Tag Archives: Flipboard

Social magazine app Flipboard adds audio

Social magazine app Flipboard has added audio, allowing users to listen to a podcast, an interview or music while flipping through the pages of the app.

Flipboard is an iPhone and iPad app (soon to be on Android) that allows users to sync with their Twitter, Google Reader, Facebook and other accounts to receive personalised news content.

Flipboard has partnered with SoundCloud for audio (which provides content including Journalism.co.uk’s podcasts), National Public Radio and Public Radio International (PRI).

As The Next Web reports:

It’s a marvellous new way to distribute and listen to audio content, one I might just use specifically for podcasts. The user experience is unquestionably superior to iTunes.

And how long before we see Flipboard dive into video? It’s somewhat surprising it hasn’t decided to explore the video space first. The social magazine already includes a video category but is limited in sources and isn’t ideal for video browsing. With no clear winner in the video magazine space (see ShowYou and TNW Startup Rally winner Shelby.tv), Flipboard can still make it its own.

BBC News and TechCrunch both have details on the Flipboard development.

Flipboard goes French with latest update

Flipboard, the iPad and iPhone app which creates a magazine out of friends’ social network updates, now supports the French language following its latest upgrade to version 1.8.

Although a French content guide was released in December, this is the first time that the app’s core text has been translated into another language.

Also included in this update is the popular Cover Stories personalised feed feature, which highlights content curated from friends’ reading links. Cover Stories was first introduced on the iPhone edition of Flipboard.

Readers of Flipboard in the U.K., Canada, Australia, Ireland, France, Hong Kong and Taiwan can also access country-specific international content guides.

According to Flipboard’s latest press release, other new features include:

  • A third page of tiles provides a home for all your favorite content. This is one of the most-requested features from Flipboard fans.
  • New typography and photo layouts will make your Flipboard even more beautiful.
  • Easy set-up lets you pick topics of interest and instantly build your Flipboard with great stuff to read.
  • International Content Guides offer hundreds of recommendations for readers in the UK and Ireland, Canada, Australia, France, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Tap on the red ribbon to choose your Content Guide edition.
  • All-new French-language edition. We launched a French Content Guide back in December, but now the app itself is in French, too. You’ll get it if your device language is set to French.

LA Times: Online journalism ‘contaminated’ by web format, says Flipboard chief

The LA Times’ technology blog interviews Mike McCue, chief executive of Flipboard, an iPad app that creates a magazine-style package of news, features, videos and images circulating within a user’s social networks – and it’s well worth a read.

The problem with journalism on the web today is that it’s being contaminated by the web form factor. What I mean is, journalists are being pushed to do things like slide shows – stuff meant to attract page views. Articles themselves are condensed to narrow columns of text across 5, 6, 7 pages, and ads that are really distracting for the reader, so it’s not a pleasant experience to “curl up” with a good website.

Journalism is being pushed into a space where I don’t think it should ever go, where it’s trying to support the monetisation model of the web by driving page views. So what you have is a drop-off of long-form journalism, because long-form pieces are harder to monetise. And it’s also hard to present that longer stuff to the reader because no one wants to wait four seconds for every page to load.

Full story on LA Times at this link…

World’s first social magazine launches on iPad

Flipboard, the world’s first personalised social magazine, has been launched on the iPad, offering its users a magazine packaged collection of the news, features, videos and images circulating within their social networks.

The app was masterminded by Mike McCue, former CEO of Tellme and Evan Doll, former senior iPhone engineer at Apple and is getting its first public demonstration later today.

Because Flipboard renders links and images right in the magazine, readers no longer have to scan long lists of posts and click on link after link – instead they instantly see all the stories, comments and images, making it faster and more entertaining to discover, view and share social content.

Flipboard also lets readers easily create sections around topics or people they care about. Choose from Flipboardʼs suggested sections on topics such as sports, news, tech and style, with content hand-curated from popular and interesting Twitter feeds. Or, create an entirely new section by searching by topic, person or Twitter list to make Flipboard even more personal.

See a demonstration video below, courtesy of Inside Flipboard:

See the site at this link…