The team behind the popular Dolphin Browser HD have been testing a new version for the past few weeks with a “Webzine” feature that lets you view news from some web sites in a magazine-style layout. Now Dolphin Browser HD 6.0 with Webzine has left beta and it’s available as a free download from the Android Market.

The Webzine feature allows you to customize your new tab page with links to sites such as the New York Times, NPR, CNN, or the BBC. When you click on a link to a Webzine you’re taken to a new page with thumbnail photos, headlines, and snippets of each article. Webzines tend to load more quickly than full web pages and the layout is attractive and well suited for phones with small screens.

Tap on a headline or photo to open the article and things start to break down a little bit. You still get a quick-loading, streamlined mobile experience without any advertisements. But for most web sites you’ll only see the first few paragraphs of a story. If you want to keep reading you’ll have to click the “view article” button to load the full web page.

Webzines are certainly attractive, but I’m not entirely convinced that they’re all that useful. Still, Dolphin is throwing them in for free and the feature doesn’t seem to slow down the browser at all. Dolphin Browser HD is still one of the fastest, most customizable web browsers available for Android.

Version 6.0 also brings a new logo and program icon as well as some bug fixes including improved performance with Google images and better support for the Asus Eee Pad Transformer and Motorola XOOM tablets.

Dolphin Browser HD 6.0 with Webzine hits the Android Market is a post from: mobiputing

Last fall Bloomberg released an Android app for checking stock quotes, watching market trends, or viewing the latest business news on your smartphone. Now the company has launched Bloomberg for Tablet bringing the same features to tablet-style devices running Android 2.1 and up.

Since the new app isn’t made exclusively for Android 3.x Honeycomb tablets it doesn’t feature any Honeycomb-specific design elements. Instead it’s simply designed to look better on a large display than the smartphone app. Fonts are bigger and there’s a new multi-pane view for news headlines. When you click a headline to read an article the story will appear in a column on the right while you can use a column on the left to find additional headlines and categories.

While many tablet apps are Honeycomb-only, you can run the Bloomberg tablet app on devices running Android 2.x such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 and HTC Flyer.

Bloomberg for Tablet is available as a free download from the Android Market.

via EuroDroid

Bloomberg launches business news, stock tracking app for Android tablets is a post from: mobiputing

NBC took a step into the digital age this week and released a new iPad app to complement its full-fledged website.

The app is optimized for easy use on the iPad’s 10″ screen, and provides users with a wide variety of features. These include the network’s schedule, show information, exclusive photos, interactive games, and searchable content (by show.) A customizable dashboard even offers a personalized view of your favorite shows and content.

It also includes some short video clips and recaps, but lacks a major feature: full-length episodes of NBC shows. This means that if you’re looking to rent NBC episodes on iTunes and Apple TV, you’re still out of luck. Interestingly, many shows from NBC Universal are available for streaming on Netflix and even Hulu.

Of course, those are both subscription-based services, but NBC could’ve easily monetized the episodes through ad-support (which it does on NBC.com) had it chosen to make them available in the iPad app. By not choosing to provide its iOS audience with a convenient mobile option for viewing its most popular TV shows, NBC is essentially telling its fans to go use someone else’s app to view its content.

You can download NBC.com for iPad in the App Store for free.

via Gigaom

NBC’s app for iPad arrives, lacks full episode content is a post from: mobiputing

A few weeks ago an official BBC News app finally hit the Android Market, but at the time you could only download the app if you happened to be in the UK. Now the BBC Worldwide team has launched a global version of the news app.

You can use BBC News for Android to read the latest news, listen to radio stories, or watch videos from your Android phone. You can also listen to live radio programs using the app.

The BBC News app doesn’t currently support tablets running Google Android 3.x Honeycomb, and to be honest it’s not really optimized for tablets running Android 2.x either. I took it for a spin on an HTC Flyer tablet and while it looked pretty decent in portrait mode, there’s no landscape mode at all.

When you fire up the app you’re greeted with a series of photos and headlines for the top stories followed by the latest news in a number of categories. You can customize the home screen by clicking the Edit button and choosing just the topics you’re interested in. There’s also a bar at the top of the screen which shows the latest headlines, as well as an advertising bar at the bottom of the screen. The advertising is probably the key difference between the UK and international versions of the app. British residents pay a license fee that supports the BBC, so they get an ad-free version at no charge.

via Android Police

BBC News app for Android now available outside the UK is a post from: mobiputing

The Financial Times has decided to replace its aging mobile applications for iOS, Android and other platforms with a new web app based on HTML 5. The move could pave the way for more web apps based on the latest web standards — but not just because of the new features HTML5 offers. The new web app also offers the FT a way to provide its 600,000 subscribers with access to the news while sidestepping Apple’s rules for subscription-based apps sold in the App Store. Update: While the web app is designed for the iPhone and iPad you may have some luck getting it to work with browsers on some other platforms.

The FT joins a growing number of companies that have expressed displeasure with Apple’s system, where Apple takes a 30 percent cut of all subscription revenue. The move also offers a platform agnostic approach. You can access the web app on any mobile device with a web browser that supports HTML5.

The new web app is free to use until June 14th. You’ll need to pay for a FT.com subscription to keep reading after that, with prices starting at $4.99 per week.

Some users are reporting that the initial load time is tediously slow, but mine was zippy and about as fast as waiting for Mobiputing’s new app for iOS to load. The biggest problem is some unnecessary choppiness when tapping new categories, but the overall speed of the app felt quite fast compared to similar native iOS apps.

Check out the video below for a walkthrough:

Visit app.fT.com from your mobile browser to view the Financial Times’ new HTML 5 web app.

via TUAW

The Financial Times launches new HTML 5 web app is a post from: mobiputing

The Wall Street Journal has offered an Android app since last year. But the app was only available for Android tablets such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab. Now the WSJ has finally released an Android app for smartphones. Wall Street Journal Mobile is available as a free download from the Android Market.

The app shows top stories from the newspaper divided by section, includes a “Photos of the Day” feature, and lets you access video and podcast content. You can save articles to read later and share items via email, Facebook, and Twitter.

One feature I’d love to see in more news apps is a “listen to article” text to speech article. The digital voice is horribly annoying, but at least it seems to do a decent job with punctuation, and if you want to catch up on the latest news while you’re driving, walking, or otherwise unable to read, text to speech is a killer feature.

While some articles are available when you register for a free account, you’ll need to be a Wall Street Journal subscriber to view premium content. You don’t really get to do anything with the mobile app unless you at least register.

via Android Police

Wall Street Journal app finally available for Android phones is a post from: mobiputing

The good news is that the BBC has finally released an official BBC News app for Android. The bad news is that unlike the networks' iOS app which is available internationally, the BBC News app for Android is only available to UK residents at the moment. The (other) good news is that an international version is on the way.

If you happen to be one of the folks who can download the app, you can read the latest stories, view full-screen articles and videos, sort stories by subject, and even personalize your homescreen using the edit function to add or remove categories.

BBC News is available for Android 1.6 and up, but if you happen to have be running Android 2.2 or later with support for Adobe Flash you can also watch live streams of the BBC News channel. My guess is that’s the reason the app isn’t available outside of the UK yet. The lisense fee paid by British television viewers funds the BBC, so you typically have to be in the UK to view live content from the network.

My guess is that when the international version of the app hits the Android Market, live streaming won’t be an option.

BBC News app comes to Android (UK only) is a post from: mobiputing

News360 has launched a new app optimized for Android tablets. The company has been offering news apps for iOS, Android, and other platforms for a while, but the new app for tablets running Android 3.x Honeycomb may just be one of the best tablet news apps I’ve seen so far.

The home screen is divided into a navigation bar on the left and headlines and photographs on the right. You can choose from top stories, latest news, world, US, politics, business, tech, or other categories. You can also connect to your social networks so News360 can deliver personalized news.

From the menu at the top of the app you can search the news, hit the Local button to view stories from your area, and click the 360 view to watch a stream of photos from the news float by. Tap on any photo to view more information or bring up the full article.

The article view shows a summary at the top of the page, but also loads the full web site. You can dismiss the summary to view the full text of any article — because you’re actually using News360 as a web browser at this point, so you won’t get stuck looking at a partial RSS feed.

From the reading page you can also share any article via Facebook, Twitter, email, Instapaper or ReadItLater or save an article for offline viewing.

Another nice feature is the Twitter button at the top of the article view which lets you see what people on Twitter are saying about the topic.

New360 for tablets is available as a free download from the Android Market.

News360 brings social, local, global news to Android tablets is a post from: mobiputing

The Apple iPad has gotten a lot of attention from magazine publishers over the past few months, but it’s not the only tablet in town. Next Issue Media has announced that it’s bringing magazines from five major publishers to Android tablets starting with the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 inch tablet.

Right now the company’s digital newsstand is available as a preview for Galaxy Tab customers on Verizon’s network – even though you’ll need to download content over a WiFi connection. The service will eventually roll out to WiFi-only Galaxy Tab models.

Titles include Time, Esqure, Fortune, and Popular Mechanics. Customers can buy single issues or sign up for monthly subscriptions. Prices vary from magazine to magazine. For instance a single issue of The New Yorker runs $4.99, but a monthly subscription is just $5.99 for one issue per week. Time is $4.99 per issue or just $2.99 per month for a new issue each week. Next Issue also offers 30 day free trial subscriptions.

Publishers may also opt to offer free digital editions to print subscribers.

This fall the service is expected to expand to additional Android devices and the company hopes to offer as many as 40 magazine titles by year’s end. A version of the service for HP webOS is also in the works.

Next Issue Media brings magazines to Android (Starting with Samsung Galaxy Tab) is a post from: mobiputing

Google has added a new feature to the mobile version of Google News, allowing you to select “News near you” to find the latest stories rom whatever area you happen to be in.

Google News already lets users select local news from cities manually, but this feature makes the process automatic — and since it relies on Google’s location-based services, your news will move when you do. If you’re traveling you can pull up the local news for whatever city you happen to be in just by pulling up news.google.com in your mobile browser and clicking the News near you link from the “Jump to” button.

The new feature is available for Android and iPhone right now. The first time you visit Google News in your mobile browser you’ll be asked if you want to share your location. If you say no, then you’ll have to find your local news the old fashioned way… by searching for it.

You can also disable News near you by scrolling to the bottom of the page and hitting the “Personalize edition” link and then “hiding” the sections you don’t want to see — including News near you.

Google brings “News near you” to mobile browsers is a post from: mobiputing

24 hour news channel Al Jazeera has launched a new mobile app for Android and BlackBerry devices. The news network had already offered a simple Android app which provided live streaming video from Al Jazeera’s English and Arabic news channels, but the new app is a full-featured news utilties that provides photos, written articles, video clips, and live streams, among other things.

The Al Jazeera English app for Android has an attractive home screen with thumbnail photos for top stories in a number of categories including News, Opinion, Features, and Video.

There’s also a “Your Media” section which lets you submit content to Al Jazeera from your phone, CNN iReport-style.

While there’s still a heavy focus on video, the new Al Jazeera App also lets you view full length articles from the company’s web site, formatted for a mobile device. The app also has a picture gallery which lets you browse for stories by images… for some reason.

My only complaint is that the navigation looks like it was designed for the iPhone rather than Android. You can use the Android back button for navigation — but there’s also a back button at the top of each screen allowing you to return to the previous category or home screen. There are also forward and back buttons at the top of each article which you can use to navigate between stories. And pressing the menu button on your Android device does nothing, but there’s a settings button on the home screen.

What’s funny is that while the new Al Jazeera English app looks like it was designed for iOS and ported to Android, it isn’t yet live in the iTunes App Store. The BlackBerry version, however, is available from the BlackBerry App World.

via Reddit

Al Jazeera English news app launches for Android, BlackBerry is a post from: mobiputing

NewsTweet Reader by Intelligent Hand puts Twitter integration and aesthetic style at the forefront of your news-consumption on the iPad. Simply follow the latest news by creating Twitter feeds based on keywords (hashtags) of interest, without needing a Twitter account. This amounts to essentially creating playlists for your media concerns, all on your iPad.

Discover what other readers think of the article you’re reading with just a tap on the StoryBuzz! button, thanks to NewsTweet’s deep Twitter integration. Furthermore, you can view the latest tweets from people in your area and view links they are sharing through NewsTweet’s Near Me feature. Based on my research, this location-based Twitter feature is exclusive to NewsTweet.

Other features include easy access to social sharing and the ability to read stories in offline mode when data connectivity is unavailable. All of this centers around Intelligent Hand’s self-described ‘ fresh Scandinavian design.’ Of course, this doesn’t amount to much more than a marketing ploy, but the UI and graphics are indeed quite modern and sleek. Best of all, NewsTweet’s price just dropped from cheap ($.99) to free.

You can grab NewsTweet Reader for your iPad running OS 4.0+ for free in the iTunes App Store. You can find more information on NewsTweet at its official website.

NewsTweet Reader for iPad Review is a post from: mobiputing

Taptu is an alternative news-aggregator that allows you to personalize your streams with anything from Facebook to a specific area of interest. It doesn’t deliver a magazine-like experience like the competing Flipboard, but for now that app is limited to the iPad and it’s capped at 21 sections of content. Taptu is available for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Pulse News is also a like-minded application, but you’re limited to 60 content sources.

Taptu, on the other hand, supports up to 200 streams in a clean grid interface. Read through your selected content and get a snapshot of your streams or you can tap on one individual headline to access the full story.

The full story pulls up right away, and there is no lag time while it goes out to another website within the built-in browser (looking at you, Pulse). To save a particular article and read it later, tap the star button in the top right corner of the app’s toolbar.

A unique feature Taptu holds over its competition is the mixed topic streams that aggregate content from multiple sources. For example, if you select NFL from Taptu’s StreamStore, a stream will pop up on the home screen that displays headlines from The New York Times, NBC Sports, The Boston Herald, and Fox Sports.

Taptu says its editorial team curates these topics with the help of advanced algorithms that emphasize mobile-friendly sites. Topics range from News and Sports to Arts & Entertainment, Travel, and Celebrities.

You can also create your own streams for your favorite content. You can build a news ‘playlist’ from scratch, selecting and merging your favorite feeds from Taptu’s StreamStore or you can edit the topic streams that Taptu’s already curated by removing and adding the streams you want. You can even share your streams with your friends via Facebook, Twitter or email.

You can download Taptu for iOS devices from the App Store for free. Taptu is also available for Android devices running OS 2.1+ in the Android Market.

Taptu newsreader brings your favorite social, web feeds together is a post from: mobiputing

CNN introduces its first app for Android in January. Unfortunately it was only available for tablets running Google Android 3.0 Honeycomb initially, which meant that you couldn’t really use the app until the Motorola XOOM hit the streets more than a month later.

Now CNN has finally gotten around to launching a full-featured news, video, and radio app for Android. You can use the CNN app to view the latest CNN videos, read the latest stories, or listen to CNN Radio reports.

The app sorts news into a number of categories including latest, top, most popular, US, World, Politics, and so on. You can login to your Facebook or Twitter accounts to share stories.

There’s also an iReport section where you can see stories reported by CNN’s army of citizen journalists. You can also submit your own photos or videos from within the app.

As Android Police points out, the smartphone app is choc full of advertisements. Not only do you get a pre-roll ad whenever you start a video, but there are several ads per page because the ads show up in between news stories instead of at the top or bottom of the screen.

Still, for a free app, the CNN app for Android offers quite a bit of news and multimedia content.

The CNN app for Android is available as a free download from the Android Market.

CNN app finally available for Android phones is a post from: mobiputing

Three out of four imaginary doctors recommend a daily dose of news, reviews, and videos from Mobiputing every day. And you wouldn’t want to disappoint three doctors I just made up, now would you? Fortunately it’s easier than ever to keep up with the latest from Mobiputing, thanks to the new Mobiputing Android app.

You can grab the free ad-supported Mobiputing app from the Android Market. If you prefer the ad-free experience, you can pick up Mobiputing Pro for just $0.99.

Both apps bring you the latest headlines and full length stories from Mobiputing. If you’re only interested in Android news you can filter by the Android category. There’s also a video section for the latest Mobiputing video content.

We’re also working on an iPhone version of the app which should be available soon.

Mobiputing: Now available in app form! is a post from: mobiputing

Google has updated several of its mobile apps and web pages over the past few days. The Gmail web app now looks the same on newer BlackBerry phones as it does on Android and iOS devices. Google News now displays properly in the Opera Mini web browser. And Google Translate now supports more spoken languages.

Gmail for Blackberry

Google basically has two versions of its mobile Gmail site. One is built with HTML5 and functions almost like a native app, letting you check boxes and interact with on-screen menus without loading a fresh page. The other presents an ugly little list of links and looks like it was designed to run on the smartphones of 2002. Up until recently that ugly interface was the only option BlackBerry users had.

But now that newer BlackBerry devices have HTML5 compatible web browsers, Google has flipped a switch hat brings the attractive new Gmail web app to BlackBerry users.

Google News for Opera Mini

Google has improved the layout of its mobile news site for phones with the Opera Mini browser. The light weight web browser doesn’t just work on smartphones. It also comes preloaded on many feature phones, allowing users a better experience than they would get with the standard web browsers that come with those devices.

The new Google News layout for Opera Mini features thumbnail images, links to videos, and easier navigation for feature phones.

Google Translate in more languages

The Google Translate for Android lets you translate text from one language to another with written or spoken results thanks to a text to speech feature. This week Google added support for text to speech in Japanese, Arabic and Korean, bringing the total to 24  supported languages. The company also says it’s improved performance for a number of other languages.

While text to speech is available for 24 languages, Google Translate for Android supports written results in 58 languages.

Google updates mobile Gmail, Google News, Translate is a post from: mobiputing

It must be reddit week in the Android developers cabal. Hot on the heels of the launch of BaconReader for Android phones, a developer has released Reddita, a reddit app for Honeycomb tablets.

Reddit is a social news web site which allows users to submit links to news items, pictures, or just about anything. Visitors vote on stories so that only the best make it to the front page, and the comments section for each post is (almost) always fascinating reading.

If there’s one major down side to reddit though, it’s that the web site is only a step above Craigslist when it comes to site design. It looks like it was designed in the 1990s, and the user interface is especially difficult to navigate on a touchscreen tablet. Reddita fixes that, making reddit more fun to browser on a tablet than a desktop web browser.

The app lets you login with your reddit credentials to see your profile, friends, and messages. You can also enable alerts so that your tablet will let you know when new items show up in your inbox.

The real fun takes place when you visit the home page and click on an article. The image or web site will open in a window on the right side of the screen while you can see a list of stories on the left. You can also click the comment button to see what people are saying about a story, and respond to comments or leave your own from within an app.

Of course you can also vote stories or comments up or down and submit your own items from within the app. Unfortunately, like BaconReader, Reddita doesn’t appear to work with Android’s default sharing menu, so you can’t surf the web in the default web browser and then send a link to Reddita.

You can check out a brief hands-on video showing some of the features below, and you can find more information at reddit.

Reddita is available as a free download from the Android Market. There’s also an ad-free version for about $1.61.

Reddita makes reddit look beautiful on Android 3.0 tablets is a post from: mobiputing

BaconReader is a new reddit app for Google Android which lets you read the latest headlines and comments, open links to web pages, videos, and pictures, and upvote or downvote stories or comments. You can also share or save stories, post replies, or submit your own links.

The developer released a public alpha version of BaconReader this weekend and while it seems a little rough around the edges, it’s already probably the best mobile app around for reddit.

Once you login with your reddit credentials, BaconReader will present you with the top stories from reddit.com. You can click the button marked “front page” to view the top subreddits as well as any you’ve added to your front page. So just by adding reddit.com/r/android to my front page using a web browser, it automatically shows up in the list of subreddits in BaconReader.

Unfortunately things got a bit complicated before I figured this out. I tried viewing the subreddit settings in the app and adding a custom Android category. The app crashed repeatedly and added a few dozen listings labeled “android” until I cleared all data and logged in again.

One feature that’s pretty nifty, but not necessarily intuitive is the ability to swipe across any story from left to right to bring up a menu letting you vote the story up or down, view comments, or open the story.

When viewing any story you can find a summary at the top of the screen, the number of votes, and links to vote a story up or down yourself. There are also icons for saving or sharing the story, or previewing the content without opening a web browser. You can hit the “Go” button to open a link in a browser. Video content can also be opened using your phone’s YouTube app.

Below this toolbar you’ll find comments. You can swipe to vote any comment up or down, or reply to the comment.

Aside from the occasional crash or subreddit mess, the app has a few quirks. For instance, there’s an icon at the top of every page for submitting a new link or story. But you can only actually press that button when you’re on the front page or at the starting page for a subreddit. You can’t submit a story when you’re reading another story.

There’s also no integration with Google Android’s default sharing menu at the moment, so if you’re viewing an article in your web browser that you’d like to share with the reddit community, you’ll have to copy the URL and paste it manually into the baconreader app.

BaconReader is still in the alpha testing stage, so hopefully some of these quirks will be addressed over time.

BaconReader Alpha reddit client for Android now available is a post from: mobiputing

Google may have finally gotten around to releasing an official Google Reader app for Android, but the official app only supports one Google Reader account at a time, doesn’t let you save data to an SD card, and doesn’t support themes. D7 Google Reader does all of those things.

D7 Google Reader is also faster than the official Google Reader app, supports podcasts, and features a built-in search tool. It also has a really purty home screen which shows you how many unread items are in your reading list at a glance.

The app features a number of customization options, allowing you to adjust the theme, use the volume keys to navigate, and whether to show all items or just new items.

D7 Google Reader also a home screen widget that will show your unread item count.

There’s a free, ad-supported version of D7 Google Reader available from the Android Market.

There’s also an ad-free Pro version for $1.56.

via xda-developers

D7 Google Reader is a prettier, faster Google Reader app for Android is a post from: mobiputing

Google is working with Citigroup and and MasterCard to develop a mobile purchasing system for Android smartphones. This would allow users to make purchases by simply waving their devices at a checkout counter.

Rather than swiping your MasterCard or debit card at a counter, you might soon be waving your Droid to pay for purchases. This would be done by activating a mobile-payment application designed for your specific Android phone model.

In addition to the payment technology, Android users would also be able to manage credit-card accounts and track spending on their device. This can be done now, of course, but I suspect that this function will be included in one universal payment application. The payment system is expected to require that your device have an NFC chip. Currently, the Samsung Nexus S is the only Android phone available that includes the technology.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the planned payment system would allow Google to offer retailers more data about their customers and help them target ads to mobile-device users near their stores. In turn, this would be a huge boost to the company’s advertising operation. The WSJ also reported that Walmart is already negotiating with Google.

via Techland

Google to add mobile payment features to Android OS is a post from: mobiputing

The New York Times launched a new version of its iPhone app last week, in advance of the launch of a new paywall which would only allow readers to view 20 articles per month for free on the web, or the the Top News sections for free on a mobile device. I kind of wondered what would happen if you didn’t upgrade to the new app, so when the newspaper company pushed out an updated version of its Android app this weekend I decided not to update.

Now that the paywall is in full effect, I fired up the mobile app and got a warning saying that an upgrade is required. There’s a friendly “Remind Me Later” button, so I tapped that to see if I could keep reading anyway. The answer is yes… if I’m cool with reading yesterday’s news. The old version of the app simply won’t grab any new articles from NYTimes.com. The ads at the bottom of the screen are also going crazy, refreshing about 2-3 times per second.

So the long and short of it is that while there are a number of ways to avoid paying to read The New York Times, using an outdated version of the company’s mobile app is not one of them.

Oh, and it should go without saying, but if you want to support the newspaper, you might actually want to think about paying for a digital or print subscription. Good news doesn’t come cheap. If, on the other hand, you’re not a fan of the way the company is going about its new subscription plans, then there are plenty of other news sources on the web. But subscription-based news apps may be an important part of the future of journalism.

Update: While the older Android app has stopped working, it looks like users with the older iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad app can continue to download and read the latest news stories… for now.

New York Times paywall kicks in, older mobile apps stop working is a post from: mobiputing

Pulse has pushed out an updated version of its apps for Android and iOS bringing new social features to Pulse News Reader. Pulse lets you view news from a number of web sites in an attractive wall of news format with headlines and images pulled from the web pages. You can then click on any article to view a stripped down version formatted for your device, or click a “web” button to see the full story.

The latest version lets you add up to 60 news sources to your account. Earlier versions topped out at 20. Despite the extra stories and images to load, the new version of Pulse is actually faster.

The other big change is the addition of a Social section, allowing you to view the latest updates from your Facebook contacts as well as top stories, images, and other content from social sites including Flickr, Reddit, Digg, and pcplz. You can also share any item you’re reading with your friends on Facebook and Twitter.

Pulse News reader is available as a free download from the iTunes App Store and Android Market.

via TechCrunch

AppBrain Link:

Pulse News Reader for Android, iOS gets more social is a post from: mobiputing

You can still listen to radio stories one at a time, browsing by top stories or topic. But when you want to listen to a specific show such as Morning Edition, Fresh Air, RadioLab, or All Things Considered, you’ll find a new “Add all to playlist” button at the top of the screen.

NPR News 2.0 is available as a free download from the Android Market.

via reddit

AppBrain Link:

NPR News app for Android now lets you stream entire radio programs is a post from: mobiputing

The New York Times is starting to roll out digital subscription plans in Canada this week, with US and international subscriptions set to take effect on march 28th. Readers will be able to view the paper’s home page for free, and read up to 20 articles per month at no cost. You’ll also be able to access the “Top News” section of the company’s mobile apps for Android, BlackBerry, and iOS for free. For anything else, you’ll need to pay up.

Here’s the breakdown:

• If you want full access to the web site and smartphone apps, you’ll need to pay $15 every four weeks.
• For full access to the web site and the tablet app for the iPad you’ll need to find $20 in the couch cushions.
• Full access to the tablet and smartphone apps plus the web site will run you $35 every four weeks.

Existing newspaper subscribers will be able to continue accessing all of the digital content for no additional charge. That includes customers who sign up for weekday only, or Weekender Friday-Sunday only service. Because the New York Times is currently offering a 50% discount for up to 12 weeks on some print subscriptions, I can actually sign up for the weekday print edition and digital editions for $3.70 per week, compared with $3.75 per week for the web and smartphone plan. But after a few months that price would double.

The company will offer some sort of “introductory” pricing on March 28th.

News media companies have had a difficult time charging for online content in the past, with only a few big names such as the Wall Street Journal managing to convince a large enough number of customers to subscribe to make any real money. But the New York Times might have the kind of loyal audience and name recognition in the US to pull it off — and the fact that casual, occasional readers can still view some articles for free may help. It also means that unlike the Journal, the Times isn’t completely closing its content off behind a walled garden, making it difficult for blogs and other sites to link to.

The New York Times certainly isn’t the only company looking to make money off its web site and mobile apps. In fact, several newspapers and magazines have launched recently that are exclusively available on the iPad. But even though the Times plans to charge more money than Project Magazine or The Daily, I suspect the paper has a better chance of attracting readers than either of those publications.

New York Times unveils digital subscription pricing for web site, mobile apps is a post from: mobiputing

Time Warner and DISH may be arguing over which company was the first to let subscribers stream live TV to an iPad, but the folks at the Al Jazeera network, which has been having a tough time finding US cable distributors, have sidestepped the whole argument by offering free apps that let you watch live news from the network for free — no subscription required.

Al Jazeera LIVE for Android offers live streams of Al Jazeera’s English and Arabic new services. Video quality is reasonably good for the live streams, and you can also download the latest “video news bulletins” for offline viewing.

Other features include options for enabling or disabling background playback so you can listen to the news while other apps are running in the foreground or to enable or disable playback when the screen is turned off. You can also disable the screen from turning off while video is playing.

An Al Jazeera English LIVE app is also available for iOS. There’s also an Arabic version for iOS.

via reddit

Al Jazeera LIVE app for Android is a post from: mobiputing

GoodNews is an RSS reader for Android that synchronizes with your Google Reader account. But that description is kind of like saying a Ferrari is a hunk of metal resting on top of some wheels that will get you from place to place.

The app lets you choose between Google Reader accounts at launch, and lets you manually or automatically synchronize with Google Reader to pull down new articles from your RSS feeds, and mark items as read or starred.

Items can be sorted from newest to oldest or vice versa, and when you’re reading any news item you can load the full web page in a built-in GoodNews web browser or in your default web browser.

You also have a lot of control over what happens when you synchronize your device. For instance, you can select how many total unread and/or read items are downloaded, and set different numbers for your starred items or Google Listen podcast subscriptions.

You can use GoodNews as a podcast app to play audio files associated with your Listen account

Unlike the official Google Reader app for Android, you can install GoodNews to an SD card, which means the app uses just 1-2MB of disk space.

There’s also an optional add-on that lets you integrate GoodNews with Tasker and Locale to automate jobs based on the time of day, location of your phone, or other criteria.

My only complaint with GoodNews is that the ads at the bottom of the screen in the free version of the app are a little annoying. But you can make them go away buy paying less than $3 for an ad-free license.

GoodNews is available as a free download from the Android Market.

via PocketHacks

stuff

GoodNews could be the best Google Reader app for Android yet is a post from: mobiputing

Google has pushed an updated version of its Google Reader app to the Android Market, and it has one small but important change that will seriously make me consider giving the app another chance: A “Mark previous as read” button. Basically, as you scroll through the latest articles from your RSS feeds, a button will pop up at the bottom of the page asking if you want to count everything you’ve just scrolled past as read, making it easy to quickly go through dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of articles on your phone without having to see them again later.

The Google Reader mobile web site offers a similar feature. But instead of allowing you to scroll continuously, Google Reader on the web shows you 25 articles at a time and then asks if you’d like to see more or mark the above items as read. I’ve found that using the mobile web site I can skim the latest news from hundreds of RSS feeds in less than half the time it would take me to do the same thing using a desktop web browser. The new Google Reader Android app is even faster since you never have to tell it to load more items… you just keep scrolling.

The other major update int he latest version of Google Reader for Android is the addition of widgets. There’s a news ticker widget that lets you show the latest headlines from any category or from all of your unread items.

There’s also an unread count widget which can show the number of unread items in a specific category or from all of your RSS feeds. This widget is the size of a normal app shortcut, so you can place it virtually anywhere on your Android home screen to quickly launch the Google Reader app and immediately open the feed category of your choice.

Of course, another key reason to use the Google Reader native app instead of the mobile web site is that the Android app can sync and cache your RSS feeds so that you can read the news even when you’re offline — although it won’t download photos unless you have an internet connection handy.

Google Reader for Android is available as a free download from the Android Market.

Google Reader app for Android updated with widgets, better item management is a post from: mobiputing

Yahoo is introducing a new app which will deliver personalized news and media to users based on their preferences. The Livestand app will be available soon for the Apple iPad and Android tablets.

The idea is that Livestand will draw content from around the web based on your location, interests, and the time of day. Content will come from Yahoo’s Sports, News, and Finance properties, as well as Flickr and the Yahoo Contributor Network (which seems to be the name Yahoo is giving to the content farm it acquired from Associated Content).

Eventually Livestand may also make the jump from tablets to smartphones and other devices.

Yahoo unveils Livestand personalized newsstand app for iPad, Android tablets is a post from: mobiputing

Credit: JIm Ronan

Over the last few years, digital book sales have really started to take off — but publishers are hoping the next big thing will be digital newspaper and magazine sales.You can already grab subscriptions to some content using an eBook app like the Kobo Reader and Kindle apps for iOS or Android, and Apple offers subscriptions to iPad-specific magazine apps such as WIRED and Project.

But according to the Wall Street Journal, Google is hoping to create a more consistent experience for users — and take a cut of the revenue, by working with publishers to create a “digital newsstand” where you could purchase or subscribe to newspapers and magazines on an Android device.

Google has reportedly been in talks with a number of major publishers including Time Inc, Condé Nast, and Hearst. Google may offer publishers better terms than Apple currently does.

It’s not entirely clear at the moment if Google plans to offer a single app for reading newspapers and magazines, or just a marketplace for publishers to sell their goods.  While many periodicals offer much of the good stuff for free on web sites which you can access from any computer or mobile device, it’s a lot easier to view content on a phone or tablet if it’s properly formatted for the page. But I’m still not 100% convinced that consumers will be willing to pay for digital periodicals the way they have for books, music, and movies when there’s so much information available for free online.

Google working on a “digital newsstand” for Android is a post from: mobiputing

There are two apps I use more than any other on my mobile devices: Gmail and Google Reader. While Android has a pretty nifty built-in app for accessing Gmail, up until recently you had to use the mobile web version of Google Reader to check out the latest news from your RSS feeds, or rely on a third party app like NewsRob. But this week Google launched an official Google Reader app for Android.

Scan to download

The app offers all the features found in the mobile web version, plus:

• Support for multiple Google accounts
• Synchronization for offline viewing

You can also read full text feed items from the app or even search for text within articles without opening a web browser.

The app lets you navigate by using your volume keys if you like. You can also share any item via email, Facebook, or other services by using the “send” option from any item. Google Reader for Android also makes renaming folders, unsubscribing from a feed, or changing folders as easy as long-pressing a feed or folder. You can also open a web browser by clicking any link in a story, including the headline.

It’s worth noting that while you can read feeds offline using the Google Reader app, it doesn’t seem to cache photos for offline viewing. By default, you also only get the last 25 or so items when offline, but it appears you can manually grab more stories than that to read offline by scrolling to the end of the page to load more stories before killing your internet connection.

It’s actually a bit tricky to find the app in the Android Market, since there are so many third party Google Reader apps, but you can download the app by scanning the bar code above.

I’ll probably have to use the app for a few more days before deciding whether it will become a permanent replacement for the web app on my phone, or just something I use when I know I’m going to be offline for a while. But it’s certainly a nice addition to the Google suite of Android apps.

Update: After using the Google Reader app for a day, the amount of storage space it was using on my phone grew to over 11MB. I’m going back to using the web app or NewsRob until I get a phone that has more storage (or until Google releases an update that lets you use an SD card for storage).

You can check out more screenshots after the break.

via Android Guys

Official Google Reader app for Android is a post from: mobiputing

Pulse is a news reader for mobile devices that made a big splash when it landed earlier this year. At it’s most basic level, Pulse is just another RSS reader. But it features a unique interactive design with a heavy emphasis on photos and touchscreen gestures that makes reading the news on a mobile device a more pleasant experience. Basically what Google Reader is to newspapers, Pulse is to magazines.

The app initially ran from $1 to $4 on the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and Google Android. Today the company is making all of those apps available for free.

The New York Times reports that the goal is to increase the number of uses for each app and attract advertisers and publishers to help fund the software. The company behind Pulse also raised $800,000 in venture capital, which probably provides a bit of a cushion to make up for any lost revenue from removing the price tags on these apps.

Out of the box, Pulse will show you news stories from a handful of popular news sites including TechCrunch, The Huffington Post, Salon, Good, and Fast Company. Each publication gets its own row, with a list of headlines, author information when available, and a nice big photo. You can tap any story to open up a page where you can read the text of the article and see a larger photo.

You can remove any of the news sources you don’t need and add your own, either by selecting a news source from a list maintained by Pulse or by logging into a Google Reader account to add any RSS feed you subscribe to. If a site doesn’t provide a full RSS feed, you won’t get full text in pulse, just the first few lines, but you can tap the headline to pull up the full web page — which may not look as good on your mobile device.

Honestly, I still find the Google Reader web app provides me with a much faster and easier way to get through my daily news reading routine — but I’m a blogger and I subscribe to hundreds of RSS feeds every day and spend more time skimming than reading. If you have half a just a few dozen or fewer news sites that you like to check out every day, Pulse certainly provides an attractive way to do it.

You can download Pulse News Reader for the iPad or Pulse News Mini for the iPhone and iPod touch for free from the App Store. The Pulse app for Android is also now available as a free download from the Android Market.

You can find a few more screenshots of the iOS version after the break.

Pulse News app for iOS, Android now available for free is a post from: mobiputing

A group of magazine publishers plans to launch a service that will let users read digital magazines on Google Android tablets early next year. At launch Next Issue Media tells All Things D that the software will only support Android and not Apple’s iPad, although it will likely be available for iOS eventually.

While All Things D describes Next Issue Media’s platform as “Hulu for Magazines,” there seems to be a big difference. Hulu offers a free, ad-supported service, while Next Issue’s platform will allow users to pay for subscriptions to magazines. So really it sounds more like iTunes for magazines to me.

What’s interesting about the choice of Android is that while there are a growing number of tablet devices running Android, Google still doesn’t officially support the tablet form factor. That will likely change by the time Next Issue is ready to release its software next year, but it seems a bit odd to focus on Android when there are already millions of iPad users already.

Of course, it’s likely that Apple might want to offer magazines through its iBooks or iTunes platform, while Google likely gives Next Issue more freedom.

Next Issue Media is a partnership between Conde Nast, Time, Hearst, New Corp, and Meredith, some of the biggest names in magazine publishing.

Next Issue Media to offer Magazines for Android next year is a post from: mobiputing

BuzzVoice is a mobile app for iOS and Android that basically reads the news to you out loud. It uses text to speech technology to read the stories out loud to you.

Honestly, like most speech to text apps, the digital voices are kind of annoying, but at least the phrasing and pacing is pretty good. And if you’re in the car or in another location where you want to hear the news but can’t stop to read it, BuzzVoice could come in handy. It could also be very useful for sight impaired smartphone users.

The app has about 1600 news sites and blogs in its directory, allowing you to find news by searching. You can also add any site to your personal playlist as long as it has an RSS feed.

There are also a list of BuzzVoice “radio” stations which let you listen to the top stories in a number of categories, including Android, Apple, Celebrities, Politics, Sports, or Tech.

This week BuzzVoice launched updated versions of its mobile apps, and they’re now available as free, ad-supported downloads for iOS and Android. The new iPhone app also supports background audio streaming and a feature that lets you control playback with the buttons on your headset.

You can check out a demo video after the break.

via Android Community

BuzzVoice reads the news to you… now for free is a post from: mobiputing

NY Times Android app (which is available for free)

There are millions of Google Android smartphone users, with Google reporting that 160,000 new handsets are activated every day. But since Google is giving away the operating system for free, you might be wondering how Google plans to make money from Android.

The most obvious thing Google is doing is creating demand for Google services including search, email, calendar, contact, and other cloud-based apps. The more you use those, the more you’ll be exposed to Google ads — if not on  your mobile device, then the next time you login to your account using a desktop web browser.

But speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Google CEO Eric Schmidt suggested there might be another revenue stream: subscription services. For instance, if Google launched a service costing just $10 per year that lets you subscribe to premium newspaper content, Schmidt says, it could easily generate $10 billion dollars.

Of course, there is no such Google service right now. And if there were, Google would probably have to split the revenue with newspaper publishers. But you get the idea.

Oh yeah, and Google’s expected to launch a music service for Android users soon. Does anyone really think that Google isn’t going to figure out a way to make money off of the fastest growing smartphone platform around?

via Android Community

Google could turn Android into a $10 billion business with subscription content is a post from: mobiputing

Time Magazine has launched an official Android app that lets you access much of the information available on the Time web site on your mobile phone. It’s available as a free download from the Android Market, but for some reason it’s rather difficult to find the official Time app by searching, so you’re best off scanning the barcode to the right with your phone’s camera to go directly to the download page.

Scan to download

Stories are broken up into sections including Latest, Most Read, Politics, U.S., World, Business, and Photos, to name just a few. There’s also a Videos section with links to Time.com video features.

The stories are formatted for a small screen and the overall user interface is attractive if not always intuitive (sometimes you use an on-screen arrow to go back a page, and sometimes you use your phone’s dedicated back button). You can also hit the Menu key to pull up additional options, allowing you to save a story, adjust the text size, email the link or share it over Twitter or Facebook, or download a story for offline reading.

The offline function is pretty awesome, and it’s something I wish more web-based news apps would add.

The only real problem I’ve found with the Time app is that I think it’s supposed to be ad-supported, but the ads aren’t showing up correctly. Instead, I keep running into a small bar at the bottom of some screens and the top of others that says “web page not available.” I have a feeling it won’t be too long before this problem is fixed.

via OMG Android

Time Magazine launches Android app is a post from: mobiputing

NPR has released the source code for its Android app. For now, that won’t mean much to most users. The app still lets you listen to reports from NPR programs and fine live streams from local NPR member stations. It was available as a free download yesterday and it’s still free today.

But NPR is hoping that by opening up the source code to the public, the app can grow in new and interesting ways.

What I didn’t realize until today was that a single NPR fan at Google was almost single-handedly responsible for building the original NPR Android app. He did it in his free time. NPR is hoping that contributions from other independent developers can make the app more useful, attractive, or just more interesting.

NPR is also taking suggestions for the app from Android users who don’t know how to code. You can reach out to the organization through its blog or Twitter account.

NPR app for Android is now open source is a post from: mobiputing

The New York Times has released an official news app for Google Android. At first glance, the app looks like a clone of the newspaper’s iPhone app. Both allow you to sort news by category (World, US, Politics, N, Travel, Magazine, Latest, and so on). And both apps are much faster and easier to navigate on a mobile device than the New York Times web site.

But the Android app has a few features that set it apart from the iPhone version. The first is a “Latest Videos” section, which lets you see the latest videos from the New York Times web site and read a brief description. If you tap on a video, it will open up in the Android media player. The iPhone app doesn’t have a video section. Interestingly though, the iPhone app has a Popular section, which is missing from the Android version.

Scan to download

The New York Times App for Android also makes use of Google’s navigation scheme for Android. For instance, I find it much easier to hit the back button to return to the previous menu in the Android version of the app than to use the button at the top of each page in the iPhone version. On the down side, if you tap the back button one too many times, you might find yourself back at the Android home screen.

For some strange reason, the developers also decided to use a drop-down menu as part of the navigation. Hanging out in the “Latest News” section, and want to check the obituaries? Grab the top of the window and pull down to get a list of all available sections. The confusing thing is the top of the window looks a lot like the Android notification bar… and it’s awfully close to it.

I’ve already found myself accidentally opening the Android notification menu when I meant to pull down the category list in the New York Times app. This UI element also takes up more space than it really needs to — especially since you can bring up the same list by hitting the Menu button on an Android phone and selecting “Sections.” That said, the app is without a doubt the best way to access New York Times content on an Android device.

The New York Times app for Android is available as a free, ad-supported download for Android 2.0 and up. It’s available from the Android Market, or you can scan the barcode to the right to get started.

via Android Community

New York Times app for Android now available is a post from: mobiputing

The New York Times offers an excellent free news app for the iPhone that makes it easy to catch up on the latest news from the paper without trying to navigate the NYTimes.com web site in a mobile browser. So far there’s no equivalent app for Google Android, but it looks like one should be available soon.

The New York Times has created a FAQ for a NYTimes Android app. It says the app should work with Android 1.6 and newer and that it should be available as a free download from the Android Market or by visiting nytimes.com/androidapp. Unfortunately, neither of those things is true… yet.

Google Operating System reports that there was briefly a video of the NYTimes app running on the Google Nexus One on Google’s YouTube channel for the phone, but that video appears to have been removed.

All in all, I would have been surprised if the New York Times wasn’t working on an Android version of its app for reading the latest stories and watching the latest videos from the Times web site. But it’s nice to know that we’re close enough to an actual product launch that a FAQ has been created and a promo video has been shot.

New York Times App for Android coming soon? is a post from: mobiputing