Hot Off the Press

The iPad and other tablets are slowly bringing reading back into fashion. I doubt if there is any other gadget that facilitates reading like a tablet. With numerous new aggregator apps,users can swipe through the top news items from across the world,or just concentrate on specific areas of interest. Here is my list of the best news apps all of which are free and how to use them:

News 360

The name is sort of self-explanatory. Once you have decided which news item you want to read,this app shows you the same story from different sources. An excellent tool if you want to get all the angles and version of a news event. News 360 allows users to easily navigate from one source to another by just clicking on the tabs listed above the story. Meanwhile,similar stories appear in a sidebar on the right. The app also gives you the option of saving webpages for offline reading,a feature I love. You can customise the section,or just let the app filter stories using your GPS location. Then,there is the 360-degree view,which shows you the top pictures of the day,letting you read the story behind it by just clicking on a picture. You can also browse through news from one particular source. The app is available for most tablet and smartphone operating systems.

Zite

I was surprised at the versatility of Zite,which calls itself a personalised magazine. Zite gives users the option of adding various sections,which get updated with feeds and latest stories from a host of popular websites. If users log in with their Twitter or Google Reader accounts,the site will have some sections pre-selected,according to their preferences in the former. The interface is very magazine-like and you have the option of sharing items with your friends through social networking sites. The app keeps asking you if you like reading a specific article,so that it can get you more news of the same kind and customise your sections accordingly. This is a pure news app,so you wont find Twitter feeds or Facebook wall-posts here.

Flipboard

My favourite iPad app is like an RSS reader on steroids,thanks to an interface that presents content in an easy-to-browse magazine-like format. You can flip through pages of news,your social networking accounts,photoblogs and many other sites. Flipboard has a better interface for Facebook and Twitter than the actual sites,for it shows whats on the link instead of the gibberish. However,Flipboard is not fully customisable and you might have to wait for some of your favourite websites to be added to the service. Another drawback is that the app has a tendency to repeat items. A news item that appeared on Page 1 is likely to appear again on another page. But,at the same time,it puts together Facebook photos from one person on the same page,giving it a real album like effect. You can play YouTube videos on the app itself and go to the original post if you want to read anything in more detail.

The others

There are many other news apps,like Pulse,which are popular with iPad users. Some people prefer to check the source directly using the BBC,CNN,or New York Times apps. Most of the content of these popular news sites,however,is paid. There are also apps like Newsy,which bring you the top video news items from across the world as snippets which wont send your 3G bill through the roof. But it is better to play safe and use video apps mostly on Wi-Fi.