Pocket - How I Save The Internet

How do you consume your news?  Do you buy a traditional newspaper?  Do you just read the free newspaper on your daily commute?
Or, do you use your phone, tablet or PC to read the news?

I rarely read a newspaper; but I do read the news on my phone; each morning, as I wend my way to work, I flick through feedly and find articles of interest in my curated news feeds.  I also use Flipboard for more in-depth articles of interest.  When I find something I want to save for later, I add to Pocket.  This is how I "save the internet".

It's not just feedly.  It's possible to save articles from almost anywhere; especially by using the "share" feature, I select Pocket, and away it goes.





The next time I fire up the Pocket app on my mobile, or the site; all my saved articles are ready to ready to read.

Once I've added tags, I can then select tags to read, see where the videos are, or pictures.  Articles I want to keep handy I mark as favourites, others, when read can either be deleted for good, or simply archived.

Saving the internet has never been so easy.

Do you use Pocket?  Is there some other way in which you save articles for reading later?

iPad - App Review

It's been a few months since I purchased my iPad (16Gb Wi-Fi Only) and thought I'd revisit some of the apps I've downloaded.  I've already written reviews on some of them, but there are others that are worthy of a mention too.

There's no obvious place to start, and with the lack of folders on the current OS (will have to wait for OS4 in November before we get them) I have split my apps into various screens.

A screen for business apps, one for news etc, another for games.  And so on.

Firstly; the apps that I have docked at the bottom of the screen are:
Toodledo - Task management has never been so easy; and it synchronises with the web too
Informant HD - Diary and task management (integrated with Toodledo, see above)
FeeddlerPro - An RSS feeder that synchronises with Google Reader
Kindle - THE ebook reader, from Amazon
Also Safari and iPod

Screen 1 - Apart from some of the standard, pre-loaded apps, I have
BBC iPlayer (which technically isn't an app; but a link to the site)
CineXPlayer - for watching XVid movies; now you're not tied to iTunes
DocsToGo - Familiar to BlackBerry users, this app gives you word, excel and more
Dropbox
AccuWeather - Need to know the forecast - this is a great free app
PrintCentral - An app to print from the iPad via Wi-Fi; excellent application
ZumoCast - Listen to music or watch films hosted on your desktop PC; via Wi-Fi

Screen 2
Facebook - This is the iPhone app; which doesn't look good at all - but it works!
Twitter - The app for iPad is very well thought out
Photo fx Ultra - Ideal for photo editing / enhancing
Wikihood - What's around the area you're in - Wikipedia for the local area
IMDb - The No.1 app for movie fans
Sky+ - Full access to the Sky programme schedules, and you can set it to record too
NASA - Pictures, video, news and more about space
LinkedIn - This is the iPhone app, and looks rubbish on the iPad; but it works
Instapaper - Download webpages to read offline

Screen 3
BBC News
TripIt - Online journey planner
Flipboard - A personalised, 'Live', magazine; which displays Facebook and Twitter in an interesting format
Sky Sports - General sports news; would be better if more video provided
Eurosport - Access to more sports news

Screen 4
Bloomberg - Business news.  Plus, how are your shares performing?
Teamviewer - A great, free, app for remote-access to other PCs/Laptops.  Ideal for helping others
Other pre-loaded iPad apps, that I don't use

Screen 5
Angry Birds - Very addictive (I have the iPhone version; but there is an iPad specific one too)
NFS Shift - Racing cars through cityscapes!!
Tesla Wars - Defend your area type game
MultiPong - Shows off the touch aspect of the iPad, with excellent graphics
Real Solitaire - Solitaire - nuff said!
Conquist - Like Risk, only playing against computers as well as your friends
Slice It - Addictive or what?  Very clever, and frustrating.

So there you go; just some of the apps that reside on my iPad. 

What iPad apps do you have that might be worth considering?

Flipboard Review - A social magazine for the iPad

On Wednesday, a new application made its appearance on the AppStore.

OK - I might be going iPad mad at the moment, but this is free (we like free stuff) and it bills itself as a social magazine.

Imagine the worlds of Twitter and Facebook being presented in magazine format.  It's a clever concept, and once I'd got over the initial hurdle of linking my accounts (due to everyone trying at the same time, and their servers being unable to cope - where have we heard that before!) I found it to be quite beguiling.

I'm not a huge twitterer (or should that be tweeter?) but I do dip in occasionally, to see what's going on.  Indeed, this blog will appear on there, as a means to drive traffic to read it.  I'm also not a massive user of Facebook - I update my status every now and then, but otherwise, I just catch up on what's going on.

So when I heard about Flipboard, I wasn't sure of the relevance to me.  However, I have been quite surprised.  I'm not sure how it can be free, indeed I don't know the business model behind it, but I reckon there'll be adverts popping up soon, which, if handled and presented properly, won't interfere with the overall flow of the application.



When you start it up, you are presented with the 'cover' page.  Flip it across, and you will see 9 boards. In fact, you'll see 6, with space for three more.

The top left ones are free for you to add your Twitter and Facebook accounts.  The rest are populated by Flipboard, and these can be changed as you like.

When you select a board, the page flips over, and presents you with the content.  Twitter, for example, shows updates from the last few minutes, and it is possible to open them further and comment; just as you would reply. You can also see other replies.
Some tweets refer to actual website addresses (urls), and these are presented in full, rather than just the link; with further links to the website.
I like the fact that you can reply to posts, but you can't post directly from the app.  This could be something that is introduced in a later release.  For now, though, I can live without it.

On the Facebook page, again, statuses are presented, and you can 'Like' and comment, just as you would on the website.  You can click on the "Read on the web" button, to take you to the page - although you'll need to sign into Facebook to get the real appreciation.

One great fact is that, if there is a video, it will play directly in Flipboard - I tried it, and it worked beautifully.

If you want my opinion, I like it.  I can see what they're trying to achieve, and since this is the first release, you can forgive some of the missing  'nice to haves'.

If you have an iPad, this is definitely worth downloading.

Have you tried Flipboard?  What do you think?