Top 5 news and RSS apps for Android [January 2015]
Keeping up with news articles can be a cluttered process, especially if you use multiple apps or bookmarks on your phone or tablet. Using a news aggregation app or an RSS reader can tidy up your mobile device and make keeping up with things even easier. There are tons of apps that can get the job done, but we’re going to go over the best options in this guide to help you get started on staying on top of the news.
Flipboard is one of the most popular apps on the Play Store for keeping up with multiple news sources, and its even the backbone of pieces of some of Samsung’s new UI on their phones or tablets. It offers a slick experience for quickly browsing over popular news and comes with a handful of extra features that make it fun to use.
Flipboard lets you select different topics for things you want to follow, such as food, technology, music, etc. and then it displays relevant content from top sites as you browse through the main feed. If you select mobile games as something you want to stay caught up on, you’ll see news stories for when Gameloft announces something new or Angry Birds get a major update, while if you subscribe to a scuba diving topic, you’ll see tons of pictures, articles, and content related to scuba diving. You can also subscribe to particular sites if you want.
While reading news articles, Flipboard lets you save particular articles to read later by either tying them to your Flipboard account or exporting them to an external app like Pocket, Readability, or Instapaper. There are also full blown comment sections specifically for Flipboard users on articles, and you’ll be able to take complete advantage of Android’s built-in sharing menu.
For social media enthusiasts, Flipboard also integrates multiple social networks into your news. The app allows you to sign into your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and multiple other accounts, after which content from those social media sites will start appearing in your main feed. This is really helpful for keeping all of the barrage of information in one place if you’ve avid about keeping up with tons of different networks and sources.
Flipboard is completely free, and if you’ve owned a recent Samsung device, there’s a good chance you’ve already played with it a bit.
Feedly is an RSS reader application that works fairly similarly to apps like Flipboard, but you get a more fine-tuned experience if there are specific sites or blogs that you want to track throughout the day. It has an excellent, easy-to-navigate interface that has several customization options that most other aggregation apps lack.
When setting up Feedly, there are preset options for curating content that you’re interested in, like cooking, mobile phones, or video games. Within each of those topics, you can further narrow it down to which sites you want to see in your feed. This can be useful for narrowing down how many music blogs you’re subscribed to, for instance, so you don’t see six different posts about the same thing all within an hour of each other.
With Feedly, you can also specifically set up a URL as an RSS feed, which is useful for tracking more obscure or less popular sources that you may want to keep up with. Plus, Feedly can also handle a bevy of social networks which you can either blend in with your main feed or view separately from the other sources. There are also options for using your favorite save-for-later apps like Pocket and Instapaper, and Feedly also has a tool for setting up a quick-share button. If you typically only ever tweet out news stories, you can set Twitter as your default sharing app and skip Android’s built-in sharing menu.
Feedly is free and offers a web based version for tracking and syncing your news sources on all of your devices. There is a pro version that runs $5 per month that nets you Evernote support, quick article searching, and prioritized customer support, if that’s your thing.
Google has had a splotchy track record when it comes to news and RSS apps. Originally, Google Reader was a fairly successful option for keeping all of your news sources in one place. Google axed Reader in 2013 and offered up Google Currents in its place, but then that app was put on the chopping block in favor of rolling its functionality into Google Play Magazines, which leads us to the current iteration of Google’s news solution: Play Newsstand.
Play Newsstand offers a very unique feature that none of the other apps on this list do. You can purchase and subscribe to magazines through the Play Store, and they’re fully integrated into your other news sources so you can view everything in one place. There isn’t much in the way of RSS feeds, but Newsstand has an enormous selection of magazines and web content. You can look up specific news channels from tons of categories ranging from technology to business to travel, dig into a particular magazine, or see everything thrown together in a main feed.
Newsstand also has a very useful “bookmark” feature that lets you save your spot in a particular magazine or clip an article on the web to read later. These bookmarked articles and magazines are available for viewing offline, and the bookmark will hold your place so you can pick up right where you left off.
While Play Newsstand doesn’t have social media integration or tons of customization options, it’s one of your only choices for magazines and offers an excellent way to keep all of your main news sources in one place. Plus you get the excellent Material Design interface that Google has been pushing lately, so it’s worth taking for a spin.
Press is one of the apps that doesn’t try to throw in the kitchen sink in its feature set, but instead, focuses on building an excellent application with a slick interface that’s easy to use. The app has enough features to appeal to most users, but it really stands out thanks to the fantastic UI.
Press works as an RSS reader with tons of preset news sources. You can set up all of your favorite hobbies and interests, and Press displays everything in a clean, easy-to-read manner. As a bonus, the app will also sync with your other RSS feed sources, including ones from Feedly, Fever, FeedBin, and Feed Wrangler. If you juggle multiple apps and services, this is a huge time saver.
When it comes to features, Press nails the important things. There are a couple different theme options, depending on if you prefer white or dark interfaces, and a few other tweaks tailored to the UX. There is full support for apps like Pocket and Instapaper, offline support, image zooming, and widget/lock screen widget support. There isn’t any magazine store or social media integration here, but the interface is much faster and cleaner with Press than with some of the other apps.
If the other apps on the list are too bloated or heavy for your tastes, Press is worth a shot. At only $2.99 it’s one of the best designed and well-performing Android apps on the Play Store.
Digg is a service that was beginning to fade in popularity but made a fairly strong comeback on the announcement of Google Reader’s demise. The redesigned app that was released into the Play Store really put the service back on the right track and is a great option for someone that wants a slightly more hands-off approach to curated news.
Digg offers most of the best features of any other RSS or news application. You can add specific feeds from your favorite site or select from a list of the most popular sites in different categories, and you’ll still have access to do things like saving the stories to read later in Pocket or Instapaper. Where Digg really shines, though, is in the focus on popular and social content.
To make sure you’re caught up on the biggest stories online, Digg actually uses algorithms to see what people are talking about and sharing. There’s a little help from the Digg staff, but the whole point behind putting this content front and center is to keep you updated with the latest viral videos or the hottest political stories, even if it’s not something that would normally be in your primary circles. For some people, that might sound like an annoyance, but for others, it’s an easy way to stay up to date on what your friends and coworkers are talking about.
To push that even further, Digg makes it a priority to let you quickly and easily share stories to your social networks or to your Digg account. These shares likely play into the algorithm that they use to decide what’s popular or not, so the app almost functions like a crowd sourced news feed.
On top of everything else, the Digg app has a great interface. It’s slick, intuitive, and very easy to use. It’s completely free, and creating a Digg account lets you access your stories on the app or on the web.
These are the top five apps for keeping up with your favorite news each day, but there’s no shortage of other news apps on the Play Store. Did we miss any of your favorites? Drop a comment and let us know.
Come comment on this article: Top 5 news and RSS apps for Android [January 2015]
Google details Ara Manager app for wrangling all your modules
We’ve known that there’ll be an Ara Manager app to help Android users grok their shiny, new modular toys, but we’ve just gotten a better sense of how it’ll actually work when Ara devices trickle into the wild later this year. At its most basic, the app — which should come pre-loaded on Ara phones — allows users to lock and unlock the modules currently slotted into the phone by using a bit of current to disengage the electro-permanent magnets holding them in place. We knew that already, though: What’s new?
Well, what about when you’ve got multiple, similar modules slotted into a phone’s endo, like a regular camera and a thermal camera? You’ll be able to use the app to determine which one you want to use at any given time, though it’s not exactly clear how the interface will let you do that. Oh, and seeing as how there’s firmware specific to each module, the app will also let you manage the updates and “support packages” that’ll assuredly become available as developers refine their modules. Beyond the mechanics of managing an Ara phone, the app will provide users will status information (think battery levels, vendor details and the like), but maybe the app’s most important role is a sherpa of sorts, a guide to help people figure out their devices by flagging potential issues and offering suggestions for optimal module spots. Linaro CEO George Grey hinted that slipping hardware into certain slots would lead to less-than-ideal performance, but sadly, he didn’t dive into what exactly that meant.
Filed under: Mobile
Google’s Play Store eclipses Apple’s App Store in number of apps and developers for first time
Given the differing business models being employed by Google and Apple in getting their mobile operating systems into the hands of consumers, it should be no surprise that despite a jump start by Apple, Google is ahead in many measures. Even in areas where Apple has a lead, Google is steadily marching toward dominance. An example of this occurred in 2014 according to app metrics tracking firm AppFigures whose latest numbers show Google’s Play Store has surpassed Apple’s store in terms of both number of apps and developers.
According to AppFigures, the Google Play Store now boasts 1.43 million apps compared to 1.21 million available in Apple’s App Store. There are some who may counter that Apple is much more strict about what gets into their store, which keeps the numbers down. Nevertheless, there will be many Android fans who will point to this change in app figures as a major milestone for Google’s business.
Meanwhile, the number of developers who are working on apps for each store continued to grow faster for the Play Store than it did for the App Store. In terms of actual numbers, Google has been in the lead for a few years now and has now reached 388,000 developers compared to Apple’s 282,000 developers.
As a whole, app development continues to grow at a very strong clip. All three major app stores – Google’s Play Store, Apple’s App Store and Amazon’s Appstore – all saw at least 50% growth during 2014. This kind of expansion should continue during 2015 as manufacturers work to expand their ecosystems to a whole variety of new platforms, especially wearables, that will push developers to consider new ways to support interaction with apps.
source: 9to5Google
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Google will launch Project Ara market pilot in Puerto Rico later this year
Google has just announced that Project Ara is making its way to Puerto Rico for its first market pilot later this year. Earlier today in Google’s second Project Ara developer conference, the company laid out its plans on how exactly they plan to proceed in getting the modular smartphones into consumer’s hands. In the second half of the year, Project Ara will be launched in the United States territory on both OpenMobile and Claro.
Google chose Puerto Rico for a few different reasons. Firstly, the mobile phone market is largely diverse with a broad number of users on smartphones and feature phones, all spread out in a wide variety of US carriers, Puerto Rican carriers, as well as local mobile carriers. Puerto Rico also has a 1:1 ratio in terms of sales with high-end flagships to entry-level devices. Puerto Rico also abides by FCC regulations, so Google won’t need to sidestep any regulations while still in the planning process.
Google’s ATAP venture will be opening up a number of “food truck-style” vehicles on the streets of Puerto Rico in order to sell Project Ara devices and extra modules. At the time of launch, Google says they’ll have 20-30 Ara modules available across multiple different categories. In order to expand their reach, the search giant has partnered with 11 different schools in the University of Puerto Rico system to invite developers on board if they’re interested.
We also saw an updated version of the “Spiral 2″ hardware, which is the current device being tested. The newest model boasts a NVIDIA Tegra K1 processor, a 720p display, 5MP rear-facing camera and much more. The Spiral 3 skeleton is the device Google plans to launch when the market pilot comes to Puerto Rico. The company plans to release an updated and improved version of the Sprial 3 when the device hits the mainstream. So we’re still far away from seeing anything come to market, but at least we have a more updated vision on what’s to come in the second half of the year.
We’ll be sure to fill you in once more details surface about the upcoming Project Ara launch.
Google to bring Project Ara devices to Puerto Rico first
At the second Project Ara Developer Conference, Google has announced that Puerto Rico will be one of the regions to get a ‘market pilot’ of the device. This essentially means that Puerto Rico will be the first region to get Project Ara based handsets.
Google mentions that this decision was taken considering the country’s reliance on mobile networks. Since it is part of a mobile-first ecosystem, it’s feasible to try out something like Project Ara over at Puerto Rico.
Google mentions that test devices should be available sometime in Q2 2015, so there’s still some waiting to do. By then, Project Ara will reach functional status, so the timing of the launch has been scheduled based on that.
Paul Eremenko of Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) group stated the reasons for choosing Puerto Rico as one of the first launch markets – “First, Puerto Rico has an incredibly diverse mobile user base, that ranges all the way from a large number of feature phone users all the way up to premium smartphone users. We need to be able to reach both with the Ara platform, and so we should have both included in the market pilot. As it happens, the ratio in Puerto Rico is about 50/50 between feature phone users and smartphone users.”
Google further mentions that since Puerto Rico is a free trade zone, it would make it easier for manufacturers to send components from around the globe. Also, since Puerto Rico is technically under FCC’s jurisdiction, it will act as a decent test market for the subsequent American launch of Project Ara based devices.
Come comment on this article: Google to bring Project Ara devices to Puerto Rico first
Google’s first test market for Project Ara will be Puerto Rico
Want to get your first taste of Project Ara, Google’s modular phone project? You might have to move to Puerto Rico. That’s because Google has designated the US territory as the market pilot site for Project Ara. Why Puerto Rico? Well, according to Paul Eremenko, Project Ara’s lead, the island is very “well-connected” and has a designated free trade zone that would make it easy to get developer modules from around the world. Puerto Rico also has apparently has a very diverse “mobile-first” market, and entry-level phones make up a great majority of sales. But perhaps more importantly, Puerto Rico is still under FCC jurisdiction and would therefore make a great test market for the US. The first two carriers to offer Project Ara will be Open Mobile and Claro, both of which offer 4G LTE coverage in addition to 3G. As for when exactly this will happen, well, Google didn’t say, but we’ll tell you as soon as they do.
Filed under: Google
The Project Ara Developer Conference Keynote starts at 11:00am ET today and you can watch it right here
The 2nd Project Ara Developer Conference is taking place this week, and you don’t want to miss the keynote which starts at 11:00am ET. With the release of the Ara Modular Developers Kit (MDK), we are that much closer to seeing a consumer product. The keynote could bring us the news as to when, plus a whole lot of other useful information. We have the live stream for you right after the break.
Click here to view the embedded video.
Come comment on this article: The Project Ara Developer Conference Keynote starts at 11:00am ET today and you can watch it right here
Google finds a big new home while it waits for its ambitious London HQ
Google wants to build some extravagant new offices at London’s King’s Cross, but after putting those plans on ice, the firm seems to be looking at other options. It had already agreed to rent half of a 350,000 square foot site at 6 Pancras Square, but CityAM reports that it’s now taking the other half too. The offices, set to be completed later this year, will be a far cry from what Google originally envisioned. The company had planned to build its own, 950,000 square foot offices at a different site in King’s Cross, complete with roof-top running track, swimming pool and connected cycling ramps. But apparently the project wasn’t ambitious enough and Google’s architects have been told to go back to the drawing board. It’s now delayed until at least 2017 — that doesn’t mean the project has been abandoned completely, but while those plans are in flux Google is clearly settling for plan B.
[Image Credit: BNP Paribas]
Via: Business Insider
Source: CityAM
Google finds a big new home while it waits for its ambitious London HQ
Google wants to build some extravagant new offices at London’s King’s Cross, but after putting those plans on ice, the firm seems to be looking at other options. It had already agreed to rent half of a 350,000 square foot site at 6 Pancras Square, but CityAM reports that it’s now taking the other half too. The offices, set to be completed later this year, will be a far cry from what Google originally envisioned. The company had planned to build its own, 950,000 square foot offices at a different site in King’s Cross, complete with roof-top running track, swimming pool and connected cycling ramps. But apparently the project wasn’t ambitious enough and Google’s architects have been told to go back to the drawing board. It’s now delayed until at least 2017 — that doesn’t mean the project has been abandoned completely, but while those plans are in flux Google is clearly settling for plan B.
[Image Credit: BNP Paribas]
Via: Business Insider
Source: CityAM
Google partners with its home city, brings electric-powered shuttles to residents
The City of Mountain View, the location of Google’s Googleplex headquarters, just took a large leap forward in public transportation by announcing the commission of four shuttles powered exclusively by electricity. The shuttles were made possible by a two-year fund set up by Google and utilize a power-train designed by Motiv Power Systems.
Motiv’s electric Powertrain Control System (ePCS) was created specifically for trucks and buses, making it one of the firsts of its kind to apply electric drive systems to such a category of transportation. Motiv is no stranger to its technology being applied to buses. In 2014, Motiv was the first to design an all-electric school bus and the first in North America to create an all-electric garbage truck.
The shuttles themselves are not meant to replace the current Mountain View public transportation system, but rather add an additional layer of green, public commuting. Mountain View hopes that these shuttles will reduce traffic and assist its residents in reaching medical plazas and shopping centers.
Additionally, the shuttles will offer free WiFi to its passengers and racks for bicycles. The shuttles will also be handicap compliant, which includes access for wheelchairs.
It should be noted that while the shuttles themselves are “green,” the increased demand on the electric power grid is usually not. One supplier of electricity in Mountain View is Pacific Gas & Energy. When looking at PG&E’s power sources, you can see that 51% of its power is created by green-friendly sources, but 27% of their power generation still comes from natural gas. PG&E has stated it intends on further eliminating its reliance on fossil fuels and increase the utilization of renewable energy.
If you’re a Mountain View resident, or visitor, and would like more information about the shuttles, you can visit their website by clicking here.
Source: 9 to 5 Google
Come comment on this article: Google partners with its home city, brings electric-powered shuttles to residents
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