rss

The Podcasts app on iOS is a great way to subscribe, listen to, and even watch your favorite podcasts while on the go. The tight integration with iTunes makes it simple to find and subscribe to new podcasts from your iOS device. What if you want to subscribe to a podcast that isn't in iTunes? As Macworld pointed out a while back, you can add non-iTunes podcasts to the app, using a not-so-obvious method.

Before you can add a podcast to the app, you'll need the direct link to the podcast. Sending it to yourself over iMessage or … Read more

Google's RSS Subscription Extension for Chrome automatically scans pages for RSS feeds and lets you subscribe to them with a single click on the RSS icon in the Omnibar. You must be signed in to Google to use it. It works with Chrome in Incognito mode, too, and supports multiple feeds per page. RSS Subscription Extension is freeware.

As with other Chrome extensions, you might miss RSS Subscription Extension's installation if you blink or look away, and (unlike some other Web browsers) you don't need to restart Chrome to activate it. We opened the Extensions Manager page … Read more

If you're not familiar with Flipboard, it's a magazine-style news reader that has been wildly popular on iOS for quite some time. What gives it extra cool points is its ability to handle social media. See, Flipboard can integrate your social accounts into its feed, and present tweets or other status updates just as it would news stories or blog posts (complete with images and video thumbnails). Couple this with Flipboard's gorgeous tiled interface, and it's easy to see why the app is such a fan favorite.

With its clean design, vibrant display of photographic tiles, … Read more

Making its unofficial debut earlier this month on Samsung Galaxy S III demo units, Flipboard for Android has finally opened itself up...a little bit. No, the app isn't widely available on Google Play yet, but perhaps just as good, you can now download the official beta version of Flipboard through a public download link.

If you're not familiar with Flipboard on iOS, it's a magazine-style news reader app that has reached an amazing level of popularity. What gives the app extra cool points is its ability to handle social media. See, Flipboard can integrate your social … Read more

Flipboard is a must-have newsreader and social network hub that lets you organize the info you want to look at and then flip through it like a magazine. Get started by creating an account with Flipboard, then sign in to your Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Once you're all signed in, Flipboard presents you with an intuitive layout of your social networks and some default news categories to browse. Touching a panel lets you browse through any of the default categories. But touching and holding a panel lets you delete it and replace it with whatever you want. To customize … Read more

With so many Web sites to follow, I find myself relying on my Google Reader regularly. Unfortunately, I also find that many RSS snippets will cut off right when I'm about to get to the good stuff. This is generally because the sites want you to click on their links. I understand the reasoning behind it (and am guilty of it myself), but this sometimes leaves me with 10 open tabs to read, making me wander and lose focus on 10 different Web sites.

To prevent this, I've started using Google Reader Inline after checking out&… Read more

Has Techmeme met its match? Or Flipboard? New semantic news analysis company Wavii is launching its automated, personalized news "feed" app today. It's a more modern and more pretty, deconstruction of the overwhelming news barrage we're all buried under. Wavii CEO Adrian Aoun's pitch: "Facebook is good for keeping up with friends, but it's kind of annoying that you can't keep up with your world this way."

Wavii is a smart timeline of the news. Its core value is that it runs its semantic engine against several hundred news feeds and … Read more

After using Newser on the iPhone, one of my all-time favorite apps, for years, I have found it hard to rely on RSS feeds on my Mac with their text-heavy design and truncated headlines. With MixTab, free in the Mac App Store, I get a quickly loading app that delivers my news, complete with engaging graphics.

Launch MixTab and you'll be asked to create an account. After providing an e-mail and password, MixTab opens with seven default topics. You can delete any topic that doesn't interest you by clicking on the Edit Tabs button at the top and … Read more

As I noted back in January, the only smart way to buy Apple gear is to buy it refurbished.

You're guaranteed to save money while getting gear that's literally as good as new.

Just one problem: how can you keep tabs on Apple's latest refurb deals? Suppose, for example, you're in the market for a refurbished fourth-gen iPod Touch, the one with the built-in cameras and Retina display. (As it happens, that's exactly what my kids are after.)

For a long while, there weren't any for sale. I know because I checked the store … Read more