So you downloaded the Zipper app for free to your smart phone and you\’re ready to roll. Now what? How do you use it to get the most out of it? Oh, let us counts the ways! Let \’s take a quick look at the actual interface for the Zipper with the primary goal of quickly creating and accessing local news, local gossip, free texting, and private texting. Start your engines…err…we mean apps.

When you first open the Zipper, you\’ll need to quickly set up an account. This is needed since so much of the functionality is based on area. Do you really want to know why that office building exploded on the other side of the country? We\’ll leave that to the national news (and they\’re doing such a good job sarcasm sarcasm) but for local stuff, we need just a little information to make sure your news is from your local. It\’s pretty basic: name, zip code, high school (if applicable) and a few other preferences you may have. You can also set up private text message boards and set the password needed to access your private board. The whole registration process probably takes 20 seconds unless you have broken thumbs and in that case, 30 seconds.

Now that you\’re set up, you\’ll get a general tips window (which you can turn off on subsequent visits) and then you\’re taken to the main window. This is where you see new Zips or better yet, Fresh zips (zips that are highly respect, relatively recent, and with lots of activity in the from of responses or ReZips in the parlance of the Big Zipper). As new ones come and go, you can scroll with the flick of a finger through the teaser windows with the first 140 characters of each message, a picture or avatar of the poster, the number of thumbs up/down and the # of rezips. You can click on the teaser window bring up the full message along f replies or rezips to the original going down in chronological order. You can always respond to a zip if you have better, updated, or confirming information. Hey, you may be sitting in front of a bank that\’s being robbed and take a pic, post a zip and everyone in the area will know the deal. Of course, it doesn\’t have to be that groundbreaking. It can be a fender bender on a certain street or a 1/2 deal at a store. News is news and the viewers will rank it accordingly.

What about the Channel and Location drop-down. Good question. These are two different ways you can narrow cast what you want to see. The Channel allows you to filter zips by type such as deals, news, gossip, etc. You may only want to find out what\’s happening in traffic. Flip the channel to \”traffic\”. Location works the same way but as you guessed it, by location. You can generally choose your location (residence area), current location (if you\’re travelling), and high school or college. This is a quick and dirty way to find out what\’s going on with your fellow students. There\’s even a way to essentially set up a private messaging board that requires a passcode to enter. A high school may have a passcode to make sure only students have access to board. You can also set up private channel for your crew, your boyfriend/girlfriend or whomever you like so you can get a little bit of texting privacy. By the way, using the Zipper for texting either public or private is a way to get texting for FREE. Yes, our favorite words. Free.

So that\’s a quick walk through of how to use the Zipper. We gave you the tool but who know where you\’ll take it. Zip It!

Author Bio: Dennis Jarvis writes extensively about local news and local gossip smart phone apps.