If you're into radio news, you will absolutely love Swell. It allows you to pick what kind of news you're interested in and creates a custom "radio" station for you.
In one ride, I listened to everything from Meet The Press, PBS Newshour, a TED talk, NPR Planet Money, and more.
It's not perfect, but a few improvements could easily take it to the next level.
I started using the app over the weekend and now find myself using it constantly. I used to use Sirius XM to get my news, but I'm really satisfied using this free app over that expensive satellite service.
Other apps have been publcized as Pandora-type news radio apps, but I found that this is really the closest.
Let's get to why this app is so great.
First, Swell asks you what type of news you're interested in. It then creates a default mix for you, which is your home base.
As you continue listening to different "tracks," it continually registers what news you're into based off of your skips and "likes."
If you want to listen to a specific category of news, you can go into your Swell mix and click that category.
If you like a specific track and want to save it for later, you can bookmark it and revisit it later.
It has a simple user interface and really easy to understand.
Here's what it's weaknesses are.
There isn't much track information. If you wanted, you could bookmark it, go into your bookmarks, and find a link at the bottom that will take you to the track's website. When I clicked on a track from Comedy Central, I was led to the Comedy Central website-- not to that specific standup segment. Not really helpful and not to mention cumbersome.
Swell plays both short tracks and long tracks (think tracks that are about a minute and tracks that are over one hour!). It would be amazing if it let you have a station with just short tracks and just long ones. For me, I'm not intereted in a full episode of This American Life when I'm looking to get quick news updates.
I also wish you could combine more than one category, instead of just the default mix or a single category. For instance, if I want to just hear about entertainment and art, I should be able to combin arts, comed and music!
If you're really not into the arbitrary nature of Swell, then I'd suggest an app like Stitcher.
I personally didn't like it that much, but hey, everyone's different. Tomato, tamato. I found the user interface difficult to navigate. There was so much going on and I couldn't figure out what the core part of the app was. I'd say Stitcher is for you if you have specific shows or podcasts you're into. They obviously had a much wider selection of things to listen to than Swell.
For me, I want to turn on a radio app and not think about anything. I don't want to worry about changing the station. I just want the news to seep into my head through osmosis. And that's why I highly recommend Swell.