There are so many ways to get the News fix on your Android phone. You can download the NDTV app, IBN Live app, one of many unofficial newspaper apps; you can subscribe to the popular News feeds; there is Google News for India and you can always visit the various newspaper websites. But Taazza wants to provide you with a better and more localized experience of News for many locations in India. Ahead is a small description of what they do in their words.
Taazza is about getting you closer to the news story that matters to you. We bring this fresh perspective by connecting you to three important aspects of news:
- Who wrote the story? (Author)
- Where is the story relevant? (Location)
- What is it talking about? (Topic)
How we are different?
- Cutting edge NLP & classification algorithms
- Popular newspapers, citizen journals & niche neighborhood papers
- Easy content API for developers to build on
We downloaded the app for a quick review. See the gallery below for all the images.
The app offers to calculate or select a location according to which the searching will be done. After the boot screen we see the following tabs:
- City News
Gathers news and deals from the city and displays the headlines collected from various newspapers/websites. As you click on the news Taazza opens up a page with a smartly selected category, location of the news on the map and Share (Email/Facebook/Twitter) and Save (Instapaper) options. The “Read More” option opens up the source website within the app. - Nearby
Displays the news articles nearest to the selected location along with the approximate distance. The details are similar to City News. - Deals
Gathers various Deals near you. The detail page contains the Overview, Details, Outlet location, Reviews and the deal details. Pressing the BUY button allows you to call a phone number or visit a link to buy the deal. - Cities
Shows the complete list of cities and locations the app supports. You can browse to view the news/deals in any location.
The other sections worth noticing are:
- Settings
The page that allows you to connect to Facebook, Twitter and enter Instapaper credentials. - Map
Shows all the news on a neat map interface. - Feedback
Allows you to repost and issue and more importantly suggest your favorite source of news.
What we liked
- Once you select the location, the gathered news articles are pretty good.
- Categorization of news is good but not used optimally. Users should be allowed to browse the news by category.
- Except the buying process, the Deals interface is excellent.
- The Map interface is slick and innovative.
- Weather icon shown on the Top-Right corner is interesting but not detailed enough. Current temperature and a link to the detailed weather will be great.
- Integration with Social Networks is good.
- Right after we posted the review the developers informed us that the new release is getting ready with the fixes to the issues we pointed out. Good job guys!
What needs improvements
- The intermediate pages feel unnecessary.
- No option to read news in browser. It’s helpful as you can open multiple tabs and someone may want to render the article in a different browser like Opera Mini.
- The app is somewhat slow and not really polished. While loading different tabs, the UI seems to hang.
The app is definitely worth a download but we’d wait for the next version to decide how long it stays on the phone.
10 responses to “Get Fresh Local News and Deals – TaazzaGo for Android”
This app just hangs up each time I click on a news item. Pretty buggy I'd say.
Worked fine for me. You on Wifi or EDGE?
We have reached out to you on twitter to help address the issue. Pls revert.
The earlier problem was confined to only LG's Android phones (LG Optimus One).
The latest update seems to have fixed the issue.
Which is the app that you use to capture screenshots on an Android Phone again?
ddms on the computer. Comes with Android toolkit.
oh yeah, I use that too. Surprising that one has to root the phone to do this w/o using the desktop. There must be some command to trigger the DDMS command, is there?
Chirag,
Thanks for taking the time to post a detailed review. We are humbled! Some of the issues/suggestions that you have brought up are being addressed in the next release that should be out in the next few days:
– Speed & performace
– UI cleanup & polishing
– Option to read in the browser
– intermediate page seems unnecessary
Thanks for your suggestions about the weather details – It has been bumped up in priority 🙂
News reading by category in scheduled for the following release after we push the current release.
Would love to get your insights on the following comment –
– Except the buying process, the Deals interface is excellent.
How would u like us to improve?
Hope we find the app useful! More features are on the way!
Best,
Arjun Ram
Think Local. Think Taazza.
Is there any plan to bring Taazza on iPhone?
Hopefully soon. The current focus is to stabilize the app on Android and get enough users before we spread out to other platforms. My current phone is an iPhone so I am rooting for it internally 🙂
Pls follow @taazzaGO on twitter for more updates on the same. Cheers!