Alphonso Labs Inc.

Biggs is the editor of TechCrunch Gadgets. Biggs has written for the New York Times, InSync, USA Weekend, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Money and a number of other outlets on technology and wristwatches. He is the former editor-in-chief of Gizmodo.com and lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. You can Tweet him here and G+ him here. Email him directly at john@techcrunch.com. → Learn More Created by a young man named Jonathan Bouman, Scrolldit is a thing that scrolls Reddit for you, thereby allowing you to avoid the hard, hard job of scrolling Reddit. Why, you ask, is this news? Because we like Reddit and it’s really cool. The site essentially takes Reddit feeds (including NSFW ones, hurr hurr hurr) and places them in little boxes that march across the screen. Because most people don’t read too good, there are lots of pictures and the occasional video, available for easy and quick consumption. Most of the rendering happens in the browser and it even feeds in Reddit’s own ads. We’re obviously talking about a mash-up here, but it’s rejiggerings like this that improve interfaces. While I doubt I’d ever use this on a daily basis – the current Reddit interface is good enough with the Reddit Enhancement Suite installed – in an era of popular mash-up apps like Pulse and Flipboard, the desktop hasn’t gotten much in the way of alternative interfaces. The app uses jQuery Masonry and Amazon cloudfront and fetches using the JSON API. It’s unfunded because why would it be? Sponsored Ads Sponsored Ads Sponsored Ads Read More

By Rene Ritchie, Friday, Sep 30, 2011 | Have an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch and curious which are the best, most must-have RSS feed reading apps you need to check out? We’ve already covered readers in general, from eBooks to comics, but this time we really wanted to focus on RSS news. So if you want to keep your syndication really simple, and yourself up to date with the latest new, read on for TiPb’s top 5 most recommended RSS feed readings apps for iOS. NetNewsWire is the granddaddy of iOS RSS readers and is still a favorite for many. It syncs with Google Reader, and while in version past that was a laborious process, improvements to both the app and iOS have made it much smoother these days. It’s now been given a whole new codebase and has been picked up by a new team of dedicated developers so its quite possible grandaddy might just become the new, fresh kid on the block as well. Rather than a universal binary for both iPhone and iPad, NetNewsWire has separate apps for both. There is, however, a free version for iPhone with ads that you can try before you buy. If you want a great way to organize and chew through your Google Reader-synced RSS feeds, give NetNewsWire a look. The Early Edition was one of the first RSS readers available for iPad when it launched and it’s still iPad-exclusive to this day. Beautifully rendered in a newspaper-style motif, it won’t sync with Google Reader but will import your feeds to get you started. You can flip pages in the same way you can in iBooks, and there’s a familiar Action button to share your favorites. Just like iPad itself, The Early Edition isn’t meant to be an on-the-go, breaking news reader. It’s meant for when you want to relax. When you have your feet up and a glass of wine or a latte close at hand. It’s for when you have time to just enjoy your feeds. Reeder manages to sync with Google Reader but without the slowdown many other apps seem to experience. Indeed, for a sync-enabled app, it’s smoking fast. It presents everything in a clean, clear interface that doesn’t seek to ground you in tradition or wow you with modern effects. If you just want to power through news on the go, get in, get informed, and Read More

Realtime semantic startup Evri is debuting its brand-new iPad application today, where it joins the crowded “iPad news magazine” space filled with the likes of Flipboard, The Daily, Zite, Pulse, NewsMix, AOL Editions, News360 and others. To differentiate itself from the pack, Evri’s app employs a combination of social news and topical streams, allowing readers to follow their interests as opposed to just following sources. The new app relies heavily on Evri’s semantic underpinnings to turn unstructured data into topic-based channels. The company’s content discovery engine analyzes feeds from 15,000 news sources, runs the data through its natural language processing (NLP) parser and extracts entities which are put into Evri’s semantic index. In addition, the engine also determines what news is trending based on things like how many times a topic was covered, the velocity of coverage, how often its being shared on Twitter or Facebook and more. And unlike apps like News Corp.’s The Daily, Evri’s index is updated every 15 minutes, not…well, you know, daily. In other words, it’s a fairly robust backend technology that Evri has in place, no doubut helped in part by last year’s acquisition of another semantic search startup, Radar Networks. But more importantly, at least to consumers, is the new app’s interface. Given that Evri hasn’t always been a leader in terms of design, it was a concern. (Does anyone remember Evri’s bright pink “Top Gossip” mobile app? I do. Shudder.) As it turns out, the Evri iPad app is a big improvement in the looks department. The user interface takes a little inspiration from Pulse, as it also features image thumbnails overlaid by white-on-black text. However, Evri offers its own unique take on topic navigation. At the top of the screen are brightly colored squares for the major categories, including Top News, U.S. & World, Entertainment, Sports, Business and Technology. These are preceded by three grey buttons for social news (Twitter and Facebook) and “Now Following,” the section dedicated your personalized list of favorite topics. Tap on any of these major categories to see the trending news within those areas or delve into subcategories using the navigation on the side (also image thumbnails, but smaller.) That may sound like a lot of navigational options, but it’s well done, not overpowering and it disappears when you need it to. As you dig into the various sections, however, you’ll find only articles snippets, not the stripped down, Read More

Popular news reading app/service Pulse just got better by integrating some of the Instapaper features. The all new Pulse bookmarklet lets you save some story for the later reading when you will be able to access it either from your computer, smartphone or tablet. What’s more, if you use Google Chrome, there’s a dedicated Chrome extension that does the same job and we’re pretty confident similar add-ons are in works for other popular browsers. While I personally don’t use Pulse — I prefer the old school RSS instead — I’m hearing it’s getting more popular with the day. At the moment, the service is used by more than 5 million people and that number will most likely keep growing. Alternatively, if you’re using Google Chrome as your primary web browser and also have an Android device (but don’t want to run Pulse), you may want to try out the Chrome to Phone extension along with a dedicated mobile app… Dusan has been using smartphones since their introduction and is now following the latest trends in the industry. The "convergence" is what he's most excited about, and writing about it is the next logical thing to do. He thinks that using a smartphone is what everyone who cares about their time should do. In addition to his interests in mobile phones, Dusan also loves to experiment with the latest web and mobile 2.0 services. The idea of accessing and managing your information from any device no matter where you are simply amazes him. Whether it's an online to-do list, note taking service or a video sharing social network, he's there to try it out. He admits though, he's still searching for the ultimate web-based organizational tool, which "sings" perfectly with the mobile PIM application. Dusan used to run SymbianWatch.com which later became part of IntoMobile. He lives in Serbia, South-East Europe, from where he edits the site on a daily basis. Read More

The iPad is a fantastic way to consume news, read articles and catch up on shared links from a social network or a webpage-saving service.  But what if you’re a newcomer to the iPad or have only recently become interested in online news services, where should you start? We’re here to help you out with ten of the very best apps to help you make the most of your iPad when it comes to finding and reading the latest news.  You’ll find many offer similar features, but all take different approaches and have different interfaces, so give as many as you can a try to find the one which suits you the best. My personal favorite news aggregator, especially now pulse.me has been introduced, where stories can be saved to other services and synced across the iPhone and iPad.  The attractive, easy to use format makes RSS reading an engrossing experience.  Free. Although Instapaper has an application for the iPad, it has a price attached to it, and as Read it Later performs essentially the same service – saving webpages for reading later – and has a free app, it wins through.  A bookmarklet on your desktop browser allows you to add pages, plus they can be downloaded into the app for offline reading.  A Pro version is also available which adds link sharing, video and Google Reader integration.  Free. Probably the best known of all the magazine-style news aggregators, thanks to the huge amount of hype surrounding it at launch.  It is great, but to take full advantage you’ll need to have busy social networking circles with lots of link sharers.  It’s also advisable to spend a while setting it up, as although there is a degree of recommended content, it feels better when you’ve personalized it.  Free. The official application for one of the best and most extensive online news aggregators, this has access to all the main Reddit categories and the sub-Reddit categories, plus a shake function to go to a random news story.  Free. If Google Reader is your preferred way of saving articles you find online or curating RSS feeds, then Reeder is probably the best way to view it on your iPad.  $4.99/£2.99. Another attractive magazine-style app which will combine Google Reader, Twitter, Read it Later and Instapaper links into one place.  The design is far more minimal than the alternatives such as Pulse.  Free. Read More

MG Siegler is a general partner at CrunchFund and a columnist for TechCrunch, where he has been writing since 2009. His focus is on Apple. Prior to TechCrunch, MG covered various technology beats for VentureBeat. Originally from Ohio, MG attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI. He’s previously lived in Los Angeles where he worked in Hollywood and in... → Learn More In many ways, tablet-focused readers like Pulse, Flipboard, and now Editions, are the next phase of RSS readers. But they’re RSS readers that the masses will actually use because they’re actually user-friendly and oriented around experience and visuals. But because they’re so tailored for user experience, they often need partnerships beyond a simple RSS feed to bring in the necessary information to populate the apps. Today, Pulse has landed a massive fish in that regard: ESPN. The sports category has always been a bit under-represented in the tablet reading space because ESPN content has been largely absent. ESPN is by far the biggest name in sports news, and Pulse notes their deal is the first time the sports network has agreed to syndicate their content to a mobile app that is not one of their own. With the deal, the Pulse Sports category is being revamped to highlight this ESPN content as well as the other sports content from SB Nation, Bleacher Report, Yahoo Sports, and others. The ESPN deal will place major headlines in Pulse as well as tailored news for MLB, NFL, NBA, WNBA, college football, and college basketball. Within Pulse, you’ll also now be able to break down the area by individual sports to get just news about that sport (this includes sports beyond the major ones as well, such as MMA, tennis, boxing, etc). In addition to this deal, co-founder Akshay Kothari tells us that Pulse should today cross 5 millon users across all the platforms that Pulse is available on (iPad, iPhone, Android). It was only a month and a half ago that the service hit 4 million users, just in time to announce their big $9 million Series A round of funding. You can find Pulse in the App Store here. And in the Android Market here. Sponsored Ads Sponsored Ads Sponsored Ads Read More

A friend just picked up a shiny new iPad and asked me for my app recommendations.   Obviously, we get similar questions often, so I drew up a list of the apps that I use often that most any iPad user might consider. Wundermap: Appshopper: Find new, free, and price-reduced apps.    Pulse:  Innovative news/RSS reader.     Flipboard:  An alternative to Pulse.       Wikibot:  Wikipedia reader with read-ahead, etc.        Noteability:  Take notes with optional linked audio recording.       Simplenote:  Simple text note-taker with sync to other devices and the Web.       Goodreader:  Sync and view documents and other media.       eFax:  Send/receive faxes.       neu.Annotate:  Annotate/sign PDFs.           ABC Player:  Watch full episodes of ABC shows.       IMDB:  Access the Internet Movie Database.      iMyAddress:  Use GPS to find the nearest street address.   Got any other suggestions?  Leave them in the comments below. Read More

This week for our weekly installment of Picks of the Week we are changing things up a little bit.  It’s hard to believe that we have been running the POTW post for 30 weeks now!  So far our writers at iSource have highlighted almost 150 separate iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac and Apple TV related items.  In the spirit of fun, and to give our hard-working writers a bye week, I thought it would be nice to take some of my favorite posts and create a “Best of” Picks of the Week post this week instead.  Sorry for the one day delay, but it was harder than I thought to sort through nearly 150 posts form ten different contributors.  Hope you like my selections.  Feel free to leave a comment below and let me know some of your favorites you have seen on former POTW posts, or would like to see on future posts. Pulse is better known as an iPad app, but it’s also a great RSS iPhone app for the casual news reader. Pulse doesn’t tend to bother you with many unread counts, and instead, focuses on presenting you with thumbnails of articles from sources that you pick (or sync from your Google Reader account). The app used to be quite limited with 20 sources and only one area to view them in, but with the recent 2.0 update, Pulse can now be sorted into several columns (I believe the number is five) and can support up to 60 sources. This extra ability to customize and sort your sources really brings the whole experience within Pulse to a new level, and I quite enjoyed playing around with it. It won’t be replacing Reeder as my primary RSS app any time soon, though. Although the 2.0 update also vastly increased Pulse’s speed and performance, it still feels slower than using Reeder or the Google Reader web app, and the inability to “star” items for later viewing is a real letdown for me. However, if you simply want to relax and catch up on the news once or twice a day, then Pulse for iPhone is a fantastic and free way to do it. I have been on the hunt for a good task manager app for quite some time now.  I’ve tried at least a dozen different ones—free and paid.  All I really need is a way to keep track of Read More

Sunday June 19th is Father’s Day, and if your dad has an iPad – or is lucky enough to be getting one on the day – why not get him a bundle of new apps to go with it.  We’ve gathered together ten apps which every father should have on his Apple tablet to give you some ideas! OK, so it’s an obvious choice, but not every new iPad owner will have heard of it!  Without a doubt one of the very best mobile games ever made, and one which can be enjoyed by everyone.  $4.99/£2.99. A massive selection of eBooks available for the iPad and iPhone, with free samples and syncing between devices.  You can always download Apple’s own iBooks too.  Free. An excellent casual golf arcade game along the same lines as Cat Physics and other physics-based titles.  It’s a universal app for the iPhone and iPad (with Retina Display support for the iPhone 4), lots and lots of levels and challenging gameplay.  It’s on sale this weekend too.  $0.99/£0.59. One of the better iPad weather apps, and unless you’re wanting to get rid of the ads and show more than two cities, grab the free version.  Free. The classic puzzle game recreated on the iPad.  It’s part of Electronic Arts Father’s Day sale too.  $1.99/£1.19. The innovative social networking magazine app is perfect for keeping up to date with family activities and news.  Free. A great, relaxing and utterly absorbing game which looks fantastic on the iPad.  It’s simple to play too, but can keep you entertained for hours.  Game Center support.  $4.99/£2.99. An excellent way to consolidate news feeds from all around the internet and group them together in sections.  A more attractive, more user-friendly way of enjoying reading the news.  Free. Although there are iPad-specific relaxation apps, the iPhone’s SleepStream 2 is still one of the best out there, and the x2 feature won’t make any difference here.  Be prepared to purchase a few extra programs via in-app purchase though.  $0.99/£0.59. One of the better soccer games for the iPad, and also on sale this weekend.  $0.99/£0.59. Read More

Pulse News app for the iPhone and iPad received a nice update today allowing selected stories to be saved and automatically synced to other Pulse News apps you have or retrieved via the web. Sign-up for the service is free and can be done from within the Pulse News app. All that's required is a user-name and a password. When you see a story you want to save, click on the star symbol. If, for example, you did that on your iPhone, you can pick up your iPad and the saved story will be there too, assuming you have a web connection. The story is also accessible from the Pulse.me website. Saved stories can also be sent to Instapaper, Evernote or Read It Later. If you import newsfeeds from Google Reader, marked stories will also mark them in Google Reader. After some difficulty with iTunes this morning, I was able to download the app for both the iPhone and iPad. Saving a story on either device made it immediately available on the other. It's a nice feature. With the links to the web component, I'd really like to be able to set up my master set of sources on one app and have them sync to the other, but at least for now, it's not a feature Pulse provides. Read More