Admit it: You're a headline hound. When you're killing time between meetings or waiting in line at the post office, you want to skim breaking news -- and fast. Personalized news aggregation apps pull top content together for you, and sort it exactly as you tell them. From an app that lets you create your own personal magazines to an app that combines several news streams into one, these are the best news apps right now.
It's easy to get lost in Reddit's jam-packed labyrinth. So how about a simple app that makes it simple to search Reddit's archive of posts, browse Casual Subreddits, and more? The free version of Alien Blue has the basics, but step up to the Pro version to get the ability to add and create posts, view all images with a single tap, and gain advanced features likes tilt scroll, hide all, and the ability to exclude posts by keyword. Android users should look to BaconReader for Redditon Android (free).
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Editors curate and condense the day's news into more easily digestible components, with original sourcing links supplied, in Circa News. Follow stories to receive push notifications when there's a new development, and share stories via e-mail, Facebook, or Twitter. It even has offline support, so you can take your news on-the-go, even when you have no connection.
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News Republic lets users get a visual overview of the latest news that matters to you, and you can even personalize your home screen by moving topics around various screens and resizing their icons. The app's Tag Nav news navigation system lets you explore related topics. Version 3.0 displays Articles lists that allow for quick news browsing, while an improved catalog of popular choices and sources expand the depth of news you can view.
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A sort of Pinterest for news, Flipboard lets you pick topics you're interested in as well as popular publications and sorts all of that news by category. Plus, a Flipboard 2.0 update lets you create personal magazines, where you essentially 're-pin' news or blog articles (or even items from Etsy) to your own magazines and sort them however you like. You can share your magazines via social networks or with other Flipboard users or keep them to yourself, and browse through or subscribe to other users' personal magazines. And the app offers syncing, so you can access your top news on any device.
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Pulse aggregates all of your favorite blogs, magazines, social networks and newspapers, so you can follow such top news sources as The New York Times as well as your favorite under-the-radar tech blogger. You can sync with social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Instagram, Reddit and YouTube. If you're stuck without Internet, don't fret: Pulse supports offline sync so you can read news stories whenever. And you can save stories for later through Instapaper, Read It Later or Evernote. The best part? Pulse syncs your account across all of your devices, so you can start reading a story on your smartphone and finish it later on your tablet.
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With the catchphrase "DJ your news," Taptu lets users pull all the news they're interested in into one app, plus content from popular social networks. The StreamStudio merges several news feeds into one, then users can rename and color-code that stream. A Taptu Magic feature learns what kind of content you like then tailors your stream according to your interests. If you're logged in to the app via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Google Reader, you can sync your content between all of your devices, plus you can share news or streams you like with friends via social networks or email.
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This personalized magazine does the work for you. Based on what you're interested in, Zite learns what to send your way in the future and delivers the news, articles, blogs, videos and authors you like. Users thumb articles up and down to indicate what they like, and Zite gets more personalized as they go. The app features more than 40,000 topics to choose from, and a smart auto-suggest tool leads you to content you'll like when you're not quite sure what you're looking for.
