Shovel is an app that lists the top stories from the Digg news service on your iPhone. It is run by a seperate company (not Digg itself), which makes it somewhat likely Digg will shut it down somewhere in the near future. After all, why should shovel earn a dollar per download for what is essentially the Digg experience on your iPhone?

As far as the app goes, the experience is well designed — in fact, it feels exactly as if it was designed by Digg itself — with the caveat that there is no way to digg or bury stories from your phone. The reason for this is that Shovel uses the digg api, and there is no way to digg a story from the api.

I’m somewhat upset that the app is paid. I would give it higher marks if it were free, but payiung $0.99 just to access Digg without the added interactivity of being able to vote on stories strikes me as wrong.

*Editor’s Note: Since this review was written, the price for Shovel has been changed to free.

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category: General News, News