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If you’re over the age of, oh, 25, this may not interest you much. For you youngsters out there, however, this is, like, so totally cool: MTV just got its own app.
Free but ad-supported, MTV News serves up the latest pop-culture gossip–er, news–about music, movies, TV, celebrities, and gaming. It’s available for the iPhone and the iPod Touch now; an iPad version is in the works.
You can browse breaking news in a fairly standard list view or a much cooler photo grid, which, when left alone for a few seconds, reverts to a kind of screensaver mode, jumping between photos and overlaying the accompanying headline. It’s kind of pointless, but also kind of cool (not unlike MTV itself–hey-o!).
The app also lets you browse news by category and create a custom My News page with just the categories you want–again with the same cool list/grid viewing options.
Beyond that, the MTV News offers videos (but only of the news variety–actual music videos are MIA), photos, and access to roughly half a dozen MTV blogs.
Within the Photos section lies another nifty convention: you can finger-swipe through photos using a traditional Cover Flow-style view, or switch to a “tabletop” view where you slide stacks of photos around, arranging them scrapbook-style. Again: kind of pointless, kind of cool. (It’ll be cooler still on an iPad.)
And that’s about it. MTV News does give you the option of e-mailing stories to friends, but for now there’s no Facebook or Twitter integration. Ultimately, it’s a solid, polished app, one that’s sure to appeal to teenagers. And, hey, it’s free.
