Top five news aggregator apps for iOS and Android

Flipboard:
Flipboard is a news-aggregating app that creates a personalized magazine out of everything being shared with you through a variety of sources. “Flip” through your Facebook newsfeed, tweets from your Twitter account and photos from Instagram. You can also add news feeds from Google Reader, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Flickr and 500px on Flipboard.

You can customize the app with the things you like to read, from niche blogs to publications. Users can also use Instapaper or Read It Later to save articles to read later.

Flipboard creates a single place to browse, comment and share all the news that interests you. The interface feels like flipping through stories hence the name Flipboard.

Available on: iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation) and iPad. RequiresiOS 4.0 or later. Not yet on Android

Zite:
Zite is a free personalized magazine for your iOS device that automatically learns what you like and gets smarter every time you use it. Zite delivers all the news, articles, blogs, and videos you want – and helps you discover new stuff that based on the categories of your interest.

Users can simply log in with their Twitter and Google accounts, select from a wide variety of news categories such as technology, gaming, film & TV, Health and exercise and many more.

You can save an article to read it later via the Read it Later app.

Available on: iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.0 or later. Not on Android.

Pulse:
Pulse brings all your news together under one roof. Pulse lets you choose and share stories of your interest, from thousands of top news sources, blogs of your choice and social networks.

You can chose from numerous categories ranging from tech, lifestyle, news, business, science, sports and more. Log into the app with your accounts such as Facebook and Twitter. You can also save the articles to be read later with the help of apps such as Read it Later, Instapaper, Evernote and Readability.

The interface of pulse lists the new sources one below the other. You can choose the order of listing the sources. Users can have 10 sources listed on each page.

Available on: iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.Requires iOS 4.0 or later. Android 2.1 and up.

News 360:
News360 has a very unique view for displaying the stories. Once the user has selected a particular story to read, he gets a variety of sources that have covered that particular event. It’s a nice and easy way of getting access to multiple perspectives and editorial viewpoints of one incident.

The app delivers headlines and back-stories from more than 10,000 newspapers and magazines in one stream. You can personalize the content by logging in with your Facebook, Google Reader and Twitter accounts. Apart from customizing the news feed with topics of your interest, you can choose from a wide variety of news categories such as sports, science, business, crime, politics, health and many more.

Available on: iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.Requires iOS 4.0 or later. Android 2.2 and up.

Feedly:
Last but not least on our list is the Feedly app. Users can log in with their Google Reader, Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Instapaper and Read it later accounts to customize the news feed.

The interface of Feedly may take a bit of getting used to. Touching the right side of the screen marks a story as read where as touching the left side of the story saves it. It’s a nifty shortcut. You swipe through the stories horizontally.

Once you’ve reached the end of a particular category, the app automatically jumps to the next category that you have saved. It a quick way to swipe through stories and categories.

You also have the standard sharing options via Twitter and Facebook. You can also mail the article or open the link in Safari.

Available on: iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.Requires iOS 4.0 or later. Android 2.2 and up.

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Handwritten Message for iOS

Leaving personalized hand written notes has been lost as a cute gesture thanks to the digital age of SMS, MMS, BBM, iMessage, What’s App and the plethora of other ways that people choose to stay in touch. Gone are the days when you’d find a posted note on the fridge telling you that your loved one has left the house or that message for the kids, “there’s food in the fridge”, So on and so forth.

Today we have with us an iOS app, Handwritten Message, that lets you send personalized messages that you can write on the screen using your finger. Is it the modern day version of showing cute gestures or are you better off sending the good old text?

Features:
The app is really simple. There is a message box. You use your one finger to type and two fingers to swipe/move and pinch to zoom. The notes have a defined space, which cannot be expanded upon.

In terms of customization, there are 48 solid colour backgrounds and 30 textured backgrounds to choose from. These backgrounds are really nice and enhance the personal touch of the message. You can also change the colour of the text in the message.

For that extra personal touch, there are 60 shapes including smiley faces, roses and love hearts to choose from. To add to the finishing touches, there are 48 custom borders to choose from. With the permutations and combinations, you can really make each message look unique.

Performance:
Straight out of the box, the beauty of the message you create in the Handwritten Message app depends on how good your handwriting is. No matter how many of the available effects you apply, if your writing looks like crawling ants, your message will look bad.

One downside is that the place to write the message feels a bit cramped. But the developers have said that in the next update to the app, users will get a larger area to type in.

It is easy to type a message on the device especially since the gestures of typing with one finger and scrolling with two starts to feel natural after a bit. Beautifying the messages is also a lot of fun as you can add borders and colour the text. The only downside is that you cannot choose the location you want to put the smiley face or the heart images. Their location is fixed.

Also, you cannot erase specific text. You can undo your last typed word but if you want to erase the 1st word, you will have to undo the whole thing or clear the slate completely. You cannot save your creations either.

Once you’ve “written” your message it is very simple to send it. Hit “done” and then hit “send” and the message gets copied to the clipboard. You can then “paste” the note in iMessage, send it as an MMS or even e-mail. The message will not go via a regular SMS, as it is an image and requires to be sent as an MMS, so you may want to keep the cost of sending an MMS in mind before sending cute posted style messages to the entire world.

Verdict:
All in all, the app is a nice one to own. Sure, there a lot of apps that recognize you handwriting and can send it across as a message, but the customizable options of Handwritten Message app gives it a personal touch. Add to the fact that the app is now free instead of $0.99 and there is more incentive to give it a try!

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Airtel may launch 4G services in Kolkata next month

Earlier this month the Internet was abuzz with reports that telecom giant Bharti Airtel was going to launch its 4G services on March 20. Apparently, that didn't happen. However, fresh round of rumours suggest 4G is still on Airtel's cards and the company is likely to launch it in Kolkata circle in the first half of April.

Citing unnamed sources, Telecom Talk reports that Airtel may launch LTE-TDD based wireless broadband services in the first half of April, 2012 in Kolkata. It further reports that ZTE will assist Airtel as the equipment partner, while Indus Towers will be providing towers for the 4G services. The site also points out that Airtel may install small cells at different places of the city to provide better coverage. Also, the roll-out of LTE will only be available in select pockets of the city.

It may be recalled that Airtel had won spectrum for high-speed wireless broadband service (Broadband Wireless Access spectrum) in four circles namely Kolkata, Maharashtra, Punjab and Karnataka . Airtel was allocated 20 MHz of BWA spectrum in 2.3 GHz frequency band.

In the same auction, Reliance Infotel had won a pan-India BWA spectrum and was given a 20MHz band. RIL has been previously rumoured to launch its 4G services with an ultra low-cost tablet. Read our previous coverage on RIL's 4G plans here. Meanwhile, Airtel, which has the largest subscribers base in India, is likely to launch its 4G services with new dongles and tablets.

It's notable that there's no official word on 4G launch from Airtel yet.

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Fake Android store spotted in China, includes Apple shop-in-shop

While we often see robot-themed booths at events like MWC, we've never come across a Google-owned stand outside the show floors -- and chances are what you see above is definitely not it. This KIRF Android shop is set up in Zhuhai, China, calling itself a "famous smartphone experience store." That said, if you're looking to pay it a visit for the special Green Army treatment, you may just throw a temper tantrum when you see Apple's own section where an array of legit iPhones and iPads are being showcased. Just be sure to get there before the black and white crew comes knocking...

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Google Play may get movie purchases, says CNET

 

 

When Google debuted its massive Google Play re-branding of its app and media stores, one thing that was still missing was the ability to purchase movies — but that may be about to change. CNET reports that Google is considering adding the feature due to pressure from its content partners. Hollywood studios are said to be tying Google's continued ability to rent titles to the addition of purchases, which obviously come in at a higher price point — with more profit — than rentals alone. The new option could potentially appear as early as this summer. Despite Google's incredible success with Android, it has thus far had difficulty establishing a successful media ecosystem, but whether the addition of movie purchases will change its fortunes remains to be seen.

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Nokia releases Play To beta, updates Music app for Windows Phone

To follow its announcement of updated Nokia Drive, Maps and Transport apps (and not to forget Creative Studio), the firm in Finland now has two more servings of software to crow about for its Lumia lineup -- okay, no more alliterations. Today, Nokia has announced an updated version of its music app, now dubbed -- simply enough -- Nokia Music 2.0, along with an entirely new beta package known as Nokia Play To. While the Music upgrade appears to include little more than minor revisions to the wording of certain functions, the Play To software will cater to users of DLNA equipment with its ability to stream photos and videos. Because it's only in beta form, the means to stream music hasn't yet arrived, but Nokia intends to bake this ability into a future revision of Play To.

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Google throws stones from its glass house, calls Siri 'competitive threat'

Summary: Amid calls that Google is “anti-competitive”, the search giant sees Siri as a “significant development” in mobile search. Could Siri spark the end for Google’s dominance?

Eric Schmidt, in another round with U.S. senators to face questions over Google’s alleged anti-competitiveness, says Google is threatened by Apple’s latest player in the search market: Siri.
“Apple has launched an entirely new approach to search technology with Siri, its voice-activated search and task-completion service built into the iPhone 4S”, Schmidt wrote in response to written questions posed by antitrust subcommittee lawmakers on Friday.
While other challenges faced by the company include Facebook’s integration of Bing as its default search option, and losing its real-time search of Twitter and other up-to-the-minute results, Siri appears to make Google worry the most.

(Source: CBS News)

Apple and Google, seemingly up until recently, were married in the technology world. Though signs of fraying of the carefully crafted relationship had appeared over the past year, it has since become clear that Apple was to ‘divorce’ itself from the search giant.
Though Apple has no primary stake in the search engine market, instead leveraging the capabilities of Google, as the iPhone’s primary search engine, and Microsoft’s Bing as another choice for consumers, Schmidt nevertheless sees the Cupertino-based technology giant as a threat to its global marketshare statistics.
Schmidt, who currently serves as Google’s executive chairman, insisted however that Google was “not dominant” in web search, as lawmakers contended.

The search giant currently holds 65.3 percent of the U.S. search engine marketshare according to comScore, as both U.S. and European antitrust authorities investigate the company.

Schmidt has two problems to contend with:
Firstly, he needs to convince primarily the U.S. authorities, rather than the European authority underdogs, that Google is not anti-competitive. If anything, to come across as ‘wounded’ and ‘the victim’ in all of this will score Schmidt bonus points. Secondly, and crucially, it needs to remain as the industry leader in search and mobile spaces; while appearing not to call Siri anti-competitive in itself, to push others into thinking it is.
It’s a difficult balance to strike. But amid Schmidt’s hedging answers, as part of his repeat Senate hearing, Apple may do more damage to Google than U.S. and European antitrust authorities.
Apple seems to have designed Siri in such a way that it only uses Google when it really has to; in a part to appear as truly ‘intelligent’, whilst also striking a blow to Google, by performing the bare minimum as part of their ongoing ‘divorce’ proceedings.
When asking Siri a question, it searches the web only as a last resort, bypassing Google as its default search engine, instead to claim the best answer it can from Wolfram Alpha, Yelp or other web services. Naturally, Google sees this as a threat.
Knowing full well that though Google has 44 percent of the mobile marketshare, with Google as the default search on its Android devices, and Apple only has 27 percent of the U.S. mobile slice, the numbers are beginning to collide. Google is quietly panicking.
But Schmidt is not alone in his Siri suspicions.
I, for one, could not for a moment be sarcastic, cruel or tormenting to Siri, unlike the millions of users worldwide that badger the assistant with inane, sexually-explicit questions — just by the off chance it is more intelligent than Apple lets on, and texts my entire phonebook contact list my deepest, darkest secrets as I sleep.

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