Win a free copy of Strips for iPhone / iPod Touch! Just leave a comment about your favourite webcomic below! US iTunes account required to win.

I was recently privileged to have taken part in the beta for a great new app for iPhone and iPod Touch called Strips, which recently launched on the App Store.  I recently went to a designer meetup in Waterloo where the developer of the app, Jeff Verkoeyen, was presenting his creation.  Being what I would call a lapsed webcomic fan I was instantly interested in what this app had to offer.  I used to read a bunch of webcomics, but as time went on I just found the process got unwieldy as I read comics that were dailies, 3 times a week, weekly, bi-weekly.  It just became too much and I eventually drifted away as I started falling behind on my favourites.

This app pretty much solves those problems for me.  One of the issues with trying to read a couple years worth comics is page load times.  Most comic publishers have nice sites with lots of graphics to wade through just to get to the comic.  Strips cuts through all that loading just the strips for you.  Even better it caches a bunch at the same time, so you’re probably only loading new data maybe once every 10 strips(that’s a guess on my part).  This enables you to just hammer through years of worth of comics with relative ease.

One of the big features of this app is the push notifications, so you can get an update when your favourite webcomic is updated, which is pretty cool.  The app also allows you to easily navigate through the timeline of your favourite comics.  If you want to start at the beginning, or want to see the strip from May 13, 2002, the app has a good UI setup to quickly get you back reading again.

So far I’ve only caught up with stuff I’ve previously read like PVP, Ctrl+Alt+Del and Penny Arcade, but there are currently over 40 comics and more to be added.  I’m personally hoping Diesel Sweeties and Scary Go Round get added, as I have a few years worth of stuff to catch up with there.

If you are a fan of webcomics, this is $1.99 well spent on the app store.  But as luck may have it, Jeff gave me a promo code for a free download of the app to give away.  So if you’d like to win a copy of Strips for iPhone and iPod Touch, just leave a comment below stating what your favourite webcomic is.  The winner will be chosen at random from all the commenters.  Unfortunately this giveaway is only for people with US iTunes accounts.

Buy Strips from the iTunes App Store