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Flipboard 1.9 puts emphasis on audio
Flipboard is the "social magazine" for iPad and iPhone that lets users browse their favorite social network sites, feeds and more in a beautiful, magazine-like interface. Version 1.9 was released this week and adds audio to the mix. A new audio tab offers several options, like SoundCloud and shows from National Public Radio (like Fresh Air) and Public Radio International. You'll also find podcasts and indue music from the likes of Sub Pop Records and Epitaph Records. What's really nice is that you can begin an audio stream and navigate away to another section of Flipboard (or even another app) while the stream continues. Version 1.9 is a free update.
Flipboard for Android 'liberated' from Galaxy S III demo unit, available for all
For many, one of the biggest causes of jealousy after the Samsung Galaxy S III launch event wasn't that 4.8-inch screen, or the new Exynos innards, it was that beautiful looking Android version of Flipboard. Alas, the Korean mobile giant had enough cunning to secure the popular glossy social network and feed reader all for itself -- for the time being. That is, unless, you're a naughty little xda-developer visitor, perhaps called Valcho, who had the foresight / lack of restraint at the event to nab the .apk from one of the demo phones. He's made it available for all and sundry (well, those with Android phones at least). If you want to see how it looks on your phone, point it at the source link, or be a good spirit, and wait for the official outing.
Samsung Galaxy S III gets an early exclusive on Flipboard, headed to other Android phones in 'coming months'
It looks like you can now add one more popular iOS app to the Android ranks -- sort of. Samsung has managed to get an exclusive version of Flipboard for its just-announced Galaxy S III smartphone, and the folks at SlashGear have already taken it for a quick spin. The short version: it's a lot like the iOS app, with the notable exception of some widgets that you can add to the phone's home screen. As for when it will head to other Android phones, Flipboard is only saying that it will be available for "select" phones in the "coming months." You can find SlashGear's hands-on at the link below.
On building Flipboard
There are designers and then there's the rest of the world. As much as I appreciate esthetics, I can't conceptualize design because I'm convinced designers see things through a different frame of reference. Those like me who aren't designers are thankful when people like Craig Mod take the time to explain their creative process and insights. Mod, who worked on Flipboard for the iPhone, has crafted a lengthy essay about the design of the app. His discussion doesn't focus on the bits and bytes but the existential journey that led to the finished product. It will take you a while to digest all that Mod has to say, but it's well worth your time.
Flipboard 1.8 adds cover stories to iPad
An update to the popular Flipboard introduces cover stories to the iPad version, something that's been available for the iPhone since its introduction in December. Cover stories culls a selection of interesting articles and photos, presenting them in a magazine-cover format for easy viewing. The iPad's cover stories is a combination of news and status updates. The update also adds a third page of tiles, the ability to identify preferred topics and international content guides with recommendations for readers in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, France, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Flipboard 1.8 is free and available via the App Store. [Via MacStories]
Localized Flipboard Content guides available for UK, Ireland, Australia and Canada
Flipboard added another feature to its popular social stream and news reading app that'll please international users. Announced earlier this week, the company will be sending out three new Content guides for readers in Australia, Canada and the UK and Ireland. Folks in those countries will soon receive news that's custom-selected for those regions. These areas will join China, France, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, which already have local recommendations. If your iPad's or iPhone's region is set to one of the countries mentioned above, then you will automatically receive your local guide. To switch back to the original, un-filtered content, you'll have to set your device's country location to the United States. That's somewhat inconvenient, but Flipboard says it will soon let you choose your country from within the app.
Flipboard launches on iPhone, iPod Touch, introduces 'Cover Stories' feature
Flipboard has now arrived on a slightly smaller board. Previously available as an iPad-only affair, the popular magazine and social media app has now launched on both the iPhone and iPod Touch, bringing graphics-laden aggregation to a wider swath of the iOS community. This new universal version features much of the same functionality you'll find on its iPad predecessor, along with a new Cover Stories interface, which collects and displays all your recent photo uploads, shared articles and status updates from select social networks. If you're intrigued, you can download it for free at the source link, below.
Flipboard for iPhone released
Flipboard, the popular personal magazine app that's been tremendously successful on the iPad, has been updated to a universal version that now also works on the iPhone and iPod touch. Other features included in the latest Flipboard update include: Cover Stories for iPhone, a selection of interesting articles and photos being shared with you right now. And it gets smarter every time you use it. (Coming soon to iPad.) Speed. Flip through pages as you would through a printed magazine, all with the flick of a thumb. Flipboard Accounts: Sign into your Flipboard from either iPhone or iPad and get instant access to all your favorite content. Check out All Timelines. Flip through a single feed containing all articles and all photos being shared across all your social networks. Setting up Flipboard on the iPhone is extremely simple if you've already set up a Flipboard account in the iPad app, and all your data immediately syncs over quite seamlessly. As for the experience of using the app itself, it's a bit different from the iPad version; only one article at a time shows up in the viewer, and you swipe vertically through articles rather than horizontally as on the iPad. There also doesn't appear to be any support for landscape orientation at this point, which seems an odd omission. Other than those minor quirks, using Flipboard on the iPhone is almost as delightful as using it on the iPad. For those of you who don't own iPads and thus have yet to experience Flipboard, I'd urge you to check it out right away. It's one of my all-time favorite apps from any category, and it works very well even on the iPhone's much smaller screen.
Flipboard Accounts syncs data across devices
The latest Flipboard update introduces Flipboard Accounts, teasing to imminent and anticipated release of Flipboard for the iPhone. Creating an account will allow you to access your personal version of Flipboard on a shared iPad or link it to the iPhone version. MacStores walks users through the steps on creating an account, noting that the feature already is enabled on the iPad. One feature I like is the ability to capture an avatar from Twitter or Facebook for you. The update also adds support for Tumblr and 500px.
Sina Weibo comes to entice business, not to bury Twitter
Sina Weibo, China's most popular micro-blogging service is on the cusp of launching an English language version. Twitter addicts won't be forced to choose between the two: it's not for them. No, this westward drive is to encourage businesses to connect to Chinese users -- Neil Bush, head of TX Oil already uses the service to drum up clients in the far east. The company has also enlisted the help of Instagram and Flipboard, who will integrate with the service (as long as the latter can charm the Government to unblock it).
Flipboard for iPad looking to add TV shows, movies, more
Reuters reports that popular iPad magazine aggregation app Flipboard might soon expand beyond aggregating social media and RSS feeds and incorporate TV shows and movies into the app. Don't get too excited yet, though. Flipboard CEO Mike McCue said he plans to begin tackling Flipboard's video ambitions at the end of the year, so it's going to be a while before users see any streaming shows in the app. McCue also said he eventually hopes to add ebooks to the Flipboard lineup if he can cut a deal with publishers. Additionally iPhone fans will be happy to hear that Flipboard is coming to the iPhone and the iPod touch "in a few weeks," according to Reuters. Flipboard currently has over 3 million downloads, which speaks to the appeal of news aggregation apps. The field is quickly becoming a hot sector, with CNN reportedly set to buy Zite for up to US$25 million and AOL entering the fray with its AOL Editions app.
Time Inc. exec makes the leap to iPad startup Flipboard
The New York Post is reporting that digital journalist Josh Quittner is leaving Time magazine to join startup Flipboard as its new editorial director. Flipboard is a personalized social magazine app for the iPad. You can enter your Facebook and Twitter accounts and follow any number of sites' RSS feeds, and the app presents all the tweets, status updates and articles to you as a digital magazine. The fact that Quittner, who covered the digital revolution for 15 years at Time Inc, is leaving underscores a tectonic shift happening in the traditional publishing industry. It seems that those in the know feel secure in their beliefs about the future of publishing enough to leave established outlets for what they think is the future of the industry. Like many, I've said it again and again, publishers need to embrace the future if they want to keep up with all the ways people consume media nowadays. When veterans like Quittner, who also worked at Fortune and the now defunct (best magazine ever) Business 2.0, start jumping ship, it seems apparent that a tipping point from print to digital is closer than one thinks. [via iPodNN]
iPad app Flipboard blocked in China
Flipboard CEO Mike McCue confirmed over the weekend that its popular Flipboard app for the iPad no longer works in China. The company is investigating the problem, but it seems that China is now blocking Flipboard servers from sending data to the Flipboard app. All services, including Facebook, Twitter and RSS, are no longer available to Chinese Flipboard users. CEO McCue questions whether this is part of China's censorship policy or a way to promote Chinese businesses that clone Flipboard. He says, "They (the clones) are complete replicas visually," begging the question, "Do the Chinese censor US services to protect their regime or to protect their market?" Chinese users account for a small percentage of Flipboard users, and this block will prevent the company from further tapping this lucrative market. [Via TechCrunch]
Flipboard daily usage higher than ever, triples in two months
Despite losing truckloads of money, iPad magazine The Daily is apparently seeing a lot of traffic, and content aggregation app Flipboard is seeing the same trend. CEO Mike McCue says the company is seeing a huge slope upwards in traffic, with an average of 8 to 9 million "flips" (essentially pageviews), up from 3 to 4 million just a few months ago. That's some solid growth, probably driven both by sales of the iPad 2 and by tablet growth in general. As we've reported before, as more people learn to use tablets, more people (as you'd expect) actually use tablets. Unfortunately, there's no news about how all of that traffic is affecting Flipboard's bottom line. Magazines and content aggregators still haven't quite figured out how to turn all of those user numbers into profit numbers. But there is still some life in content on the iPad, despite all of the issues we seem to be hearing about from traditional magazine and newspaper publishers.
Radiohead releasing new downloadable album, MC Hammer releases new iPad single
You may remember, about four years ago, Radiohead raising a stink over the digital release of its album In Rainbows. The band decided to "sell" the album on its website, asking fans to pay whatever they wanted, while at the same time shunning Apple's iTunes service, claiming they wanted to sell the album rather than individual songs. Back then, Radiohead's statement was pretty amazing, if only because there weren't a lot of other digital channels besides Apple's store. Now, of course, there are a few more ways to buy your music online. Radiohead's gone iTunes anyway, and more artists have decided to sell music themselves. But Radiohead is back at it -- they've announced that a new album will be sold a little more traditionally, but at a US$9 download for an MP3 version, as well as physically starting at $48. I doubt it'll be quite as disruptive a model as In Rainbows was, but figured it was worth a mention. And speaking of releasing new music, MC Hammer released a brand new single on the Flipboard iPad app this month. You'll know Flipboard as a social aggregator, but apparently the company took a musical turn the other week when it premiered the brand new single "See Her Face" on the pages of its app alone. There's no word on how the release went over, but you can listen to the song itself, even if you don't have the iPad app, on Flipboard's site.
Yahoo! announces Livestand for iPad, available first half 2011
If you've been following TUAW's reports about The Daily, you're aware that many of the TUAW bloggers are so fed up with the buggy, crashing newspaper app that they've removed it from their iPads while the app is still free. For me, the crashes and slow loading weren't as much of an irritant as the lack of customizable and local content. I just don't want to pay for horoscopes, fashion news and entertainment gossip that I can't turn off, and the fact that I can't read any local news on the app killed it for me. Yahoo! has apparently been listening, as the struggling internet giant has announced -- but hasn't shipped -- its solution to the problem that is The Daily. It has announced Livestand for iPad, a customizable news app that will be available "in the first half of 2011." There's no word on whether Yahoo! plans to offer the app for free or, as in the case of The Daily, it will be using subscriptions to refill its coffers. Yahoo! wants to capitalize on the huge volume of content that it has available from multiple publishers, the billions of photos available from Flickr and the many advertising agreements it already has in place. The company says that Livestand will be a digital newsstand that is "continuously programmed by a person's interests and contexts." Some of the screenshots (obviously mockups since the app isn't yet available) show local content boxes with top stories, weather and more, all wrapped in a very visual package that is reminiscent of the Flipboard content page. That makes me wonder if it might not just be a better, and more timely, solution to just load Flipboard with RSS feeds of local news from Yahoo! That solution would also make it less likely for me to have to put up with ads that are "data-rich, actionable, even location aware." I'll let you know how my Yahoo! feeds + Flipboard = Local Newspaper experiment works. Perhaps I'll get my own version of Livestand for iPad well before July rolls around. [via MacStories]
The best iOS apps I used in 2010
After looking back over Mac and Mac/iOS hybrid apps, it's time to look at the best iOS apps of 2010. As before, this list comes from my particular experience over the past year with these apps. 1) iCab Mobile (US$1.99, universal) is a replacement for mobile Safari. While it is hindered by the fact that iOS doesn't have anywhere to set a "default browser," and therefore most URLs that you open from the Springboard or email/Twitter/etc... will open in Safari, iCab offers plenty of features that make it worth the effort. It is the first app on my dock, and I much prefer it over Safari. Although it uses the same rendering engine as Safari, it comes with a host of features that Safari doesn't have. iCab Mobile will let you download files, which you can either offload to your computer later or upload to Dropbox from right within the app. Tap and hold an image, and you can save it right to your Dropbox. iCab on the iPad also does "real" tabs, with a visible tab present (it will auto-hide when not needed, if you want). You can set it to open links in new tabs, or open only links to different domains in new tabs. It has content filtering built-in, as well as module support for things like Instapaper, viewing HTML source or even downloading videos from YouTube. It also has a forms manager and a kiosk mode, and as Mike pointed out in November it supports VGA mirroring for presentation use. Web browsing is one of the primary uses of my iPad, and iCab Mobile is well worth the minimal asking price. Find out more at iCab Mobile's website. See the rest of my choices below.
Flipboard for Mac screenshot fake, real thing still in the works
A leaked Photoshopped screenshot that was supposedly of a new Flipboard for Mac found its way into many email inboxes yesterday, and now 9 to 5 Mac has confirmation that it is indeed a fake and not from Flipboard Inc. at all. While our own Steven Sande recently wrote about the possibility of Flipboard coming to the Mac soon, in talking to 9 to 5 Mac, the company had this to say: "We definitely believe the desktop is part of our future, but it's still on the whiteboard and not something we are launching soon. The desktop requires a lot of attention to design and UI and we'd like to take the time to get it right." So if you happened to see and believe the "screenshot" of Flipboard for Mac, sorry to burst your bubble. It is still available for free on the App Store to those of you with iPads, and I recommend you check it out. It's a different way of reading news, looking at pictures and responding to updates on Facebook and Twitter, and we can only hope that the Mac version comes out soon enough. Since Apple named it the iPad App of the Year, I imagine we won't have to wait too long.
Flipboard updated, finally does Google Reader and Flickr right
When we spent some quality time with Flipboard over the summer, when the iPad was still a new and exciting thing, we liked the idea but not so much the implementation -- there just wasn't enough stuff filling the pages of our pretend magazines. Since then Flipboard of course went on to win Apple's US iTunes iPad app of the year award and is now celebrating with a major update: Google Reader support. This quite naturally means a huge boost in available content and turns this into a serious way to get your news, with much nicer presentation than your average RSS aggregator. That presentation has also been boosted by Flickr integration, meaning a treasure trove of pretty pictures to go along with that dire news about US politics you can't help but subscribe to.
New version of Flipboard adds Google Reader, Facebook Groups and more
Popular magazine-style reading app Flipboard has announced major changes to its iPad application, bringing with it support for Flickr, Facebook Groups and Google Reader. The new version also includes improved Twitter and social networking integration. Named iPad App of the Year, Flipboard has gone above and beyond with this update. It's no surprise why Sports Illustrated partnered with the company to deliver Swimsuit edition content to Flipboard users. The latest version of Flipboard lets you read and sync to your Google Reader account. All RSS feeds are displayed in magazine-style layout with the ability to jump to your starred items, shared items, folders and individual subscriptions. Flickr integration is also an excellent addition to Flipboard. The iPad's large display lends itself to images, and the new Flickr feature lets you view your favorite photos, your photostream, your contacts' photos and interesting photos of the day. Flipboard originally launched with support for Twitter and Facebook, and the app continues to build on its social networking roots. Flipboard lets you view your Facebook Groups, Friend list, and Fan pages within the app's gorgeous UI. Photos from your Facebook feed also look fantastic. Twitter integration has been expanded to support favorite tweets, mentions, and both public and private lists. You can also now use Flipboard to post a status update, share a photo, or even a Flipboard page across multiple social networks. If you use any of the above web services or social networks and have not installed Flipboard, you should do it now. The Flipboard app is available for free from the App Store and is well worth checking out. You will be hard-pressed not to fall in love with it.