One of our bold beliefs here at Watchup has always been to iterate fast over users’ feedback. Watchup is a Stanford startup, incubated at StartX, the Stanford startup accelerator, and as such we always try to apply the design thinking principles to our work.
The latest version 1.4 of your favorite news video iPad app is yet another confirmation of that approach. Here is what Watchup can offer you now.
Autoplay: a Pandora-like feature
Say you’re up for a quick pizza break at home and you want to catch up with the news of the day on your iPad without having to touch your device all the time. With Watchup, you can enjoy a news experience that is almost hands-free.
Pick up the videos you want to add them to your playlist, hit play, and you’re done. Not only that, at the end of the playlist, the app will turn into autoplay, which means that it will keep playing the latest videos from your favorite news channels. So if your pizza is so good that even your fingers can relate, well, you won’t have to get your iPad dirty anymore — it’s a Pandora-ish feature that many users were asking for.
Meet Watchup from Watchup App on Vimeo.
Super-fast video startup time
We know from our users that the reason why they’ve been using Watchup so much is because it fills up with fresh news those moments of the day when you’re cooking, doing your dishes, cleaning up, etc. But what we also know is before those moments you literally have a few seconds to find the content you want. That’s why with v.1.4 we found a way to minimize the video startup time so that playing a video has never been so easy! Just try it out, and let us know what you think.
New channels: The I-Files and others
We are excited to say that Watchup is now partnering with the Center for Investigative Reporting The I-Files, an amazing YouTube channel created in partnership with the BBC, the New York Times, Al Jazeera and others to bring investigative news reporting to the world of video. New channels also include The Verge, TWiT (The Week in Tech by Leo Laporte and friends), PandoDaily and some international channels in English from India (NDTV), Canada (CBC The National) and the UK (Channel4). We are always extremely careful when we add a new channel to Watchup since we are strong believers that, in a world of abundant information, “less is more.”
We will keep adding more features to the app while maintaining its simplicity. If you haven’t tried it yet, go ahead and start enjoying the news hands-free on your iPad. Download Watchup here. If you want to get in touch, please tweet @watchup or use the Watchup Facebook page!
Adriano Farano is the CEO and co-founder of Watchup. A passionate entrepreneur with a 12-year background in the news business, Farano fell in love with tablets during his 2010-11 Knight Fellowship at Stanford where he researched new ways to augment the news experience on mobile devices.