The UK's Conservative Party has launched an official iPhone app, designed to keep people up to date with news and policies in the run-up to the General Election.

The free app launched over the weekend, and offers a mixture of news and policy info, links to the party's social networking profiles, a 'Call A Friend' feature to canvass contacts, and a tiltable 'swingometer'.

It's a pretty slick app, if a little on the slow side when we used it this morning.

The Call A Friend feature could cause a stir - it invites users to fill in a form with someone's name, address and voting intention and email it to the party "to help with our local campaigning".

Not illegal in itself, but you'd hope people will let their friends know that they're passing this data on.

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The Tories have beaten their rivals onto the App Store, but it will be interesting to see if Labour, the Liberal Democrats and other parties launch their own apps in the coming weeks - and if any of them look beyond iPhone to other mobiles too.