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Alltop for iPad: A curated guide to what's happening
If you're familiar with Alltop, you'll know that the site touts itself as being able to answer the question "What's Happening?" rather than answering questions like "How many people use Macs?" The site, which author and former Apple marketing guru Guy Kawasaki has been involved in, now has a new iPad app available on the App Store. Alltop for iPad (Free) provides an iPad-friendly way to get the latest news, plucked fresh from the RSS feeds of over 35,000 sites and curated by the Alltop staff. The ad-supported app (don't worry -- the ads are just in a strip at the bottom of the page) does a wonderful job of fitting a lot of information into the screen of an iPad. If you have a MyAlltop.com user name, you can have your own choices for curated info show up on your iPad when you launch the Alltop app. One quick complaint about the app: do I really need to see an annoying little dialog shouting "Reticulating Splines" every time I change a page? It's unnecessary -- I know that the app is going to take a second or two to grab feed information and format it... One other issue is that unlike the website, where there's a simple plus sign to tap to add a feed to MyAlltop, there doesn't appear to be a one-tap way to add feeds from the app. Still, it's free and if you're looking for a lot of curated info on a variety of topics, Alltop's iPad app is a good-looking and reasonably user-friendly app.
TUAW @SXSW: Christina talks to Guy Kawasaki
Former Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki was at SXSW Interactive this week and I had the chance to catch-up with him and talk about the announcement of My.Alltop, a customizable version of Alltop.com. Alltop is a really good way to quickly catch up on a lot of news about a specific topic. NetNewsWire is another app that's great for that, but I don't always have the time to space-bar my way through the latest news and events. Alltop started out small, with only a few categories and niche areas. Now it's huge, and it indexes and large number of topics and sites. This is great, but can lead to information overload. With My.Alltop, you can customize a personal page with your favorite links in one place from all across Allto.. As someone who is frustrated by trying to manage RSS feeds on my iPod touch, I prefer the iPhone optimized Alltop interface for getting information quickly. My.Alltop just launched and it doesn't look like the mobile stylesheets have been rolled out yet. But I'm sure just a matter of time. Guy also said that an iPhone application is in the works so you can add, edit or access your feeds more quickly. Also, be sure to check out the TUAW MyAlltop page. We've started to load it with some of our favorite Mac, iPhone and general tech links and I know this is what I'll be rocking when I want to read news on the run.
