A new colleague at HTW Chur (thanks to Tanja) gave me a very useful hint: When I mentioned Flipboard as one of my favorite apps for the iPad, she recommended me Zite, another personalized magazine.
Compared to Flipboard it is more interactive and dynamic.
Zite evaluates millions of new stories every day, looking at the type of article, its key attributes and how it is shared across the web. Zite uses this information to match stories to your personal interests and then delivers them automatically to your iPad or iPhone.
…and also to your Andorid device, you can add. Customizing your Zite you connect it with your Twitter, Google Reader, Delicious and/or Pocket accounts. To bring the personal content, Zite keeps track of how you use the app (and they confirm that they won’t sell any of your personal data, but may use it to improve relevance…). After connecting Zite shows you some sections you may be interested – and in my case it worked. So I can choose from the sections Gadgets, Social Media, Technology, iPad, Mobile and others. Of course there is also a possibility to customize your magazine and add further sections. The difference to Flipboard is that Zite doesn’t only display the latest posts from Twitter, Facebook or Google Reader, but selects the most relevant articles from theses different channels. The source (Twitter, Facebook…) is not displayed. Flipboard’s strength is the very beautiful rendering of the difference sources. Zite looks more like a newspaper, but I like it nevertheless…
But Zite is more than that: You can rate articles („did you enjoy reading this?“) or confirm that you want more from the same contributor or on the same subject. Then Zite learns and should give you even better personalized information that fit to your interests. Of course, Zite offers also the possibility to share articles on different platforms – from Twitter, Google Plus, Facebook, LinkedIn to Evernote, Instapaper, Pocket or Delicious. Not bad at all… So there’s a chance that Zite could become one of my favorite apps…
Rudolf Mumenthaler 