I’m sure most reading this either have the Breaking News app on your iPhone, or follow the account on Twitter/App.net. Breaking News provides a very real, but only sometimes, very important service. In my opinion there is no doubt that it is the best at what it does.

Over the past year I’ve noticed the Breaking News push notifications get less annoying, and more accurate with their urgency.

But today they have launched a feature on the iOS app that I think takes the service to the next level — it does something that seems futuristic:

A first for a news app: proximity alerts for big breaking stories near you

Allow the app access to your location and you get notifications for important things happening near you. Very cool. I (thankfully) have not seen this in action, but I love knowing it is there.

One other thing: how is something like this not a built-in part of iOS/Android/Windows/Macs? Seems like this could be better done at the OS level. Like the Amber Alerts already built in.