Android App of the Week: Pulse

Monday, January 17th, 2011

Android news apps are pretty samey. I’m a regular user of a pair of unofficial BBC News apps alongside software such as World Newspapers and Eurogamer, and, while they’re undoubtedly useful, many of these apps aren’t what I’d call attractive.

Our first Android App of the Week for 2011, though, takes this basic template – listing the latest posts from popular news and entertainment sites – and gives it a thorough makeover.

It’s called Pulse, is developed by Alphonso Labs, and formats the news in a grid rather than in a list: scroll down through different sources, and swipe from left to right through the stories available.

Each story is presented with a small headline and a bigger picture, and it’s all wrapped up in a clean UI with a black, blue and grey colour scheme.

Adding a news source is as easy as clicking a button at the bottom of the list, and sources are divided into categories – from business, entertainment and fashion to food, gaming, music and tech. Each category’s packed with top titles, and Google Reader integration makes it easy to add your favourites. There’s even the option to use bump and trade your news sources with other Pulse users. (more…)

Google News – Friend or Foe?

Friday, May 8th, 2009

Suddenly the world at large seems to have woken up to the fact that ad-funded delivery doesn’t work as a business model for large-scale web publishing. Worse, the big beasts of print publishing, the brand-name newspapers, are effectively forced to cut their own throats by providing their print content online for free. 

Rubbing salt in the wounds is Google News, the simple aggregation portal that is managing to make money from the newspapers’ content that it is using for free (aka “stealing”).  Some publishers are even threatening to withdraw access to their content unless Google starts paying them.

So is Google a villain here? And can the ad-funded revenue model be made to work?

(more…)

Facebook in the news. Constantly.

Monday, November 10th, 2008

Facebook now claims to have 120 million users, and although the number of active accounts will be significantly smaller, it’s still a phenomenal figure. In fact, if Facebook were a country, it would be twice the size of the United Kingdom.

That sort of popularity is always going to bring problems. Just as a city experiences growing pains, with a rising population bringing a proportional rise in crime and drug problems, Facebook is starting to get clogged up with scammers, spammers and baddies of all descriptions. (more…)

Steve Ballmer to retire

Sunday, June 8th, 2008

Yes, it is true, Steve ‘Barmy’ Ballmer the exuberant Microsoft CEO has confirmed that he is to retire. The 52 year old originator of the Monkey Dance as performed in tribute by Ricky Gervais during an episode of The Office, was speaking to an audience in Washington earlier in the week when he let slip the big decision: he will be stepping down from his role as big cheese of the biggest software company on the planet.

(more…)

Yahoo SearchMonkey is simply bananas

Saturday, June 7th, 2008

Look, everyone who has ever read any of my PC Pro columns over the years will know that I am something of a Firefox Fanboy, just like anything that makes my web browsing more efficient and effective. Which is probably why I think the whole Yahoo SearchMonkey thing is just simply bananas.

(more…)