South Africa’s Polity website, published by Creamer Media, has invested in an iPhone and iPad app that was developed by Prefix Technologies and which is now available for free download.
“The app helps expand their reach by broadcasting their content on two additional platforms (iPhone and iPad). Their online revenue is also positively impacted as they will soon be able to sell advertisement slots on the app,” said Walter Penfold, managing director of Prefix Technologies.
The Polity app joins those already created for other Creamer Media titles, Engineering News and Mining Weekly, by a different company.
“Polity is all about harnessing the power of information to empower citizens,” said Creamer Media’s CEO, Kenneth Creamer. “But information on its own isn’t enough—it has to be delivered to you wherever you are and in a format that is useful. For those with access to the iPhone and iPad it is now possible to have instant access to the information-rich variety of video interviews, speeches, legislation and policy documents that are published by Polity each day.”
Penfold said the app is a generic one built to cater to publishers (including Creamer Media) to make their content accessible. “The customisations are limited to style as opposed to function, Creamer Media was involved in this process.”
“It took two months of development time on the generic app, thereafter customisations and implementation of the Polity branded app were done within a week,” he said.
Penfold said that the iPhone/iPad app is an extension of the company’s powerful Preditor content management system. “Preditor was created to enable media houses to centralise all their content and serve it to readers via the channel of choice—Web, mobile, e-mail or print. Information is power—but information in the right place at the right time is what can change the world. The Polity app extends that concept to the consumer of the information.”
The app is available for free download from Apple’s app store <https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/polity/id445591693?mt=8> and allows readers to store the content currently loaded into various sections of Polity.org.za as well as the last 10 articles that the user viewed.
Cached articles can thus be viewed quickly as the device does not need to reconnect to the server. Users can prompt content refreshes themselves, or get the app to do so automatically.
Users of the app will be able to read not only the full article but also reader comments—and viewing embedded images or multimedia is as easy as tapping the screen.
