While you may be a particular newspaper/magazine loyalist, that could often result in your missing out on some excellent writing or important news from alternative sources. Thankfully, there is an app (or a few) for that. Here’s a list of some great news curation apps curated especially for you guys.
Digg Digg encapsulates, in the words of its developers, “the most interesting and talked-about stories on the Internet. Powered by social signals and old-fashioned human judgment, our editors turn the Internet’s vast and cacophonous flood of articles, blog posts, magazine pieces, status updates, photos and videos into the elegant and endlessly engrossing mix known as Digg.” Couldn’t have put it better myself. Sign in with your social media profile (Twitter/Facebook) and import news from any site you wish. You can also save interesting stories to read later on Pocket, Instapaper, et al, or share them with friends/family via different social media. The app also lets you organise RSS feeds in different folders for easy and quick access. And yes, the best stories still come from the section curated by Digg’s editorial guys.
News in Shorts My new favourite news curation app, News in Shorts is developed by our very own Indian whiz kids. The app is perfect for those short on time – it lets you ‘know it all without knowing it all’ – you’ll get notifications informing you of the most important news in 60 words or so, but unless you have the time or the inclination to read further, you don’t have to. Now, the app is not like most news apps that send you notifications almost minute by minute (most annoying, in my opinion) – in fact, personally, I see it as a plus point. While I do agree that receiving immediate breaking news as and when it happens is a good thing – too much of it is not. The developers, however, are working on increasing the number of published news items. And while I’d like to receive breaking news ASAP, I also hope they don’t go the regular news app way and send notifications at the speed of a mile a minute. All-in-all, a must-download.
Corgi for Feedly Corgi lets you receive all the news from your Feedly subscriptions on your lock screen. Apart from your older subscriptions, you can choose more news sources; even if you’re not a Feedly user, the app lets you pick the kind of news that would matter to you (by category, then by site). Even if the kind of news you like reading is available to you every time you wake your phone up, you may not have time to read through the entire piece – you can always save it for later on Pocket and Evernote. Not to mention all the social media-sharing options available for you to help spread the word.