Mobile publishing has the potential to be more personal, more functional, and more  pleasurable than just picking up a magazine, but too often the medium falls short. Spun,  a freshly-launched iPhone app providing geo-targeted editorial content, is one of the  most winning formulas we’ve seen so far.

Spun aggregates local news stories from hundreds of media sources in eleven cities,  and publishes them as an interactive 3D cube of curated information. The interface is  an intuitive pleasure to spin, swipe, and scroll through, complete with custom bleep and  bloop sound effects. It all feels like a cross between a magazine and a futuristic kid’s  toy, but Spun also goes the extra mile to enhance its source material with maps and  geographical data.

While the app may not actually create any original editorial content, newspapers should  take note: Spun does UX right.