Welcome to the second post in my series of iPad apps reviews!  I’ve been glued to my iPad since the second I brought it home, so much so that I’m sure my laptop is getting jealous.  But I’ll always love my laptop, even if it isn’t the new baby, it will always be near and dear to my heart (especially since it holds more music and is better for watching TV shows on!).

2. News: Flipboard and Zite

While a laptop is more than capable of keeping up-to-date on the latest news from around the globe, it sure is a lot easier on the iPad (at least in my opinion).  Normally, I’m the most unaware person when it comes to current events.  It’s embarrassing.  And also probably not the greatest thing for a future teacher.  That’s where Flipboard and Zite come in.

Flipboard is a dandy little app that pulls from a variety of sources – news, social networking, the works – on any topic you wish to know about.  The best part of all: if you don’t feel like reading it right then, you can save the article for later perusing.  The app allows you to create your own magazines, compiling the articles you find the most interesting and organizing them for keeps.  Right now, I have magazines for News, Books, Food, TV & Movies, and even a magazine just full of wedding ideas!

Today I sat down and flipped through a few pages of the Globe and Mail.  It was great being able to read their content for free, alongside articles from lots of other sources.  The visual quality of Flipboard is fantastic, the way it turns pages makes me feel like I’m actually reading a newspaper (I feel very cultured and mature!).  And if I find something particularly interesting and think I might want to give it a second read, I can ‘flip’ it onto one of my magazines.  Or, more likely, I can just read the headline and figure at some point I’ll want to read that article, but either way – FLIP, and it’s saved forever.

I’ll admit I haven’t had Zite as long, and maybe that’s why I’m biased towards preferring Flipboard.  Zite, however, is still super cool – it pulls from a bunch of sources, just like Flipboard, but then it learns.  Ah!  Scary AI!  The Matrix is coming!  Just kidding…mostly.  No, but seriously, Zite adjusts what stories it displays to you based on a) what you initially chose as subjects that interest you and b) the kinds of articles you give a “thumb-up” (or conversely, by avoiding the types of articles you give “thumb-down” to).  Neato!  Eventually, they aim to weed out all the articles that don’t interest you.  Any topics you’d like to keep an eye on can be easily added to your “Quicklist,” or you can hit the heart button to make that topic be added to your feed.

However, the ability to save articles to read later (because sometimes I’m just so lazy but things seem so interesting!) will always set Flipboard apart.  Plus I find Flipboard more aesthetically pleasing, easier to use, and just…better.  (Remember earlier when I said I might be biased?  Yeah.)

Come back tomorrow for my review of my favourite Productivity apps!

– Sam

Did you miss the first post in this series?  Check out Day One: Social Media and Etsy here.