You may not believe this. I don't really believe it myself. But there's a Clips Nation app available for the iPhone and iPod Touch. That's right - you can go to the app store on iTunes, and buy a Clips Nation app. I'm kind of freaking out - just a little. My teenage nieces will think this is very cool.
Apparently, there's also a G1 app available, but I don't know what that means. That's a Google thing, right? Man, those guys are taking over.
So, you may be asking yourself, how is the Clips Nation App better or different than the already available mobile version of Clips Nation? Well, in a few ways, hopefully. For one thing, it's built from scratch as an iPhone app, so it's optimized for all things Apple, whereas the mobile SBNation stuff has to be cross-platform. And because it is built specifically for the iPhone, you don't have to open Safari to use it - just click on it and read the stories. All of this makes it FAST to use. You can also get automatic alerts when new stories are posted on Clips Nation (be sure to say yes to notifications and then yes again to alerts - you can turn them off later if you want). You’ll also be able to share stories with your friends via email and Twitter. You cannot, however, read and post comments yet, so for now it's really for reading stories. But I'm told that commenting features are on the way.
If you're wondering how all this came about, here's the scoop. Our good friend, AusTechSpur from the Spurs blog Pounding the Rock builds iPhone apps in his day job. So he decided to do a pilot with some SBNation sites. And because PhoenixStan from Bright Side of the Sun and I were hanging out with him and drinking beers and what not in Vegas during summer league, it's PtR, BSotS and CN in the pilot - because that's how we roll. Oh, and Blogging the Boys for the Cowboys - not sure how that one got in.
I'll just tell you up front, since it won't be hard to figure out - Clips Nation is priced at $0.99, BSotS is $1.99 and PtR is free. It's a pilot, so SBNation is trying to find the best price point. The bloggers get a piece of the revenue pie on this (there's also some ad revenues involved), so by purchasing the app and using it, you can support your favorite blogger in a small way.
It's interesting timing given that ClipperBlog launched a very nice iPhone version last week - I was telling AusTechSpur that Clipper fans will be the best connected in all of mobiledom. But ClipperBlog's not available in the friggin' app store. Seriously? How cool is that?
So go ahead and check it out. Here's the link in the App store. Maybe you'll hate it. But hey, it's $0.99, and it's for a good cause (mostly me). And who knows, maybe you'll love it. If I could get my kids to give me back my iPod Touch, I'm sure I'd be using it all the time.