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You're now going to have a powerful app to bring you all
the local news and local gossip you could possibly
handle (while still actively being a productive part of
the human race). Sometimes, though, that's just a
little too much power...even for your ambitious self.
What if want to take all of that local news and gossip
and find out just what happened outside of your job this
morning with the crazy clown being chased by cops?
Great question. We'd also love to know what the deal
was with the clown. Enter the Zipper app channels and
dial in the local news that you need or want. So how do
the channels work?
Well
there's not a clown channel...yet but you the channels
do give you some quick ways to narrow down all that
local gold to more what you're interested in (for this
minute anyway). We have some basic channels built into
the Zipper right out of the package so to speak. Let's
first look at these to show you want you can do with
channels. First, understand that Channels are different
from Locations. You also have a Location dial you fine
tune for your local area, your high school, your current
area (if traveling) not to mention the private channels
you create for you and friends. Location is different
from channels.
Same
of the core channels you'll find right away are News,
Gossip, Traffic, Deals, Music, Eats, and others. Right
away, you get a sense that the Channels allow you to
narrowcast the available local news by certain
categories. For example, in the case of the crazed
clown caper (that's alliteration for yah), the "News"
channel is probably going to be the best bet unless that
same crazed clown led a high speed car chase and wrecked
a few intersections. You may then find it in Traffic.
Crazy clowns and their crazy ways. You can see how
useful the channels can be. There's a lot of local
information in any area...even the smallest towns in the
U.S. All kinds of stuff is going on. You can search
through all of that or you can strip out the local news
and gossip that you don't need right now. That's the
where the Channels come into play. So how do you place
a Zip you have created in a certain Channel? It's as
easy picking up a clown in a line-up.
When
you create the zip, you'll see a little drop down for
Channel. It will probably be set to "All" in most
default settings. You can quickly thumb through to the
Channel you want. You can even (as the author) change
the Channel later on if you've made a mistake or if, as
in the example of our traveling felonious clown above,
the story changes and literally moves across two
Channels. The Hierarchy of the Interesting still holds
true within a given Channel. Just like the the "all"
Channel where freshness, the "Thumbs", and ReZips keep a
given story buoyant and on the Zipper radar, these same
inputs will affect a message within a Channel except
it's much easier to stay up since there's less
competition. A really strong local news or gossip story
will likely stay up regardless and some stories are
nearly impossible to bring down. That's the way it goes
with local news and gossip. The Zipper is just a
messenger and don't we wish all messengers had Channels
so we could selectively choose what they told us!
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