Circa News is updated and improved
We last took a look at Circa for iPhone (free) a couple of years ago. Since then this curated news app has added new features and gives you some personalization.
There are plenty of news apps out there. Circa's claim to fame is that news editors condense the news and make it a bit easier to read. The on-screen presentation is very nice. Stories are arranged in paragraphs, but these are different. The one your are reading is in regular text, the next ones down are grayed out. When you scroll to it, the text no longer dims. It's a nice way to keep track of where you are, especially if you are multitasking.
You can choose categories you are interested in, like sports or international news, while skipping what doesn't interest you. If you are following a particular story, a single click will get you notified if the story updates. The staff also follows breaking news, and you can get notifications when that happens.
Another nice feature is what the app calls a Daily Brief. It presents the top stories within your interest range, and delivers the lot via notification at a time of your choosing.
A new feature called Wire gathers stories that match your interests into a specific page.
Circa News fills a nice niche since Zite is becoming less reliable after its sale to Flipboard. That's a shame, as I considered Zite far better than Flipboard.
Circa offers some personalization, and certainly it is worth a look if you are a news junkie.
Two disappointments. The app doesn't require you to sign up, but I tried to create a free account twice and both times it failed, suggesting I contact support. A third time it worked. Not a great first impression. I also tried to tune the app to the kind of news I want to follow, but when I exited the app and returned later all my choices were gone and the app reverted to a 'send me everything' mode. After I signed up the choices did stick, but it seems to me they should work with or without an account. Neither problem gives me a good first impression, but these issues should be easy to fix.
Circa is a good idea, with an excellent GUI and presentation. If some of the bugs get ironed out, it will be an app I use several times a day.
Circa requires iOS 7 or later. It uses the full screen on the newest iPhones and has no issues I can see with iOS 8, but it is not universal, which is a shame as iPad users are just as likely to want to read some news as iPhone users.
