As someone who’s watched American Idol more-or-less obsessively since its first season, I must admit I feel extremely well-qualified to discuss the American Idol Season 8 Exclusive Video app offered by The Zumobi Network. I mean, I’ve spent hours laughing at Paula Abdul’s non sequiturs, lamenting contestants’ terrible song choices, and covering my eyes while waiting to find out the voting results on Wednesday nights. Heck, I think at least half of David Cook’s 55 million finale votes came from me. The point is, I’m pretty much the exact intended audience for this application, I would venture.

So, here’s the skinny, dawg. The main menu of the American Idol Season 8 Exclusive Video app (shown in the screencap above) features three options: Buzz, Idols and Video. I’ll tell you right now, Video is by far your best option.

But first, the other choices. Buzz brings you to a newsfeed and blog which is also accessible on the official American Idol Web site. While it’s mildly informative to a casual viewer, if you’re really interested in the latest AI news, just about any American Idol fansite will be updated more quickly (and probably with more interesting information).

The Idols option of the American Idol Season 8 Exclusive Video app is predominantly for users to be able to rank the contestants in order of preference. You can tap on any contestant to read a short bio (also available on the American Idol Web site). The contestant pages also feature a link to that contestant’s available music on iTunes.

Unsurprisingly, the best feature of the American Idol 8 Exclusive Video app is the…exclusive videos! So far, there are only one week’s worth of videos — a “confessional” video from each of the 13 finalists, most of which seem to be about three minutes long. If you’ve been dying to know what 16-year-old Allison Iraheta thinks of the experience so far (”crazy,” “drama” and “awesome”), you’re in luck. If you’re looking for actual musical content, you’re out of luck, although all American Idol performances are available for purchase in the iTunes store.

If the videos are really updated weekly, as promised, this could be a nice feature. The video quality is very nice, and American Idol Season 8 Exclusive Video is attractive and easy to use. While for a casual Idol viewer this application might fall a little flat, for a hardcore fan, it hits at least some of the right notes.

For more articles like this, subscribe to the AppCraver RSS feed.

category: Entertainment, Misc Entertainment