London 2012 Spogger – comprehensive app for Olympic information
by Paul Wilks
Jul 26, 2012 11:23 AM –
Install
London 2012 Spogger is a comprehensive and easy-to-use Olympic information app for your Android device. Featuring loads of handy and useful information it’s great whether your looking forward to the 100m final or randomly find yourself watching the Fencing tournament and want to know the rules!
Price: Free, ~$2.31
Tested on: HTC One X
Content Rating: Low Maturity
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- Lots of info!
- Easy to use!
- Ability to add and follow your favourites events!
Cons
- UI lacks variety and presents a few errors.
- ‘Plan my Route’ does very little besides plotting a road route from your current location.
- Text seems to be cut and pasted from various Olympic themed websites elsewhere, not original copy.
- Often force-closes.
Features:
The London 2012 Olympics is just about upon us. There will be loads of coverage over the next few weeks and it might be a challenge to keep on top of all the sports and what’s going on. London 2012 Spogger is a great app for providing useful information about the different UK venues, sports and the events themselves. So, if you want to know the basic rules of the Canoe Sprint or perhaps find yourself interested in the history of Olympic BMX racing, the app has a great selection of easily-accessible information.
The app covers all the sports included in the Olympic tournament from Archery to Wrestling. Each sport can be explored and you can read up on the basics of the sport, past and present status of the sport as part of the Olympics, venues and events. You can also share the info with friends. However, the text itself has essentially been lifted from publicly available Olympic websites and pasted into the app- very little is original copy. Despite this, the information is brought together well, even including interesting stuff about the the future plans for Olympic sites.
The app is easy to use and search, bringing you info really quickly. I’m unsure what the plans for the app are once the Olympics start as there doesn’t appear to be spaces for news, updates or live coverage in the app. There is a ‘Plan my Route’ feature but this only really shows you a basic ‘by road’ route from your current location- there’s no means to customise it. Overall the UI seems lacking in a number of ways. The main Home screen is empty, and you have to bring up the menu to navigate anywhere, quite a wasted opportunity to guide the user to useful content.
The scheduler, and other areas, are great but the app lacks elements that would set it apart. For example, the Venues section provides little more than a tiny thumbnail picture- no links, no address, no details about access or travel info… it just feels like the app has a lot missing. 
The other issue with these pages are the sub-links to sports- they are not displayed correctly, seemingly cut in half- so there are these tiny design errors throughout the app (see below for examples).
I think the idea behind the app is really good. I know if I find myself watching a sport I’m unfamiliar with (which is likely) it’s a nice app to dip into for quick information on the go. However, you easily stay up to date with the action via the Official London 2012 apps (all of which are free and licensed) which make London 2012 Spogger look a relatively poor relation. I like the way the Spogger app pulls the info together, but I can’t honestly suggest that it is good value for money when all the info contained in the app can be found for free elsewhere.
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London 2012 Spogger – Front page, press menu to bring up menu
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London 2012 Spogger – Schedule
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London 2012 Spogger – Events
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London 2012 Spogger – Map view
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London 2012 Spogger – Sport info
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London 2012 Spogger – Select sports to follow
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London 2012 Spogger – Venu info
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London 2012 Spogger – Shortcut errors
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London 2012 Spogger – Countdown clock
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London 2012 Spogger – Blog
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London 2012 Spogger – More
Usefulness:
For quick insights into various sports and venues it’s pretty good. However, some of the ‘features’ it boasts- like ‘Plan my Route’ are neither intuitive or customisable. If this was the only Olympic app available it would be fine, but there are far better options for free in the Google Play Store.
Ease of Use:
The app is, however, very easy to use. While the UI is a little quirky in its design, the ever present opportunity to bring up the menu makes navigation very easy.
Frequently Used:
This kind of app, as with every other Olympic app, will only really be used for the next few weeks. Then, when the flags are taken down, the athletes fly home, the venues are dismantled and the clean up begins, this will be something you delete pretty quickly.
Interface:
The interface is simple but includes errors here and there, which make the app look unfinished. It misses a trick I think in that it could showcase some great venue and sport photography but limits this to very small thumbnails throughout the application. There’s no video, audio and the text is badly bunched together rather than broken up into paragraphs (which even the original web sources manage to do). Unfortunately this just makes the app feel rushed together.
Tags:
Android App,
Android Apps,
AndroidTapp.com App Review,
London,
London 2012,
London 2012 Spogger,
Olympics,
Spogger,
Sport
Categorised in: Sports
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