Geek News Central is the technical site for Geeks. We Spin tech for the common man. With a Family of Tech Shows and Content.


News.me vs Zite vs Flipboard

Posted by KL Tech Muse at 10:18 AM on September 18, 2011

News.me vs Flipboard vs ZiteSince News.me no longer requires a subscription I decided to give it a try so I could compare it to Zite and FlipBoard . These types of news reader have become quite popular on the iPad. It similar in some ways to FlipBoard and Zite. All three of these apps present content like a magazine. All three are well made and look beautiful. You can flip easily through stories and from one story to another in each of them. However how they determine the stories that are available for you to read is one way they differ. FlipBoard provides various favorite categories from art to technology. Within each category there is a list of providers from blogs to magazines and newspapers, to add to your reading list. You can even add your own categories. You can also add Twitter, Facebook and Google Reader to your reading list. With Zite the choice when setting up is within categories and not providers. However when you read an article you can thumbs up or down a topic, provider and even an author that you like or dislike. The more you use this option the better Zite gets in learning your likes and dislikes. Finally there is News.me which takes who you follow on Twitter and if they use News.me they are added to your list, along with a list of featured users. If someone is not using News.me you can’t add them. You can remove users at anytime under the preference tab. Once you have everything set up, if you click on a person you will see all the stories they linked to on Twitter. With News.me there is no filter other than who you follow.

The second big difference between the three is their sharing and saving options. All three allow sharing to Facebook, Twitter and by email. Zite also shares with Linkedin. All three applications allow you to save articles to Instapaper. Both Zite and FlipBoard save to Read Later. Zite also saves to Evernote and Delicious.

For me News.me is the weakest of the three because of the lack of filters. Also to be honest I not big into following what  other people are linking to, because I follow a lot of people who are interested in tech they tend to link to the same stories. Plus there are some people who I want to read when they link to tech stories, but I have no interest in their political links. On FlipBoard you can add people individually like I did with Robert Scoble . Zite has no option to add individuals to your feeds, but I am ok with that. As far as the UI of each application FlipBoard is the winner, it is beautifully looking, and easy to use, despite this FlipBoard is not my winner. I personally like Zite the best of the three, it has the ability to learn my likes and dislikes better than the other two. Plus I like Zite’s sharing and saving options. I am worried about it sale to CNN, I hope they don’t ruin it. What about you what is your favorite. If you are on Android what do you use.

Tags: , , , ,

Posted in Information, IPAD, RSS

Comments 1 Comment

Read it Later

Posted by KL Tech Muse at 3:17 PM on August 8, 2011

Read it LaterMost mornings when I wake up I usually have over 500 post in my favorite feed reader. Clearly I am not going to read all of them so I skim through them and then save those that look interesting to Read it Later. Once I am finished skimming my feeds I then can go to Read it Later and read those articles that really interest me. I have the choice of seeing just the text or the full article. I can also adjust the font size, which I like especially at night when my eyes get tired. You can also adjust the backlight on the app for reading at night. Although I prefer the black type on white background, you do have the option of doing white text on black background.

After you have read an article you can share it out to Twitter, Facebook, MySpace or Digg. If you want you can save the article to Pinboard Evernote or to Tumbler. Read it Later is available on the iPad, iPhone, Androids, Blackberry and Windows Mobile. Read it Later is accessible through various Twitter application including Twitter for iPhone and IPad, Tweetbot and Osfoora and Seesmic just to name a few. Which is great if you see a link to an article on Twitter and you want to read the article later. As far as RSS readers it works with Reeder, River of News, Feedler, along with Google Reader among many other. I personally use it with Zite and FlipBoard. It is also available as an add-on or an extension for all major browsers.

A lot of people will compare Read it Later with Instapaper. which I have also used. However I tend to use them differently. To me Read it Later is a more temporary holding place, after I read a post I may send to my various social networks or save it to Pinboard or Tumbler and then I archive it. If it is article that I think might use to write a blog post at some later time I will save it to Instapaper and put it in my Blog folder. What about you do you use Read it Later or do you prefer Istapaper or perhaps something else. I always willing to try something new to see if it has something that I am missing.

Tags: , ,

Posted in Information, RSS

Comments 1 Comment

D7 Is a Better Google Reader for Android

Posted by Alan Buckingham at 11:29 AM on April 16, 2011

Google Reader has been the second most used app on my phone, behind only Twitter.  It works well, especially since the last update which fixed a major annoyance – when going back to the feed list it no longer takes you back to the top of the list.  But, recently I found an even better alternative – D7 Google Reader.

The moment you open D7 you will notice the difference.  It’s less stark.  The beautifully graphic interface is welcoming.  It immediately feels more usable.  There are friendly icons to lead you to wherever you want to begin – Reading List, Subscriptions, Starred, Shared, Recommended, and Read Items.  It’s a sharp contrast to Google’s own Reader app.

D7 Google Reader

Google Reader

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When you click on a feed you will notice another difference.  You will get more than just headlines, you will see the first two lines of each article.  That may not be a big deal, but it’s a nice touch.

D7 Google Reader article display

The menu button allows you to do a number of things including Share, but the Share option, unfortunately does not include email.  Preferences lets you choose from a number of customization options such as changing the Theme and various ways to display subscriptions and articles.  It also allows you to follow people and add subscriptions.

There are both free and paid versions of D7 Google Reader.  The free version is ad-supported and the paid version retails for a whopping $1.57.

Tags: , , , , ,

Posted in Android, RSS

Comments Comments Off

Sharing Your Google Reader Finds

Posted by Alan Buckingham at 7:22 PM on November 5, 2010

While Google Buzz made quite a, ah…sensation, when it debuted, it seems to have become rather overshadowed now.  Other than the news this week of the settlement they have reached there’s been no real, well, buzz around it.  But strangely I have almost four times as many followers on there as I do on Twitter, and it goes up daily.  And all of my Buzz, like those of most people I follow, is forwarded from Twitter.

All of this got me thinking about a Google property that I use a lot – Reader.  One thing I like about Buzz is that when I am in Reader I can share cool articles I find to Buzz very easily.  When you click the “Share” button at the bottom of a Reader article it should automatically post to Buzz for all of your followers to see.  If it doesn’t then make sure it is set to Public by going into the left column and clicking “Your Stuff” and then “Shared Items”.  At the top make sure that “Your x shared items are” is set to Public.

You can also allow your shared items to post to your Twitter feed via Twitterfeed.  Just go to your Google Reader Shared Items page, copy the Atom feed and paste it into Twitterfeed. Then just authorize your Twitter account to sync them up.

Of course the easiest, but least high-profile way of sharing items from Google Reader is to simply click the good ol’ “Email” button at the bottom of an article and forward it along to whoever you think may be interested.

I am sure there are many other ways to share Google Reader content, but these are the simplest that I have found.

Tags: , , ,

Posted in google, RSS

Comments Comments Off

OTT Tsunami

Posted by tomwiles at 10:28 PM on September 28, 2010

We’ve been hearing quite a lot about Internet-delivered video content lately. Trends sometimes seem to advance slowly over a long period of time but then tumultuous market shifts seem to happen overnight.

Blockbuster just filed for bankruptcy. Blockbuster was unable to reconfigure their business structure to compete effectively with Netflix. It seems that Netflix has won the ongoing war.

Streaming video and video podcasts have been around for several years – these are not new ideas. However, what is new is the proliferation and increasing popularity of set-top boxes.

Back in the 1980’s backyard satellite TV dishes were a hobby among people that were looking for something different and as many choices as possible. That quest for choice ended up going mainstream in the form of commercial cable and satellite providers offering hundreds of channels.

Starting in 2004 people began experimenting with Internet-delivered content in the form of podcasts. I believe that podcasting happened as a direct result of broadband availability getting to a certain critical mass, combining the existing elements of RSS, MP3’s, etc. into a new form of communication. This new form of communication offered something very different along with unprecedented levels of choice.

Internet-delivered content of all kinds is rapidly becoming mainstream.

I believe 2010 is the year of the app. Apps suddenly seemed to have come out of nowhere to seeming to pop up on every device imaginable. Why the sudden popularity of apps? Desktop and laptop computers have been around for a long time, along with full-blown applications. What has really happened is that computers have now shrunk down to the point where they not only are in our pockets in the form of smartphones, but they are also showing up in HDTV sets and plenty of other devices. These devices we are running these apps on are actually quite powerful computers in their own rights.

There is now a wide variety of content that is heading for every computer-enabled screen you own, especially your HDTV.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted in application, geek, Geek Culture, geeks, internet, Netflix, OTT, RSS, smartphone, Streaming, video, videocast

Comments 1 Comment

All Of Your News In One Spot

Posted by Alan Buckingham at 3:53 PM on August 11, 2010

A lot of people are saying RSS Readers are dead – or on life-support, but I certainly don’t think so.  In fact I use one more now than I ever did.  Sure, breaking news may be easier to find on Twitter, but that does not cover most of what we are all interested in.  You won’t find, at least not easily, basic news headlines there.  Twitter is great, but it’s more for the sensational as opposed to the non-headliners.  But, it’s those non-headliner stories that we so often care about – the one about Adobe issuing a security update for Flash, or that your team pulled out a last minute win, or even the latest spectacular photo from Hubble.

Some of you who read this site probably also listen to the associated podcast (and those who don’t should).  If you are among those who do, then you probably are aware that Todd uses Google Reader to bring you the latest news stories from the tech world in each episode.  There’s a reason he’s using this technology and that’s because it still works better that anything else to bring you the news you want in a timely fashion.

But what you may not know is that Google Reader is not just a program for tech headlines.  Everyone can use it and for all kinds of news.  If you want tech news or sports or science or headline, it doesn’t matter.  You can add any site that has an RSS feed.  Then you can divide them into categories, move them around by drag-and-drop and organize however you want.

This is how I get my news everyday.  I rarely visit sites for this information.  When I find a site that has something of interest to me then I add it to Reader.  If I want to expand on an article I can click on it and it will open in a new tab.  Generally, I will go through all of my feeds and click on the articles that interest me, which opens them in a new tab, that I can click later to read the details.

I can edit the feeds as well.  This means that they can me added into groups (folders) that I create (such as Science), moved around, or removed altogether.

Google Reader is included in Google Mobile Apps, which can be loaded on almost any smartphone – Windows Mobile, iPhone, Android, etc.

Feedreaders are nothing new, and Google Reader, itself, has been around a while.  But, if those I know are any indication, many PC users are not using them.  And, I think the main reason for that is a simple lack of knowing about them and understanding how much convenience and efficiency they can add.

Tags: , ,

Posted in news, RSS

Comments Comments Off

OTT And Paid Content

Posted by tomwiles at 11:41 AM on July 9, 2010

OTT, short for “over-the-top-television” is an up-and-coming acronym that we are all likely going to become familiar with in the near future, provided someone doesn’t come up with a different marketing name. The concept is simple – it’s TV that comes “over the top” of traditional channels on a cable system via the Internet delivered in digital packets. It can either be live streaming video, on-demand streaming video, or in the form of a pre-recorded on-demand podcast.

There are many aspects of over-the-top TV that have yet to be shaken out. Specifically, here in the early stages there are some still-murky areas when it comes to details of how advertising is going to work.

Things that we know about how OTT works successfully so far:

People are willing to pay for bundled on-demand professionally created OTT content in the form of Netflix on-demand streaming of movies, TV shows, and other content. The bundled Netflix price for all-you-can-eat on-demand streaming OTT offers the consumer a real value. In most cases, a great deal of marketing money and effort has been spent promoting the majority of individual movies and other content that are available on Netflix, so the consumer has a fairly high degree of familiarity with much of the on-demand streaming content they offer. These are essentially repurposed movies that are already on the shelf.

People are willing to watch on-demand streaming OTT of professionally-created content with embedded ads as demonstrated by the ongoing success of Hulu.Com. The consumer is likely already familiar with a portion of the content, but Hulu also allows the consumer to discover and explore previously unknown TV show content in an on-demand stream with embedded ads. These are essentially repurposed TV shows, some movies, and other content.

Live streaming OTT of live content is still catching on. The most successful live OTT content as typified by what Leo Laporte and company are generating still offers an on-demand podcast version that can be downloaded later. Currently, on-demand, after-the-fact podcast versions of live OTT generated content end up with many more downloads than people watching via live streams. Both live streaming OTT and the on-demand podcast versions can contain ads. For the ads to be effective in this format, they need to be relevant to the audience’s needs and desires. The old “shotgun” advertising approach does not work in this format. This specific type of content is closely associated with word-of-mouth promotion.

There are a few questions that remain to be answered. Will consumers pay for on-demand streaming of TV drama-type content they are unfamiliar with — in other words, will consumers pay to watch an on-demand stream of a new TV show drama, documentary or reality show? Using myself as a gage, I wouldn’t pay for individual on-demand episodes of a TV show or movie I wasn’t fairly familiar with. Promotion and word-of-mouth still has to take place.

If consumers will pay-per-view for an unfamiliar on-demand TV show, can the content still contain ads? I think the answer to this depends on the content and its perceived value – i.e., how well it is promoted, and the resulting perceived value that is generated in the potential consumer.

Once “Lost” was a hit TV show, would the fanatic fans have paid for on-demand streams of new episodes? Probably they would have, if they could have gotten them, say a week or so in advance of the actual broadcasts. “Lost” fans would have also put up with ads in the advance on-demand stream. They might have grumbled about it, but if that were the only way it was available in advance, many of them would have opened-up their wallets and paid the price monetarily and with their attention to the embedded ads in order to satisfy their “Lost” habit. Clearly, the producers of “Lost” – ahem – “lost out” on a time-sensitive revenue stream opportunity.

Bottom line, I believe it all revolves around the content and the real and perceived values that the content delivers.

I liked last season’s remake of the old “V” television series. If I could be assured the production values remained just as high, I might pay to subscribe in some manner. If the “V” series is picked up again by ABC next season, I would also pay to subscribe if I could get episodes via on-demand streaming before they were broadcast.

In the meantime, we are still dealing with the death-throws of the old broadcast model with its old appointment based viewing schedule combined with the old shotgun advertising approach. ABC broadcast TV affiliates would have had a cow if “Lost” episodes had been made available as a paid on-demand OTT stream before the episodes were actually broadcast via the network.

The final destination of OTT and when it ends up at that destination depends on what is right for the time. Both delivery infrastructure capabilities and consumer demand will make that determination.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted in Commerce, content, internet, marketing, Media, New Media, OTT, paywall, podcasting, Podcasts, RSS, Set Top Box, Syndication, TV, video, videocast

Comments Comments Off

Tabbloid – Your Website Magazine

Posted by Nolan at 12:14 AM on October 2, 2009

Many people are still very simple in their use of the internet.  They check email and a handful of websites on a regular basis.  They are not users who follow large numbers of RSS feeds or use an RSS reader.  For those people let me give you an option that I have used on occasion.

tabbloiddotcom

I follow maybe six or eight tech sites on a regular basis.  My brother recommended Tabbloid.com.  Tabbloid delivers you a daily electronic magazine composed of the RSS stories from your chosen favorite sites.  You put in the website addresses you desire and Tabbloid does the rest.  An easy to read PDF document, Tabbloid, is delivered to your inbox at the chosen time. For me that is in the morning.  With a quick easy glance I can read through the headlines and stories from my favorite sites.  Maybe you have a certain type of web content you don’t check every day, Tabbloid is like the newspaper and magazine that waits for you.  No more looking way down the list of titles or sifting through the archives of sites.  Just open and read.

tabbloidsample

This is not for the power RSS user, but for the basic user it may be perfect.  Registration is quick and easy using the email address you want it delivered to.  Everything is so easy and slick you may be astounded that its free.  The site does one thing and does it well.  It is website content delivered to the common man.

Tags: , , , ,

Posted in Information, RSS

Comments Comments Off

Using Friendfeed for Reading Feeds

Posted by KL Tech Muse at 11:11 AM on June 24, 2009

The feed reader you use is a very personal decision, I prefer Feedly which is a Firefox add on. I like its interface and how it works. However it does have one weakness and that is it can only be used on Firefox and Flock. This meant I needed to find a new solution for my Iphone. My solution is Friendfeed. This is how I did it.

The first thing I did was divide my feeds into categories, tech, social media, food etc.. I took those categories and created a Yahoo Pipe for each of them. I published all of them so you can find them at Yahoo Pipes.   I then created a group for each of them in Friendfeed.

These are the steps on how I created the groups. First go to your Friendfeed account. If you don’t have one, then sign up at Friendfeed.com, even if you don’t use it for this purpose you will find Friendfeed worth joining. Once you are on your account, go to the right hand side column and under groups go down to the bottom and click on Browse/Edit Groups. On the next screen click on Create a Group.  Name your group, which will also create the URL for the group automatically. At this point you can choose whether you want your group to be public or private. Then click on create feed, this will bring you to a page with a title of your group and nothing else. On that page click on edit setting. A small screen will pop up and you can add a description to your feed. Then click on Import feed, which will bring to a page to add services, go down to Custom RSS/Atom and click on it, in the blank you want to insert the URL for your Yahoo Pipe for that category. You can then decide if you want to import the feeds with a entry description as comment, or just the feed. You can also import them as texts only with no links. Once you finish your page will look something like this, you then can add a picture if you want or  share the Group with other people.  You can now read your feeds on any platform, where you can access Friendfeed.   For images of the step you can go to my Friendfeed Folder I created on Screencast.com

by Qumana

Tags: , ,

Posted in application, Information, RSS

Comments Comments Off

Innovation or Death in the PMP Market

Posted by Nolan at 8:49 AM on May 6, 2009

Every single day sees the launch of numerous, unremarkable, and short lived portable music and media players.  Shiny black, white, red, glossy screened players with a shelf life of about 14 days.  If you watch very carefully you may even see one in use by someone in the general public.  Maybe.

Since Apple invented the iPod it has cornered innovation in the personal media sony-pmx-m70-pmp-4player market.  Surely Apple is not the only company with innovative ideas.  What are the keys to innovation?  Finding a need and filling it.  Finding a problem and solving it.  Finding a market that is untouched or with room to grow.  Innovation is more than copying the features of a competitor and adding a slight twist.  Have we reached the end of innovation in this market?  What more can be added to the music, video, wifi, phone, recording, and camera gadgets?

Perhaps the next wave of innovation will come in content and delivery.  iTunes could use a revamp in the search and listing functions of it’s free media.  Hulu.com is gaining more and more traction, but is fighting Boxee at every step.  RSS may be really simple, but few people use a RSS reader or podcatcher.  The Amazon Kindle has brought a library into the home, but focuses on paid content.  The problem with most of these?  They are either proprietary or to complicated for the average consumer to implement.  I want to watch video on my PMP but how do I get it, do I have to resize it, compress it, etc.  This is a nice shiny gadget but what now?  That is why you seldom see one of the dozens of new PMP’s on the street.

Innovation is there for the taking.  Competition is fracturing  and flooding the market instead of uniting it.  The physical PMP gadget market is reaching a point of critical mass.  Wikipedia defines critical mass as a “socio-dynamic term to describe the existence of sufficient momentum in a social system such that the momentum becomes self-sustaining and fuels further growth”  Who will be the people to cause this tipping point?  What will be the next idea to pull the market through to another few years of exponential growth?   You may have the answer.  Let’s hear it.

Tags: , , ,

Posted in Apple, Information, ipod, RSS

Comments Comments Off

« Older Entries