Her response? “I’m not sure how that is possible, as long as my card is in my wallet it’s safe, right?”.

Sensible precautions protect everyone: the cardholder from being stung, the merchant from dealing with chargebacks and losses and ultimately reduces the financial burden on both the issuer and the card companies.

A brief glance at the Merchant Services Agreements from the four major banks are quite vague on the matter. ANZ says that card data must not be stored in any way other than electronically. Commonwealth Bank allows information to be stored securely but must be destroyed after a given period of time (typically after the customer dispute period has lapsed). NAB is similar but doesn’t specify that information should be destructed, rather that data may be retained as long as it is stored securely. Westpac had the most confusing information, but it seems that they permit the secure storage of information for a minimum of 12 months. What’s interesting is that not one of the service agreements define what “secure storage” means, other than in a place that only authorised persons may access. I didn’t have time to examine agreements from other banks, but I imagine that they would be much the same.

However, my transaction was performed electronically. My card was swiped and the necessary details were sent to the bank for processing and an approval returned. Why is there any need for my card details (at least in full) to be printed on the receipt? In this instance the merchant doesn’t – and shouldn’t – need to know this information. Many EFTPOS machines print only a small portion of the card number (typically the first 4 digits and the 6 last digits), which is probably enough to identify the card used but not enough to be able to perform a fraudulent transaction.

A Google search reveals tools and algorithms necessary to extrapolate CVV numbers from given details. I was able to use one of these tools to correctly calculate my CVV based on the information provided on that receipt. If I could do it, what is to stop someone at that restaurant – or any other merchant or person with access to that data – from doing the same?

I’m spending today wondering if I should report my card details as compromised to my credit union. I’m sure the restaurant aren’t up to any shenanigans at all, and it’s probably not their fault the terminal is configured in this fashion. If anything, the issuing bank should be ensuring such terminals are replaced or provided with updated firmware.

That said, my penne carbonara was delicious.

Hey @twitchthis why do you RT everyone that mentions your new android app? We get it, you have an app, you’ve mentioned it a million times!

His comment was in reference to one Jeremy “Twitch” Stenberg, who has released an app so his fans can keep up to date with news and events surrounding whatever it is he does. I’m not sure exactly who he is myself, and I guess that isn’t important. Jeremy retweets each instance of his fans mentioning his app.

Ollie received this response to his tweet:

Succinctly put.

While it’s true one could simply unfollow him, let’s consider this: the majority of those following him probably already have installed his app (either iOS or Android) and don’t really care that others have done so. Secondly, telling someone to unfollow him in the manner described reeks of unprofessionalism.

But, each to his own I guess.

For those of you unaware, Find My iPhone is a free service provided by Apple that can pinpoint the location of your Apple devices – iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, MacBook or iMac. It achieves this using a combination of GPS and WPS (Wi-fi Positioning System) triangulation (or just WPS for non-GPS equipped devices). The service can also remotely lock or wipe the device. If you own an Apple device and you’re not using Find My iPhone, well, you’re not my friend.

In Cohen’s case, he had activated Find My iPhone. However, the thief was smart: he quickly disabled the location services – effectively stopping Cohen or the police from locating the position of the thief and the handset.

Cohen goes on to describe how to stop a thief (or anyone else, for that matter) from disabling location services. This means that should your device be stolen you’ll always be able to track it as long as the device is powered on.

Although described in the article, I’ll run through the steps here (this applies to your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch running iOS 5 – the process on older versions of iOS may be different):

Open your Settings app

Here you’ll need to to navigate to General and then Restrictions.

Once there, tap Enable Restrictions.

Set a restrictions passcode

The device will ask you to set and confirm a restrictions passcode, if you haven’t already done so. Choose something that’s easy for you to remember, but is different from any other PIN code you may use on the device. You’ll need to enter this code to modify or disable restrictions in the future, so use something you won’t forget.

Disable changes to location services

Scroll down until you find the section called “Allow Changes” and tap Location.

Once here, tap Don’t Allow Changes. This is the setting that prevents anyone from making changes to any location-based settings on the device.

Don’t Get Mugged

You’re done. From this point on do your best not to get done over for your shiny Apple device. If you do, relax in the knowledge that you’ve made it just that little bit harder for the thief to get away undetected.

Remember that this method has a slight drawback: installing a new app that needs or makes use of location services will require you to temporarily disable the restriction before you can grant that app access. It’s a nuisance, yes, but a worthwhile one in the scheme of things. Just remember to reactivate the restrictions once installed!

It’s also important to know that you should report the theft of your SIM-enabled device to your carrier as soon as possible. Until you do so, you’re still responsible for any charges incurred up to that point.

Several weeks ago I was contacted via Facebook by a developer asking me to write a post on his app. I declined (mainly because I dont believe in reviewing apps I’ve been asked to review, and I don’t want to feel obliged to pen favorable comments) and for the last few weeks I’ve been pestered endlessly by the developer over it. Supposedly he doesn’t understand the meaning of the word “no”.

However, I’ve finally relented, and here is a review of Raoul Shah’s app iStayConnected.

Category:Entertainment
Cost: Free
Free/Trial Version Available: N/A
Size: 6.0Mb
Developer: Raoul Shah
Other platforms: None
Device: iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad
Compatability: Requires iOS 3.0 or later

iTunes Store Link

All apps are tested using an iPhone 4 32gb and/or an iPad 2 16gb, both on the Telstra network.

The App

iStayConnected is apparently an app that allows users to stay connected with what is happening in their world. Various stories are presented, sorted into a range of geographic categories. These categories are further broken down into topics.

What’s good?

The pleasure you receive when you delete this app from your device.

What’s not?

This app reeks of amateur developer, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was developed using sample code from a textbook or similar. Yes, it’s that bad.

Graphics used to represent categories appear to be nothing more than various items of clipart sourced via the first page of results from Google Images. There’s no consistency, and frankly, they look horrible.

News items are nothing more than latest articles from Yahoo, making me wonder why one doesn’t simply bypass the app and read the Yahoo website directly. Should a category contain no items, the user is instead told they have a problem with their Internet connection.

Final Comments

The app is free, and even at that price, you’re being overcharged.

My rating: 0 annoying idiots (out of 5)
Average user rating: 0 (as of date of this post)

Screenshots (click for bigger)

Category: Photo & Video
Cost: 99c
Free/Trial Version Available: No
Size: 8.5Mb
Developer: Peak Systems
Other platforms: None
Device: iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad
Compatability: Requires iOS 3.0 or later

iTunes Store Link

All apps are tested using an iPhone 4 32gb and/or an iPad 2 16gb, both on the Telstra network.

The App

Diptic is a simple iOS application that allows the user to create an assembled collage of 2 or more photographs, selecting from an assortment of layouts. Basic effects can also be applied to photos and the end result can be shared via email or through various social networking sites.

What’s good?

The most striking feature of this app is the user interface – clean, simple yet full featured. The creation process starts off with selecting one of the 52 default layouts, selecting the photos to be included (which can be from the device itself or imported from Facebook or Flickr) and running through any additional options such as effects and border styles. The collage is then created and able to be saved or shared with friends.

Although fully functional from initial purchase, a 99c in-app upgrade brings “expandable layouts”. The app is a little confusing as to what this is, but it seems to allow users to adjust the output size and other element dimensions.

For those who might be a little indecisive, Diptic features a random select option – it will choose either a random layout or random selection of photos (or even both), leaving the user to just apply effects and save.

One purchase also covers all devices on the same Apple account – iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

What’s not?

There’s really not a lot to dislike about Diptic – it does what it is supposed to do efficiently and easily. However, I do find that it’s a little slow to process and generate the final product – one collage on my iPhone took just short of a minute. I’m not sure if performance is any better on later devices such as the iPhone 4S or the new iPad, though I’d like to compare. This certainly is not a deal breaker, though, but may bother those who want their creation in a hurry.

Final Comments

Diptic is one of those apps that doesn’t actually serve any real useful purpose, but is fun if you like sharing your photos with the world. An easy to use and well designed interface means it’s simple to start creating in a matter of seconds. Often a single photo is not sufficient, yet with Diptic it’s simple to combine images to tell the story you want to.

Thanks to Toby the cat who agreed to model for the photographs used in this review.

My rating: 4 .5 disposable cameras (out of 5)
Average user rating: 4.5 (as of date of this post)

Screenshots (click for bigger)

Back in November I wrote a review of Metlink Melbourne’s public transport application for the iPhone. Overall, I was fairly critical of the app – although useful, it was difficult to use and didn’t present information in a meaningful or helpful way. I did submit feedback – linking to my post – and received a response that a new version of the app was on the way which would address many of the issues I had raised.

Several weeks ago Metlink Melbourne was quietly rebranded to become Public Transport Victoria, using a logo stylised as PT>. Late yesterday afternoon an update to the existing Metlink iOS app was pushed out to users. The feedback from users – mostly sourced from Twitter – was that the updated version off the app, in short, sucked. And I agree.

The first thing I noticed after installing the app – which was an upgrade, not a new installation – was that the UI had been completely overhauled. The drab interface of the original app had disappeared, and had been replaced with a somewhat bright, well designed layout. I also found that, despite being an upgrade, all my saved favourite trips had been deleted.

What really stood out for me was that the app didn’t seem to work. It launched. It found my location using the phone’s GPS. I could manipulate it using the settings. But that’s all it did. It was impossible to select train stations or tram stops, or even figure out how to view public transport information.

As it turns out, the app doesn’t appear to come with current timetables included. This does make sense in a way, as users are provided two options for timetable data: online (real time information is obtained over the air upon request) or offline (downloaded timetables saved onto the device). Offline timetables combined come in at around 70mb, so it makes sense to give the user the option to download them only if they want to.

However, the app wouldn’t even provide information when in online timetable mode. Just did … nothing. Trying to obtain offline timetable data resulted in the download consistently timing out. Eventually I managed to download all 5 timetable databases (trains, trams, buses, V/Line and Nightrider) yet was still unable to actually get the app to work. At this point I actually pondered if it was me, and maybe I should hand in my iOS licence.

Word came through via Twitter that after downloading the timetable information restarting the application would see things working as normal – and it did. On the next launch I was able to actually find stations and stops, as well as plan journeys.

The only problem is that the journey planner is .. broken.

My most common journey is travelling from Werribee or Laverton to East Richmond. Typically this involves a train in to Southern Cross and changing to an Alamein or Glen Waverley train for the trip via the loop to East Richmond. As given in one example, the journey planner tells me to travel direct to Flinders St to travel to East Richmond on the 2.50pm Lilydale train. Two problems here: firstly, there is no 2.50pm Lilydale train, and secondly, Lilydale trains run express through East Richmond.

Testing multi-modal combinations – such as a train and then a tram – handles the connections well, and correct information appears to be provided, as does other single modes involving transfers. It only appears to be connections between trains that are somewhat broken.

What’s also interesting is that attempting to plan a late night weekend journey (as in 2am) returns no results – despite Nightrider services being available.

jTribe, the iOS developers who partnered with Metlink to work on the original app release are credited with creating the current incarnation. Although this doesn’t appear to be the case – a statement put out by jTribe states:

PTV Metlink app rollout issues

jTribe worked with Metlink on their iOS app last year and completed development in December 2011. Since that time we have not been involved with any further development or the rollout of the iPhone app on the iTunes store.

Today we discovered that the new PTV (previously Metlink) iPhone app was released to the iTunes App Store. We want to be clear that unfortunately we have no control over this update process.
Like many people we are disappointed that the update has not gone smoothly. We look forward to PTV rectifying the situation and the app performing the way it was designed.

I really can’t work out what’s happened here. Either PT> have inadvertently released a beta version of the app, or they seriously believe that this was ready to enter the public domain. Either way it may fall, the app is a complete farce and does nothing to promote the supposed ease of using public transport – one of the very functions of the PTV.

If you’ve upgraded to the new PTV app, you can download Metlink Classic from the App Store if you’d prefer to use the old style version until PTV remove their heads from whichever orifice they have them firmly inserted into.

Screenshots of the new app are below:

- Fixed a few visual bugs
- Put location name back at the top in landscape mode
- Ran out of funny things to say in our update text, so [insert you're favourite joke here] (see what we did their grammar peeps? Yes twice!)

You can purchase Pocket Weather HD here.

Bill shock: how you can save thousands

Mobile phone customers hit by “bill shock” have about a 95 per cent chance of successfully recovering the majority of their excess charges.

A recent study found bill shock was hitting nearly half of Australia’s mobile phone users and costing the country more than $557 million a year. But it is fairly simple to avoid most such charges – about 60-70 per cent in most cases – if you put in the time to complain through the right channels.

Some firms, such as Perth company Financial Redress, offer to go in to battle with the telcos for you in exchange for a 25 per cent fee, but managing director James Middleweek said anyone could shave thousands off their bills on their own without using a firm such as his.

Middleweek claims his company has recovered about $310,000 in the last year for about 296 Australian mobile phone users that suffered from bill shock.

…

Clients of his who succesfully got refunds on their bills ranged from ones with a statement of a few hundred dollars to $8000, he said. The highest refund a client recieved was $4000 and in most cases customers got back 60 to 70 per cent of what they claimed, Mr Middleweek said.

He said many telcos didn’t make it easy for customers to track their mobile usage, which often led to them getting a large bill.

“If [telcos] have mechanisms – which I think most of them do now – to monitor your usage, the onus seems to be on the customer to find out about them. I know one or two companies who are better at it than others.”

Another reason bill shock came about was from telcos deliberately confusing customers with the vast range of plans on offer, Mr Middleweek said, which has been described by others as “confusopoly”.

“The telcos make a lot of money out of bill shock,” he said. “And for everyone who complains about a two or three thousand dollar bill shock, how many people don’t [complain] and just pay it when they shouldn’t?”

What really bothers me about this story is that it’s essentially encouraging people to argue against bill charges that have been legitimately incurred, and possibly painting a scenario that a 3rd-party company can retrieve thousands of dollars back on your behalf.

Most mobile phone plans offered by the major companies such as Telstra, Optus, Vodafone and Virgin are typically referred to as “cap” plans. Pay a fixed monthly fee and receive a given amount of value to use across included services – for example, Telslra’s $49 Freedom Connect plan offers $450 of any combination of calls, text and MMS plus 1gb of data.

Although the term “cap” is gradually disappearing, these types plans are anything but a cap. Once the user hits their limit – in this case $450 – any charges incurred are billed on top of the monthly base rate. This may be at standard rates or an excess penalty rate. It’s here where most “bill shock” complaints happen.

Many years ago I worked for a Hutchison Telecoms dealer. As the largest dealer in Victoria in terms of volume we were well aware of and adept at the need to match a plan to the requirements of the customer. Unfortunately, as they did then and do now, many customers simply look at deals on their face value, not examining the finer important details such as ongoing call costs. This $30 per month plan IS cheaper than the $60 per month plan so I’ll just go with that one! Back then plans were much different – pay a set fee with an included value of calls less than the monthly fee. Text messages weren’t included in that value either(!).

This situation actually became so bad that I ended up constructing a basic spreadsheet to provide a comparison between the different plans and call patterns. This had a huge impact once customers could visualise the difference this way. This isn’t to say lower end plans aren’t great value, it’s simply about matching the right plan to the right person.

One requirement back then was to have the customer sign the “Do You Know…” sheet which formed part of the legal contract. Simply put, this was a brief summary of the plan the customer was committing to, including contract term, call rates, monthly fees and any other pertinent details. This meant it was much less likely for a customer to succeed in disputing charges by claiming they were unaware.

These days it seems that many carriers don’t have this requirement, instead leaving it up to the customer to be aware of what they’re agreeing to. All in all this isn’t such a bad thing (simply because I believe people should be researching before buying) providing that there’s ample opportunity for customers to do so. Telstra now provide something called “My Offer Summary” ($49 Freedom Connect as an example) which outlines all aspects of the deal, including call rates, inclusions and exclusions, termination fees and other important information.

But back to the article.

As I said earlier, it seems that the line pushed by this article is that customers should approach their providers to claw back excess charges. Why? On the face of it, if these charges have been incurred by the customer, then the customer should be paying those
charges.

If out-of-date or delayed usage information was provided to the customer not allowing them to make an informed decision then I can say fair enough, but there’s a limit to how many times this line can be taken (if a customer is exceeding their included value repeatedly, then it’s obviously time to consider a change).

I’m the first to admit that something needs to be done to bring the telecommunication companies into line on this issue. If usage meters are several days behind and don’t provide up-to-date information it’s obviously difficult to know if included value has been exceeded and it’s quite hard for the average customer to keep track of their usage. Plan details also need to be clearly presented and readily available.

These “cap” plans represent good value (to some extent), but if consumer lobby groups and government regulators continue to push for and impose sanctions on these deals it will probably mean we return to a traditional model – that is, pay $x and get $x, ultimately meaning we all miss out.

The only solution here is that carriers are more transparent with their offerings and make full details clear upfront, and consumers take the time to fully understand what they’re signing up for and that it’s appropriate for their circumstances.

This week I’ll be taking a look at The Early Edition 2.

Category: News
Cost: $5.49
Free/Trial Version Available: No
Size: 48.2Mb
Developer: Glasshouse Apps
Other platforms: None
Device: iPad
Compatability: Requires iOS 5.0 or later

iTunes Store Link

All apps are tested using an iPhone 4 32gb and/or an iPad 2 16gb, both on the Telstra network.

The App

The Early Edition 2 is the second version of Glasshouse Apps RSS aggregator and reader.

For those who don’t know what RSS is, I’ll provide a quick run down. In the context we’re talking about, RSS is a feed of stories from a particular source, for example a website. Rather than visiting The Age, ABC News, Gizmodo and your favourite blogs individually, you can simply subscribe to their respective RSS feeds. An RSS reader checks the RSS feeds periodically to check for new content, and downloads anything new to your device.

RSS Readers have several advantages: first, it obviously eliminates the need to manually visit each website to check for new content. Secondly, RSS readers manage it all for you – they know which stories you’ve read, and only downloads and displays the new unread content. All feeds are in one manageable place that is updated on a regular basis.

A third advantage is that some websites have a choice of combined feeds or individual feeds. Let’s just say you want to download stories from the Travel section of The Age, but don’t care about the rest. It’s possible to just subscribe to that particular feed so that your reader isn’t filled with rubbish you don’t care about.

So that’s your quick 2-minute lesson on RSS, and The Early Edition 2 is one of the many RSS readers available.

What’s good?

The one striking feature of this reader that really stands out is the neat layout and effects – stories are automatically formatted to fit pages (much in the way a newspaper editor would do for a dead-tree edition), and page turning effects a la iBooks are standard. I’ve found that The Early Edition 2 is comfortable and easy to use in either orientation, although my personal preference is landscape.

Like a normal newspaper, feed articles are sorted into user-defined categories. In my case, I have News for articles from The Age and ABC Online, Technology for various tech-related sites, Blogs for personal blogs and General for anything else. It’s relatively easy to manage categories, and feeds can be added to multiple categories. For example The Age’s Tech feed can be added to both News and Technology if desired. Individual sections can be easily isolated, so if you only want to read the general news, it’s easy to just focus on that and come back to other sections later.

Multiple sync options are available, and it’s possible to sync daily, on launch or never (manual only), with an option to turn off 3G sync to avoid data usage. The app can also import feeds from Google Reader and it’s easy to share individual stories on various social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.

Somewhat impressively, TEE2 detected that I had the first version of the app already installed on my iPad and asked if I wanted to import my feeds – something certainly welcome given that the thought of tracking down and entering all those feed URLs didn’t particularly appeal to me.

What’s not?

In trying to take screenshots of the app to include with this post, I hard a hard time trying to track down the in-app settings. While it’s true that users are given a quick tutorial on how to use the app on first launch, I couldn’t remember how to access the settings and only stumbled across them by accident after 10 minutes (swipe downwards, for the record). Strangely enough, it’s possible to run through the tutorial at any time, but only if you can remember how to access the settings bar.

Although this is subjective, I personally preferred the layout of the first version where feeds were listed in a left column, and stories laid out on the right. Perhaps a toggle option here would be a nice addition?

Although font sizes are scalable to three levels, there’s no apparent way to change the font of text bodies. This is important to me as I have difficulty reading some fonts, and would like to see user-selectable fonts available. It’s not a dealbreaker, but would go in favour of it being a more user-friendly app.

Final Comments

Having purchased the first version of The Early Edition, I was somewhat disappointed with the response I received from the developers when I reported an issue. Their email brushed aside the issue, and instead pointed me to the new release, claiming it has been entirely rewritten and I should go purchase it NOW. While I agree the second release is a huge improvement, the first app still does it’s job, and I’d expect the developers to provide some semblance of assistance as opposed to using their support mechanism to drive sales.

The Early Edition 2 is worthwhile app if you’re serious about getting your fix of news that’s of interest to you each day, however I do question if it’s worth the $5.49 price tag ( I picked it up on sale for 99 cents). However, I’m probably basing that more on the support experience I had rather than the usefulness of the app itself.

If you’re after an RSS reader, this is probably the best bet for you.

My rating: 4 Page 3 girls (out of 5)
Average user rating: 4.5 (as of date of this post)

Screenshots (click for bigger)