Zite

I used to spend a lot of time checking out the growing numbers of websites which I had decided were worthy of keeping up with…later on, I integrated the vast majority of these sites into an RSS reader (in my case, Google Reader)… II thought I had the world by the tail, in that I had a continually updating source of information…of interest…to me.

Even later, I got an iPad and started using such tools as the Pulse reader; this allowed me to integrate much of the content from my Google Reader, into a much more palatable format (with graphics and everything!). I also tried out (and liked) Flipboard, which has been proselytized by iPad adherents as the future of the magazine… I have to admit that while I find it to be generally engaging, it didn’t have all that I wanted, at first.

Over the last several months, I have been able to integrate more and more of the content which I want (there is more to life than a steady diet of Twitter and Facebook after all…), and lately they have upgraded Flipboard to be much faster (thank goodness). I guess when it is all said, I like Flipboard, somewhere between meh and great!

Last week I heard about, and tried out Zite, yet another iPad magazine. The name is a pun on the German word for time (zeit), and since I tried to load it up on the day it came out on the iPad, this is exactly what I thought I was wasting… you see there seems to have been a deluge of new users, which seemingly swamped out their servers.

On the next day, the clouds parted, and I started to see some of the ‘next generation’ advantages in this app. Just as with Pulse News, Flud, Flipboard and a number of other ‘iPad magazines’, Zite allows you to integrate your Google Reader account, your Twitter account, and to tailor exactly which broad topics you want to read.

I should also say that all of these ‘magazines ‘handle’ about the same, as in ‘naturally’ without effort. But here is where Zite starts to leave the others behind…you can tell Zite which articles you like, and it will adapt what it presents to you based upon this growing number of choices. And as with these other iPad magazines,Zite is free (therefore a no brainer for almost anyone with an iPad).

Introducing Zite, the iPad’s Smartest Magazine yet
http://mashable.com/2011/03/09/zite