News readers and aggregators

Turn your RSS feed into a "Star Wars" crawl

If Google's recent decision to pull the plug on the (incredibly useful and beloved) RSS tool Google Reader has convinced you that the search giant is now the Evil Empire, then join the Rebel Alliance with the RSS reader StarRSS, from user fotcorn at github. Simply enter in an RSS feed into the box on the landing page and a scrolling list of items will appear as familiar horns trumpet the start of that classic movie music.

Clicking on the items in your feed as they scroll up and become smaller and smaller isn't the easiest task in … Read more

Feedly mobile apps add better search and more features

Wasting no time after the death of Google Reader was announced, multiplatform RSS solution Feedly has already updated its mobile apps, not only with new features, but also with some new power under the hood.

With a new search-and-discovery engine running, finding feeds from around the Web is noticeably faster. The search bar even immediately tries to autocomplete what you type, to help you more quickly discover topics and sites. According to Feedly, the new search algorithm leverages millions of interactions from other users, which means the tool will even get better over time.

Now, as you're sifting through … Read more

How to get the most out of Feedly on your desktop

Google Reader is going to be retired on July 1, 2013, giving users of the RSS service about four months to find alternatives. With more than 500,000 new users since the announcement of Reader's demise, Feedly appears to be one of the more popular choices to replace Google Reader.

Feedly may be receiving a lot of interest because it's one of the few alternatives with clients on multiple platforms (iOS, Android, Kindle, Chrome, Firefox, and Safari). If you're interested in trying it out as your Google Reader alternative, we've got some tips to help you … Read more

Google Reader is dying, but we have five worthy alternatives

Hear that? That's the sound of millions of news junkies on the Web scrambling to find an alternative to Google Reader.

As you may have heard, Google Reader will soon be no more. The search giant has announced that it will shutter its much-maligned -- though still widely used -- RSS reader, which will, no doubt, leave many users in a tizzy, searching for other ways to subscribe to their favorite RSS feeds. Sure, Google Reader may not have been the most beautifully designed product to come out of Mountain View, Calif., but it sure was convenient. And now … Read more

Press for Android wraps Google Reader in a slick package

Editors' note: Price of the app has been corrected.

Meet Press, a slick new app for keeping up with your RSS subscriptions on your Android device. It syncs to your Google Reader account and presents all of your articles in a well designed package, with an attractive typeface and dead simple navigation.

Perhaps the best thing about Press is its interface. The open layout and six different font choices make it a pleasure to look at. And just like Google Reader it's really easy to navigate.

Once you sync Press to your Google Reader account, the app opens up … Read more

Top news-reading apps for the iOS touch screen

The iPad is great for many things, but one of the best uses for me is relaxing on a Saturday and flipping through the latest news. There are plenty of basic news apps that grab all the latest headlines for you, but some offer a sleek layout that lets you browse the news using an elegant interface.

I recently reviewed Trapit for iPad, a fairly new newsreader you can train to give you the latest stories about any subject. You simply search for a keyword and Trapit makes a "Trap" of the latest news stories on that subject … Read more

Pulse leaps from app to Web, at last

iPhone? Check. Android? Check. For most mobile apps, that's enough. Popular news reader Pulse, however, has decided that its next frontier is something you may have heard of before called the World Wide Web.

Pulse's Web app at Pulse.me is built entirely from HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript, and indicates that the future-Web technologies are rapidly approaching a state where they can easily re-create native app experiences in the browser. The site is accessible from most major browsers on traditional PCs and mobile devices. With the touch-focused Windows 8 and its associated touch screen hardware coming at the … Read more

Flipboard arrives on Android

Popular news-reader app Flipboard has officially landed on Android.

In a blog post, Flipboard said the app is available for Android phones as well as for Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet and Barnes and Noble's Nook slate.

The Android version of Flipboard will come preinstalled on Samsung's Galaxy S3 phone from any of the leading carriers, Flipboard said.

The company also announced new services and editions:

We're also expanding Flipboard's utility today by adding two new major services: Google+ and YouTube. Now you can connect your Google+ account to Flipboard and see all the activity in … Read more

Instapaper vs. Pocket: Battle of the bookmarkers

When you're on the go, it might not always make sense to dive into that lengthy article or start watching that 6-minute video, all on your mobile device. That's when a short-term bookmarking app comes in handy.

A bookmarker lets you put lengthy articles or videos away with just a couple of taps, so you can easily queue them up for reading and watching later, from any of your devices, including your desktop. On Android, the longtime fan favorite has been Pocket (formerly Read It Later). But with iOS-darling Instapaper entering the fold, the stage has been set … Read more