If you're space buff, then you absolutely can't miss this episode about judgment. Welcome AppJudgment. I'm David Prager and today, we're going to go to space because NASA has released their first ever app for the iPhone. I love space. The app is free, so I just had to check out.
Now, NASA is all about exploration, science experiments but they also put an incredible amount of effort into educating and making information available to the public. The NASA iPhone app is another way of making mission information accessible but this time to your iPhone.
Inside of the app, you'll see menu items on the top Navbar corresponding with missions, images, videos and updates. If you select videos, you can select and play NASA uploaded YouTube videos from within the app like this recent one of Ares 1-X. By selecting filter on the top right, you can pick and choose your favorite video feeds. In the photos section, it's organized into two main categories, NASA image of the day and astronomy picture today. You can get detailed captions for any photo you select from the database like this one from the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit taken on its 2052 days spent on Mars which is pretty incredible.
The update section of the app is the place where you can access all of NASA's various Twitter feeds. The filter option here let’s you select the topics you're most interested in hearing about. Each section of the entire app includes a search function where you can try to find particular videos, images and missions.
Now, the highlight of NASA's app is sorting through missions. Here you can scroll through nearly 50 active NASA missions. When you select the mission, you can read an updated summary about it in the middle box, the amount of time that has passed since the mission began or a count down timer of when a mission is scheduled to begin such as the shuttle launch. Across the top Navbar, a buttons for video, images and update associated with the mission. Updates within missions correspond with the same Twitter feeds image in earlier but filtered into only tweets from or about a particular mission. When you select photos or videos from within a mission, you'll be able to quickly browse and access the photos and videos tag to be associated with the mission.
Now, the most impressive feature for satellites orbiting the planet earth like say the International Space Station is that you can actually track where it currently is from a latitude and longitude perspective. Okay, under the pros and cons.
One, it’s a very attractive application, it's easy to navigate information from various NASA sources as well organized. And it gives you a solid overview of NASA's major missions and their objectives. Under the cons, the app doesn't include the ability to stream live NASA TV; that should be a no-brainer. The image resolutions could be a bit better and the search function seems limited in the kind of results you can find, most likely because there's only so much material accessible only through the app. If I'm really looking for my space fix, NASA has some of the best and most well organized web pages of any government agency and I'd rather spend my time there. That said, the new media team with the NASA Ames Research Center has done a fine job with NASA's first ever iPhone app.
You can learn all about all of NASA's missions with timely updates and associated links. It's free and no space loving iPhone owner should be without. Definitely download. I'm David Prager. If you have another app you’d like us to review, send us an email at appjudgment@revision3.com. You can also find all the ways to subscribe to Appjudgment and never miss an episode. Don’t forget our Facebook page at Facebook.com/appjudgment and find us on Twitter under the account @appjudgment. Thanks for watching.
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