Friday, March 29, 2024

Nwsty review: the news app for those who don’t (usually) read news

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Tired of being bombarded with unimportant, ridiculous news all day, every day? We feel your pain. Even worse, today’s web-based information environment is increasingly being populated with fake news and misinformation that sometimes, can have a real-life impact.

So if you get your news from social media – and many of us do – you are exposed to a daily dose of hoaxes, rumors, conspiracy theories, as well as misleading news. And when mixed with info from reliable information from decent sources, the truth becomes a lot harder to grasp.

A new app called nwsty aims to solve this problem by offering to deliver the day’s most important news pieces from reliable sources straight on your Android device.

Setup

Simply download nwsty from the Google Play Store and launch it on your Android phone or tablet. The app is minimalistic and doesn’t have a lot of Settings to go through. So you’ll be thrown right in the middle of it. Its goal is simple, to deliver reliable news on a daily basis so you can stay truly informed and updated about important worldwide events.

Impressions

Nwsty is a pretty basic app. Launch it and you will be able to start reading news immediately. Every morning (Monday through Friday) the app will deliver a collection of what it deems to be the most important news of the day (six to ten bits).

The app takes advantage of AI technology to be able to “discern” which news is of importance. If you’re a person who doesn’t usually read the news but still likes to be up to date with the things going on in the world, then nwsty is the perfect app for you.

But I like to use my news sources as a means of discovery too. I follow science and I’m really interested in the latest advancements and published papers. So I prefer a news app which lets me choose my interests.

Nwsty simply assumes you’ll be interested in a story just because it’s trending right now or it’s flagged as breaking news. Which isn’t the wrong approach. If you want to stay informed, you’ll certainly have to go through global headlines on a daily basis. This is why nwsty is a great tool if you want to do just that.

Every day you’ll get a group of summaries outlining the latest news. These are concise, easy-to-read abstracts of larger, more in-depth articles.

Need more details? Simply tap the expansion icon in the upper right corner and you’ll be redirected to the source’s website, so you can read the full story. As far as I could see, the app uses reliable sources such as CNN, Reuters, Financial Times, NBC News, NPR, and the BBC for its pieces. So if you need a tool to combat the fake news trend, nwsty is once again the app for you.

You can also easily share the news with your friends and families by tapping on the social media button in the upper right corner. Easily share content on WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram Direct.

The app delivers news from various categories including technology, business, gun control, banks, and science. But if you have a specific interest like I do, the app quickly become unsatisfactory.

As I mentioned above, the app is pretty bear. You download, install it and start getting news on your Android device. The app will send a notification each time a new selection of stories is available.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWQXEPmAm_o?feature=oembed&w=640&h=360]

You can also revisit older news by accessing the calendar and tapping on a specific date. Other than that, there’s not much you can do in nwsty. You can’t customize your feed or pick a certain hour when you’d like to get your news delivered.

For me, the most frustrating part was that I wasn’t able to pick a specific news category or categories. But to be fair, the app’s purpose isn’t to give you an overview of news in a specific area, but to keep you informed of the important things happening in the world. Sometimes the two can overlap, but not always. I for one like to see more info about advancements in neuroscience than political stories in my news feed. But it’s my personal preference.

Conclusion

All in all, nwsty is a pretty useful app. It keeps you away from fake news by tapping into reliable sources while letting you read straightforward mini-articles that won’t take more than a few minutes to go through. It has a clean and simple interface and it’s not riddled by ads either.

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