Reuters reporters have been getting news to the public since they used carrier pigeons in the trenches of World War I to do it almost a hundred years ago. So, when I saw that Thomson Reuters had made a snappy new version of its News Pro client app available for the Nokia N8, I jumped at the chance to review it.

I admit it, I am a news hound. I am continually amazed at the goings-on in the world, and I am similarly amazed at the ability of news organizations to bring those goings-on onto the display of my Nokia N8 device. Thomson Reuters News Pro divides content into categories of Top News, Word, Politics, Sports, Technology, Environment, Entertainment, Health, and a category called Oddly Enough. The latter category is for coverage of subjects like Charlie Sheen, huge lobsters saved from the pot, and other human-interest oddities of our time.

The business category has a number of sub-categories, such as Top Business, Market Reports, Commentary, Deals & Merger, Company News, and several other sub-categories. Just clicking on Top Business brings up a headline listing similar to the one below.

Clicking on a particular story brings up the graphics and text associated with that story, such as the business story below about Nokia’s new Windows phones.

There is also some localisation in the app, such as the ability to select feeds about your local weather. The app already knew that I was in America, and the localisation consisted of a one-time entry of my local airport code or postal code.

Once I had told the app my locality, it pulled up local weather news as well as weather maps like the one below.

I further personalised the app by choosing which stocks I wanted to hear about in addition to the news of the world’s market indices. Clicking on either VIP or ACH below, for example, brought up the most recent news about those companies.

About the technical underpinning of the app: For previous Symbian platforms, Reuters had created a Flash Lite based news app. For use on Nokia’s new Symbian devices like my Nokia N8, Thomson Reuters, working with the publisher Handmark, created this app using the Qt platform. The bottom line of this is simply speed. For those who have not previously downloaded a Qt-based app on their device, there is a one-time 13 MB download to transfer the setup files. The result is lightning-fast access to the world’s news stories on a daily basis.

The content that I viewed through the Thomson Reuters News Pro app consisted of text and photos, but video was also available through the Web links provided in the stories themselves. This is nicely integrated into the app, as shown below.

Once I opened the link in a browser, I could see the linked videos. Also, notice on that screen that it enabled me to share the story with my friends via either my Twitter account or Facebook page.

Overall, I find the news content of Thomson Reuters quite refreshing. The actual world events might not be that cheerful, but I get the feeling that I am hearing events from a global perspective rather than the America-first filters that I see on the other news outlets available here in San Francisco, California.

Thomson Reuters News Pro is available for free in Ovi Store.