USA Today has launched a new version of its Android app for the new Motorola Xoom tablet, the paper announced on Friday. The app has a "fast, friendly" interface, said president and publisher Dave Hunke in a press release, and features USA Today's "signature look and design."

"Users will receive news as it breaks, 24 hours, 7 days a week, as well as photos, weather, stocks and sports scores," Hunke said, suggesting that the app will not provide a main once-a-day package as some tablet offerings do, mimicking the print cycle.

USA Today is already available on Android phones, the iPhone, the iPad, Google TV, the Chrome Web Store and Windows-based slate PCs, the release specified.

Essentially, it's a kind of Foursquare++, where local meets the Internet universe of location-based services (LBS) application with digital check-ins, badges and leaderboards for loyal users via handhelds. What distinguishes The Cincinnati Enquirer's application from Foursquare, Gowalla and Yelp, however, is the bacon, according to Poynter.

"Bacon" is a tab within The Cincinnati Enquirer's new LBS application, Porkappolis, in reference to the city's hog packing history, which provides relevant geo-targeted information to the user. The newspaper believes that this is information most effectively gathered and served by a trusted local news authority like The Enquirer.

"I can pull up 'bacon' and click a button and see where all the [closest] happy hours are," said Brian Butts of Cincinnati.com to Poynter. The tab will also include location-aware restaurant listings, news and a calendar of events from the newspaper's website. "It reeks of Cincinnati," he said, "but in a good way."

The International Newsmedia Marketing Association (INMA) has announced four key concerns that publishers want to raise with technology companies with regards to subscriptions on tablet devices.

INMA held an invitation-only roundtable session on tablet subscriptions in London yesterday, with close to 60 representatives of the European media industry present. A "robust and sometimes intense discussion" of new app subscription plans by Apple and Google took place, as well as about potential alternatives, and the possibilities of HTML5, a press release reported.

On Wednesday, the day before the meeting, INMA CEO Earl J. Wilkinson issued a statement saying that the association was "cautiously optimistic" about Google One Pass and the principles that it embraces, but "less optimistic about the new Apple policy."

Yesterday, Google announced its new One Pass service for digital payments for news, just after Apple's announcement that it is introducing an in-app subscription plan for content-producers. It makes use of the existing e-commerce system Google Checkout: once users sign up for this they can make payments on the websites of participating publishers when they are signed in to their Google accounts.

Media General, Axel Springer, Gruner + Jahr, Nouvel Observateur's publisher, Prisa and Rust Communications are among those who have signed on.