The secret to eternal appiness

17 July 2014

If you don't want to read the following load of guff, here's what you need to know: You can find the 4Press app in the App store. Which you probably could have worked out for yourself. Go there and search for 4Press.

July 17. A day to conjure with through the ages. In 1867, the Harvard School of Dental Medicine was established. In 1948, the South Korean constitution was proclaimed. In 1957, Fern Britton was born. In 1981, the Humber Bridge was opened. In 1989, the B-2 Stealth Bomber flew for the first time. And in 2014, the 4Press app was launched, dropping its own information cluster bombs over hacks everywhere.

Okay, most of those occasions sound a bit crap. But it’s Fern Britton’s 57th birthday!!!! And we’re launching our app!

So, what will our app do? How will it change your life?

It will: allow you immediate access to the latest news from Channel 4, wherever you journalists are (the office, the pub, the loo, camped outside Cheryl Cole’s house, prison…)

The app connects directly to the Digital Press Centre, saving you the time and effort of typing in the URL when you could be spending said time going through Sting’s bins or engineering a storm of moral outrage to do with poor people and immigrants.

The app will also issue alerts whenever any new content is added to the site. News releases will trigger a banner alert, including the headline of the release, ensuring that you will never again miss one of our legendary audience figures announcements.

Press packs and programme information will trigger badge alerts. I have nothing more to say about that.

It will not: Tell you how much fat you have burned walking to the box of donuts Bernard from the features desk brought in; transport you to a saccharine, colourful world filled with garish sweeties in a game that will take over your life and destroy the very essence of your being; keep your children from whingeing while you’re out for lunch.

At midday today, the Digital Press Centre will be exactly 102,211,200 seconds old. To celebrate this entirely arbitrary milestone, we will be giving away this app to the first 100 people to download it. And, indeed, to everyone else. Because it’s free. And what do you get in this life that’s free? Apart from love, friendship, sunshine, happiness, and, um quite a lot of other apps.

Anyway, enjoy. Find the new 4Press app at, surprisingly enough, the App Store.

While we’ve got your attention, sign up to the daily email alerts here.

And, if you’re a bona fide journalist, register for the press site here, to get access to contacts, listings information, image downloads and a hamper at Christmas*.

*Hampers are entirely fictional.