As you know from reading the Gazette, Flipboard is my news reader of choice. The reading experience is head and shoulders above any other reader and the options for sources is staggering. As a result, I find I’m using Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn as news sources more than RSS feeds or Google Reader. And, the social interaction built into Flipboard makes it delightfully easy to retweet, reply or forward a story. Then there’s the growing number of “professional” sources publishing content via Flipboard. I love the National Geographic “channel” which pulls content from all of their publications.
One of the things that makes Flipboard so special is that it presents the distributed content in style. When content is published as an RSS feed, the styling from the source site is not included. This makes for a very bland presentation on most news readers, but not on Flipboard. And, a view of the article at it’s original site is always included with the content. Considering the time and effort so many bloggers put into the design of their site, it’s a delight to have that readily available once again. So, I get the best of both worlds – an organized tour of all my favorite authors and news sources delivered to a beautiful, yet still efficient, reading platform. It’s both time-saving and enjoyable.
An article with originating site displayed in Flipboard for iPad.
Flipboard for Android is now in beta testing. If you’d like to try it out on your tablet or phone, you can join the test crew via the Flipboard site. Not only will you get a look at this amazing news reader, but you also have a voice in its development.
