News

Yahoo News Digest has gone global

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 26, 2018

Yahoo's News Digest iOS app isn't just gorgeous, it's a great time saver, too. For those unfamiliar with Digest, it uses Yahoo-owned Summly technology and algorithmic and human editorial curation to aggregate and summarize the day's most important topics from a variety of trusted sources and premium media outlets.

With your news delivered twice a day, it's a great way to start your day in the morning and wind down in the evening, without spending too much time catching up on the most important news.

The catch? The news it serves focuses on U.S. and UK markets. But not anymore: as of today, the new version of the app serves news globally, with both international and Canadian editions of the Digest now available...

NBC’s ‘Today’ offers peek inside Apple’s North Carolina data center

Cody Lee ∙ April 25, 2014

Continuing with its recent 'green' marketing push, Apple offered folks a rare look inside its Maiden, North Carolina data center last night. The company paired up with NBC chief environmental correspondent Anne Thompson to do a spot on Thursday's edition of the 'Today' show regarding its various environmental initiatives.

The piece is fairly short—just under 3 minutes—but it's interesting because it gives you a peek inside Apple's data center operations, and details some of the equipment used to power the large buildings. Also, it features a brief appearance by the company's newly-appointed Vice President of Environmental Initiatives Lisa Jackson...

Yahoo News Digest gains background downloads, improved notifications and more

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 26, 2018

Yahoo is celebrating the 25th anniversary of the web this week and it's been marking the occasion by refreshing its key products. Yesterday, the company pushed a new version of the Weather iOS app with new animations, pull-to-refresh for cover images and more.

Today, Yahoo's news-reading product with summarization technology got refreshed, too. News Digest version 1.1.1 is now available in the App Store, bringing with it background downloads of new content, new notification messages and more...

The New York Times launching NYT Now app next week with cheaper subscriptions

Christian Zibreg ∙ March 26, 2014

The New York Times newspaper is scheduled to launch new digital offerings on the iPhone come next Wednesday, April 2. I cancelled my digital subscription to both the Times and The Wall Street Journal a year ago due to their overpriced subscriptions and sluggish apps.

Realizing as much - and taking note of sleek looking apps such as Flipboard and Facebook's Paper - the paper sent its digital team back to the drawing board with the goal of rethinking the company's digital offerings and how its content should be reformatted for mobile devices.

The result of their work is a brand new iPhone application that offers staff-curated content wrapped inside a nicely done interface, called NYT Now...

How to get iDownloadBlog headlines in Notification Center or Control Center

Jeff Benjamin ∙ March 13, 2014

If you're an avid iDB reader, and let's face it—you should be—then I suggest you check out two recently released jailbreak tweaks that allow you to add our headlines to Control Center or Notification Center in iOS 7. Aptly entitled iDownloadBlog for Control Center and iDownloadBlog for Notification Center, these new jailbreak tweaks make it easy to stay up to date with all of the latest Apple news.

We've taken both tweaks for a spin on video, and while we weren't blown away by the presentation, we did find them to be pretty handy additions for iDB fiends. Have a look inside as we step through the features.

Flipboard buys news reader app Zite for $60 million

Cody Lee ∙ March 5, 2014

Flipboard has announced this morning that it has acquired popular news reader app Zite from CNN. The company didn't disclose pricing details, but word has it that it went for $60 million and part of the deal is that Flipboard will begin syndicating CNN content inside its apps.

For those unfamiliar with the app, it's billed as an 'intelligent magazine' that helps you discover interesting things to read. Almost like a Pandora for RSS feeds, Zite analyzes millions of articles each day to offer you content on over 40K topics based on your habits and preferences...

Yahoo News Digest in its first major update adds Weather and Statistics atoms

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 24, 2018

Following its January introduction, Yahoo's free News Digest app for the iPhone has quickly become part of my daily news routine. There's just too many news-reading apps out there with lots of longform content and too little time to be able to consume it all on a daily basis. That's where summarization comes into play. A hot new buzzword, summarization technology in News Digest basically uses improved algorithms from Nick D'Aloisio's Summly app that Yahoo bought for the reported $30 million.

In its first major update, News Digest version 1.1 brings two new "atoms" (digests of news stories) that cover Yahoo's popular daily habits, Weather and Statistics. There are a few other features and improvements, listed below the fold...

Facebook announces new iPhone app, Paper, coming to App Store next Monday

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated August 4, 2016

The rumors were true: the social networking giant Facebook on Thursday officially announced its brand new social newsreader application for the iPhone. Called Paper (not to be confused with this), the app is scheduled to hit the App Store next Monday, February 3, 2014. The company has released a nice video walkthrough, embedded below the fold, which shows off really nicely done - gorgeously, dare I say - layout, fluidly animated interface and some familiar Flipboard-like gestures...

Flipboard updates iOS app, revamps Cover Stories to surface cool content

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 26, 2016

Flipboard, the wildly successful magazine-format news aggregator, has updated its iPhone and iPad application with a pair of tweaks while announcing a redesign of Cover Stories aimed at making your story highlights resemble newspaper front pages. In addition to some bug fixes and performance improvements, Flipboard 2.2.3 now makes it possible to add bookmarks to your Safari Reading List.

Another minor change: you can now copy an article's URL in your device's browser, then open Flipboard for the option to add it to your magazines. You'll be more interested in the redesign of Cover Stories which Flipboard hopes will surface more relevant content from your subscriptions...

Gist 2.0: full Pocket integration, new summary view, Dynamic Text support and more

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 24, 2018

Up until recently, it used to be that news junkies like yours trulls diligently put every conceivable news app on their Home screens in order to make sure they kept tabs on the latest news as it happened. As an unintended consequence (or was it?), this has led to information overload which in turn gave birth to apps like Yahoo's excellent News Digest (free in the App Store) and Gist by Michael Mamiye.

Both of these intelligently summarize news articles so you can consume key takeaways in the shortest amount of time.

Gist for iPhone, $1.99 in the App Store, is especially interesting due to its gorgeous and sharp user interface and a clever algorithm that can summarize most articles into approximately five bullet points - that's why the iDownloadBlog team put it on the list of 10 Best News Apps of 2013.

Following up on its mid-December debut, the developer this morning issued a major 2.0 update bringing out a host of goodies, such as a more robust implementation of the summarization technology, rich Pocket support and lots more...

The 10 best news apps of 2013

Lory Gil ∙ Updated March 16, 2018

How did the world get its news before the Internet was around? When I was a kid, you didn’t know about what was happening across the globe until 5:00. Now, news is reported within minutes of events. With the proliferation of mobile devices, people can even read breaking news from anywhere, anytime.

The writers at iDownloadBlog have come up with a list of what they think are the 10 best news apps of 2013. Check out our favorites and then vote for the one you like best to be added to our Best Apps of 2013 list…