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Facebook's Paper news-reading app to shut down next month
Facebook has announced that it is shutting down its news-reading app Paper. The application was introduced in 2014 as an alternative to the main Facebook app, featuring a sleek layout with a complete focus on showcasing articles -- rather than status updates from your friends. As unexpected as the announcement may be, it shouldn't come as a surprise considering that last year Facebook shuttered Creative Labs, the design team behind Paper.
Facebook is reportedly building a breaking news notification app
Right now, the easiest way to read breaking news on your smartphone is to download a dedicated news reader app, something like Paper or Flipboard -- but rumor has it that Facebook is working on something different. According to Business Insider, Facebook is developing a decentralized news app that simply pushes breaking news notifications and links to your mobile device. The app is reportedly in its early stages, but could be a way for Facebook to displace Twitter as a favorite place to look for breaking news.
BBC's redesigned news app is all about personalisation
The BBC is one of the most popular news organisations on the planet, yet its BBC News app hasn't seen a redesign since 2010. Realising that a little bit of spring cleaning is in order, the broadcaster has begun rolling out a major update that introduces a fresh new look and deeper customisation options. Readers can now access local news reports for the first time, complimenting the BBC's national coverage, and also choose to follow specific topics that they're interested in. The latter are collected in a section of the app called My News, where users will also be suggested new topics based on what they've been reading recently. While none of these features are particularly new, it shows that the BBC is at least paying close attention to the demand for news curation apps like Flipboard and Circa.
Zite update is aimed at Google Reader orphans
With Google Reader fading into the sunset in July, more and more users are looking to replace its functionality. Zite for iOS (free) has some solutions that should please many news hounds. The app was originally born out of a desire to replace Google Reader with something that learned your interests and had a more compelling display. In a new release, available today, Zite is trying to go further to embrace what's good in Google Reader and add some bells and whistles. First, Zite has increased the prominence of sources. Those sources now appear in a topic drawer after you mark an article that you like. Another welcome feature is that articles grey out ofter you read them. One of the best additions is the ability to highlight sources that are obscure. Google Reader always had a bit of a signal to noise problem because the volume of feeds could overwhelm some of the smaller sources. Zite fixes that and will aggressively display more obscure content that you like. Zite has also made setting up the app easier for new users. There are on-screen guides and built-in tips that explains how Zite works and what you can expect. %Gallery-189143% There are some subtle interface changes as well this time around, and some new sponsored sources have been added. I've found Zite a frequent and preferred stop for my news browsing on iOS. What I'd really like to see is a Mac app that gets me the same content so I'm covered on my desktop and laptop. I'm told this is under consideration and I hope to see it sooner rather than later. Zite is a universal app and requires iOS 6 or later.
Pulse casually enables LinkedIn sharing, gets comfy in new HQ
LinkedIn's latest acquisition is giving a nod to its new boss: Pulse users can now share news stories with their professional connections. According to the Pulse blog, the tweak is part of a series of collaborations that started when Pulse moved into LinkedIn headquarters, and more updates are on the way. The changes are subtle for now, though -- the only other addition to the app is the ability to add a LinkedIn Influencers feed to your account, which offers content from select contributors and industry leaders. The update should hit the Google Play store shortly, and is due to launch on iOS soon after.
LinkedIn acquires Pulse news reader for $90 million
LinkedIn has been pretty clearly repositioning itself as a source for news as of late, and it's now made that shift even clearer with a fairly major acquisition. The company announced today that it has acquired Pulse, maker of news reader apps for mobile devices (in addition to a web-based offering) at a cost of some $90 million. In its own blog post announcing the news, Pulse says that its apps will remain as they are for now, although they will now offer a "LinkedIn Influencer" feed featuring the company's hand-picked contributors. According to Pulse, its apps currently have over 30 million users around the globe, with approximately 40 percent of those outside the US; for its part, LinkedIn recently topped 200 million users.
Feedly Mobile revamp caters to Reader escapees with fast search, Must Reads
The phaseout of Google Reader is quickly becoming a boon for developers still carrying the torch for newsreader apps -- just ask Feedly, which now says it took on 3 million new users in the two weeks since Google's decision. Rather than simply wait for more customers to roll in on their own, though, the company is taking matters into its own hands with a major refresh of Feedly Mobile for Android and iOS. The update brings a reworked search engine that's both extra-quick and makes topic suggestions based on the collective subscriptions of the Feedly user base, getting better as more readers join the ranks. Other updates also serve those who want to keep things moving quickly. A new Must Reads section prioritizes feeds, a title-only view maximizes screen space and an updated sharing panel both allows a customizable shortcut as well as (slightly ironic) sharing to Google+. Once you've gotten over the sting of another Google spring cleaning, Feedly's potential solutions await at the source links.
Daily iPad App: Thirst aggregates the news so you don't have to
Thirst is a newsreader and news-discovery app with a personalized twist. It has a magazine-like tiled layout that reminds me of Flipboard. Each tile is a news category and the default homescreen includes a broad range of categories like sports, politics and tech. You can narrow these categories down based on your interests. The app breaks away from other newsreaders by relying on an intelligent search feature to find news articles instead of an RSS fead. Thirst uses an algorithm to search the web for articles that fit those categories you have put on your homescreen. Being an Apple fan, my Thirst homescreen has Apple, iPad, iPad mini and app categories. The content within those categories comes from a wide variety of news sources, some of which I have never encountered before. Thirst also has a social side and includes a discussion feature that lets you write and respond to comments on those articles that you read. Like most commenting forums, the comments are as good as the people reading and responding. I saw my fair share of useless drivel and a few engaging discussions that I was happy to read. Besides commenting, users can also share articles via Facebook or Twitter. I'm a longtime RSS user and have to admit that I was skeptical about Thirst at first. The app won me over when it used its intelligent search to pull up new and interesting articles that I never would have read if I had only browsed through my favorite RSS feeds. Thirst is available for free from the iOS App Store. It's worth a download just to checkout the news-discovery feature of the app. Use it long enough and you might find that you have become hooked on this search-based way of reading the news.
Pocket brings its 'read it later' service to Mac App Store, keeps its free status
We know Pocket has had a strong presence on iOS, Android and other platforms for quite some time now, but today the service formerly known as Read it Later announced it is now making its way to a bigger Cupertino screen. Naturally, Pocket's new application isn't much different than its mobile versions, meaning it'll offer the same offline access, save-for-later features as it currently does on the mobile front but with a more "native Mac experience" -- of course, this includes the ability to sync across multiple devices, stream videos and share tidbits via those cherished social networks. What's more, Pocket won't be charging a dime for its novel and handy OS X app, though this shouldn't come as a surprise given the outfit's somewhat recently adopted no-cost model -- still, it's a gesture most people will certainly appreciate, and one you Mac folk can start enjoying now by downloading from to the desktop-based App Store.%Gallery-169277%
Flipboard officially launches on Android, in multiple app stores and for more countries
Popular newsreader Flipboard is finally officially available on Android, coming out of beta and Galaxy S III exclusivity. As seen in the latest test version, it now supports integration of shared articles from your Google+ feed alongside Twitter and Facebook feeds, and has also added support for YouTube video feeds (all of these are now available on iOS as well). Beyond the Google Play app market, it's also available in the Amazon Appstore, Nook Store and Samsung Apps, so slinging the APK to your Android device of choice should be too difficult. We gave the final release edition a quick run through ourselves and found it just as smooth on a Samsung Galaxy S II as it has been on any iPhone or iPad, and being ICS-ready out of the gate is a nice touch, although we couldn't force it to switch to landscape viewing. Another handy toggle is the option to go full screen with no menu bar up top, if you need a few extra pixels on your display (optimized for screens up to 7-inches in size). Article sharing is also here and like other Android apps, shares to any services you have installed, not just Twitter or Facebook. The final update is news that Flipboard is launching fully localized editions for Germany, Korea, Italy, Spain and The Netherlands, in addition to the existing localizations for Japan, France, China, United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. All of the details are in the press release after the break, or you can check out pretty much any app store to give it a try yourself. Update: It's out! As of 1AM or so. Hit the source link to grab it from the Play Store.
Read it Later becomes Pocket, drops its price to free
Skimming the news later is no match for consuming it fresh, but we still live in a world with connectivity dead zones -- riding the subway, cruising the Pacific at 35,000 feet -- making an offline reading app a necessity for oft-disconnected consumers. Pocket, formerly known as "Read it Later," lets you save online content to read when you're not within web's reach, or even when you are. Pocket could also be a good resource for folks that stumble upon some interesting content, but simply don't have time to read it at that very moment. You can also grab videos and images to watch later -- everything is presented in a clean, easy to view format, searchable by publication, keyword or custom tags. And while the former version -- Read it Later -- ran you a cool 99 cents, Pocket is free, and available now for Android, iOS and the Kindle Fire.
Google Currents app updated with international support, offline reading
Folks in the US have been able to use the Google Currents app to read various websites (including this one) with more of a magazine-style layout since late last year, and now those outside the country can finally get in on the act as well. Google has today rolled out version 1.1 of the app for Android and iOS, which makes the service available worldwide with support for 44 languages, and adds a number of other improvements including the ability to select which editions have images for offline reading, instant online sync, translation for 38 languages and a promised 7X performance boost. As before, the app is completely free, and adapts the layout to suit both phones and tablets. Hit the links below to download it for the platform of your choice.
Google introduces Currents: magazine-like news reader for Android and iOS (video)
Google's rumored Flipboard competitor is finally here, and it's ditched the Propeller codename for something a little more appropriate: Currents. The app is available for both Android and iOS -- in tablet and phone-friendly formats -- and delivers a more magazine like reading experience for perusing your consumable content. The free app offers you a swipeable, graphics-heavy way to read material from partners like AllThingsD, PBS, Huffington Post and Fast Company, as well public Google+ feeds and RSS. You can even import your Google Reader subscriptions -- and it all gets cached for offline viewing. Of course, the whole thing is integrated with Google+ too, for quick and easy sharing. For publishers, Google is providing self-service tools for customizing how their content is displayed in the app. You can go download it now in the Android Market and in the iTunes App Store for free but, before you go, check out the video after the break to see it in action. Update: It looks like Currents is US only for the time being. Sorry international readers, you'll just have to find some other way to shove traditional magazines towards extinction.
Pulse News updated with source syncing
Apple Design Award-winning Pulse News has been updated with Pulse Sync, a new feature that allows for instant syncing of sources across devices for anyone with a free pulse.me account. In my case, I have Pulse News on both my iPhone and iPad; adding a new source to my news feed on the iPhone will automatically sync it to the news feed on my iPad. It's a great new feature that works quite seamlessly, and it ensures I have essentially the same news reading experience no matter which device I'm using. I did notice a small snag during the initial setup. I enabled Pulse Sync on my iPhone first, which turned out to be an unfortunate error on my part -- my iPad has been my primary device for Pulse, with all my feeds set up exactly how I wanted them. Enabling Pulse Sync on the iPhone first meant Pulse Sync assumed my iPhone's feed was how I wanted things set up on all of my devices, and I couldn't find any way to back out of that. I wound up having to manually re-order my news sources on my iPad, but the good news is after I did that those changes automatically propagated back to my iPhone. Pulse News is free for both the iPhone and iPad, and it has built-in support for Instapaper, Evernote, Read It Later, and Reader. Pulse is hands-down the best news reader I've used on any device, well-deserving of the Apple Design Award it won this year, and it's an app that all iOS users should have on their devices.
Reeder for Mac now available on Mac App Store
Reeder, a popular Google Reader client on iOS, is now out of beta and available on the Mac App Store. While the beta version of Reeder for the Mac was free to test, the 1.0 release will set you back US$9.99, more than twice the price of the iPad version. That $9.99 offers syncing with Google Reader (which you can set up for free), plus integration with Readability, Instapaper, ReadItLater, Pinboard, Delicious, Zootool and more. The app has a customizable, multi-column interface that's superficially similar to the iPad version, and Reeder includes gesture support and customizable shortcuts. If you read a lot of news on your Mac, Reeder definitely looks like a big step up from reading RSS feeds in Safari or Mail. We've got several Reeder fans on the TUAW staff, and one of them will likely be providing a full review of Reeder in the near future.
Zite is a pretty cool way to follow the news
As a news junkie, I just can't get enough information. I adore Pulse, and I think Flipboard is interesting and useful. Like most of you, I spend a lot of time checking out news sites and using apps like the New York Times and the NPR app. Enter Zite. Zite is a just released free iPad app that constructs a magazine around your interests on the fly. When you first launch it, you suggest topics you like (Photography, Science, Technology, etc.), and then the magazine is created using RSS feeds and links to news and other sources. Some of the sources are well known, others are not (at least to me). You can also enter your Twitter name and Google Reader account info to further tune the personalization, although neither is required, and I didn't do it for my evaluation. The result is that you get a lot of content by discovery that you might not ever see. You can tell the app that you like a particular news source or author and click on some automatically generated key words. Over time, the content of your magazine shifts to reflect what you are reading and liking. You can also tell Zite what you don't like to further shape the future content. %Gallery-119129%
Is the Apollo News Reader defunct?
I liked the Apollo New Reader for iPad. It allowed you to read RSS feeds full screen, something that the Pulse news reader doesn't do in landscape mode. Another advantage was that it could usually play video from within the app. Note: One of our sharp commenters notes that you can play a video in Pulse by holding the play button down for more than 2 seconds. Cool. Alas, good things come to an end; the Apollo News Reader is no longer listed in the App Store, and the freshest stories are 6 days old. The iPhone version of the app is also M.I.A. I recently reported that the app was not updating, but the developers said they expected to have it back up soon. The issue seemed to be some disagreements with some content providers over whether Apollo could use their material. There hasn't been any response from the developers on this latest outage, so if I could hazard a guess I'd say that the app won't be back. There is nothing on the Hawthorne Labs website that would give me any insight into what's going on. Once billed as "the Newspaper of the Future," for now the Apollo app doesn't seem to have any future at all. I hope it comes back, but I'm not holding my breath.
Pulse News Reader for iPad update makes you a news editor
A new update to Pulse News Reader for iPad now lets you mash up your own mix of news for others to subscribe to. The update to version 1.1.4, which went live last evening, provides each user with their own "pulse" if they so desire. What's a pulse? It's actually a Posterous blog (with a pulsememe.com domain name). If you're looking through some of your feeds in Pulse News Reader and see a post that you'd like your friends or followers to read, just tap on the "heart" icon and the post is added to your pulse. Followers can subscribe to your pulse in Pulse News Reader for iPad by searching for your name or handle in the app, then searching under Pulse Users. For example, if anyone wants to see what news I'm excited about, they can subscribe to Steve Sande. Whether it's a news item I've added from another site or something that I've written and posted to my Pulsememe blog, it gets published and the world gets to read it. If friends or followers aren't Pulse users, they can still follow what I'm interested in by going to the blog that's created at stevesande.pulsememe.com. Now here's the cool thing. If a lot of people are tapping the heart icon for a specific post, it ends up on the top stories page at Pulsememe.com. People who add a lot of posts are considered top editors and are listed on the Pulsememe page. In other words, this becomes a way for hot news items on the blogs you follow to rise to the top of the Internet heap, at least for a while. If there's anything I'm not happy about, it's that I can't connect this to my existing Posterous blog -- it ends up going into the special Pulsememe blog instead. The update is free to current users of Pulse News Reader for iPad, and the My Pulse feature should be making it to the iPhone version soon. Take a look at the gallery below for a few screenshots. %Gallery-98785%
Pulse News Reader now in convenient smaller size for iPhone, iPod touch
The Pulse News Reader for iPad (US$3.99) gained some notoriety last month when the stylish app was released, then promptly yanked from the App Store by Apple at the behest of The New York Times. The Times did not want their RSS feed featured in Pulse; changes were made and the app has been back in the App Store since about June 8th. Now comes word from developer Alphonso Labs that a new version of the app -- Pulse News Mini ($2.99) -- is now available for iPhone and iPod touch. It's iOS 4.0 tested, and from a quick look at the app, it does an amazing job of putting the functionality of Pulse into a smaller form factor. As you can see from the video above, Pulse News Mini looks quite similar to the iPad app. Of course, the individual pieces of the Pulse "mosaic" are smaller, but the way that users interact with Pulse is identical. Up to 20 news feeds may be added, with the ability to search by keywords to find those feeds. A tap on a story expands it to fill the screen. The rest of the stories in the feed are listed below, but can be hidden with a touch. I was pleased to see that Alphonso Labs took one of my suggestions to heart. As a writer, I like to see who is writing posts for various blogs. The initial versions of Pulse did not have this feature, but Pulse News Mini shows the author byline in the feed. In the currently shipping version of Pulse, 1.0.1, photos associated with posts did not appear to load properly. I'd love to see some way to sync the feeds on the iPad and iPhone versions to avoid re-entry of feeds between devices. If the developer responds as quickly to this request as they did to the my previous suggestion, we should see that feature implemented quickly.
iPad Pulse Reader app goes from keynote hero to App Store zero thanks to NYT (update -- it's back!)
Pulse News Reader -- a news aggregating app for the iPad -- got itself the ultimate stamp of approval yesterday by being featured in Steve Jobs' keynote speech. A few hours later, however, Apple had removed the application from its App Store, following a complaint by the New York Times that it was infringing on its rights. Although Pulse collates publicly available RSS feeds, the fact it costs $4 a pop is being interpreted as a "commercial use" of those feeds, and therefore a violation of the New York Times and Boston Globe's Terms of Use. Its makers have said they'll be getting in touch with Apple and stripping out the offending content, but it's certainly a head scratcher of a decision by the news company. We wonder if this signals the start of a crusade against all paid RSS readers or if Pulse has something peculiarly intolerable about it. Visit the source link to read the complaint in full. Update: From what we're reading, it sounds like what the NYT is really complaining about is that its feeds are preloaded into Pulse, and that Pulse is using NYT content and images in its promotional materials, not that Pulse is a paid app. Seems like those are easy fixes -- we'll see what happens. Update 2: And it's back! As we guessed, it looks like all Pulse had to do was resubmit without preloading the NYT's RSS feed and take some new screenshots of different sites, so that's just peachy. Still, it's insanely troublesome that Apple's first response is to just pull apps without verifying any claims or allowing devs to respond -- your store is still broken, Steve, no matter what percentage of apps you're approving.
