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NPR’s podcast library is unrivaled. However, the broadcaster’s best-loved stuff, especially Morning Edition and All Things Considered, are “live” and cease to exist as single, coherent programs after airing — this app lets you time shift, quickly and intuitively.

Sky Blue Productions has released NPR Radio App 1.0 ($2.99, iTunes), which is billed as “the ultimate mobile public radio experience.”

Given recent improvements in NPR News 1.1 (free), that’s a fairly tall order to fill. The marquis feature is the interactive “DVR-like” functionality, which allows you to listen to content at your leisure, skipping ahead through glib moments or jump back to hear something again.

If you choose to listen to your favorite NPR station, that’s exactly what you’ll get — a live stream that you can start or stop. However, if you choose On Demand, this is where you get the ability to consume, browse or chew over individual segments / reports, chapters (which aren’t visually marked, but demarcate sections of a report) and skip over entire sections.

Get the Flash out!

One sad note here is that, like a lot sites taking interactive content low road, NPR.org uses Flash. So, some things, like slide shows, don’t show up.

There’s really no need for Flash, especially considering the battery sucking resources it requires, so make a point of writing NPR to ask them to upgrade their content delivery using open technologies like HTML 5 and Javascript.

See also: How to: Selectively enable Flash apps, animations in Safari

Regardless of how you choose to listen, Live or On Demand, each segment will load the associated NPR.org article, which sometimes is little more than a placeholder and other times includes in-depth reportage, as well as additional resources like clips and pictures.

Further, one can bookmark items for later consumption and there’s Search, as well, which responds snappily enough though it’s just a bare single-line search function. That is, there’s no way to focus a search by program or date or other parameters — a decent search facility is a prerequisite not a perk.

Lastly, there’s the share button, which should include instant connections to FaceBook, Digg, MySpace, Reddit, FriendFeed, etc. What is there are two buttons — email and cancel. Again, Public Radio App 1.0 is a pay-to-play Web 2.0, on-the-go mobile application, so this social networking disconnect needs rectifying.

Conclusions

It’s hard to overstate the usefulness and value of On Demand, which gives you the power to enjoy All Things Considered, for example, truly at your leisure as well as revisit parts you might have missed or want to hear again — brilliant. Moreover, it’s easier to get at content using Public Radio App 1.0 than NPR’s own news app.

Is it worth $2.99? If you’re happy with NPR News and don’t need the power of On Demand, then stay where you are. However, the ability to stop Robert Seagull mid sentence, answer a call and then pick him up right where you left him, or restart that particular chapter with a single touch, is just awesome and worth the $3 asking price even if you only
use it once…

What’s your take?

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