Pulse News pushes out a significant update for iPhone news junkies

Pulse has been a major player in the news aggregation world, garnering good reviews from TUAW and users. Pulse has released version 2.0 for the iPhone and a good program has become even better.

Here's a quick summary of the improvements:

• Triple the news sources

• A personalization option

• Improved speed. The better performance was immediately obvious when I used it

• Better search that now includes most popular news feeds

This release in general brings Pulse up to the standard of the iPad release. The update now requires iOS 4.0 or above.

I check Pulse several times a day and find it very useful. I'm also loving Zite, which I reviewed last week. Zite is iPad-only, but it is a great way to quickly see what is happening in your areas of interest. On the iPad, I use both apps and get the best of both. Zite is better for discovery of news and information, Pulse News is more restricted to what you tell it you want, but in this latest iPhone release Pulse is moving toward a discovery model as well. Try them both. They are free and I think you'll really like the results you get.