There’s a lot of news out there and sometimes it can be a chore to read. Slashing down feeds, keeping up with Twitter, jumping in and out of RSS and websites – not exactly elegant! Taptu, like Pulse, Flipboard and Zite before it, wants to change that. They’re trying to bring an engaging fun to reading again.
What is it?
Taptu, Free, iPad. When you fire up Taptu, it gives you a few feeds to read along with options to connect with your Facebook and Twitter. Once you link up, you’ll see those feeds all displayed too. The stories of each feed are displayed in pretty thumbnails and when you click on the thumbs, you’ll smoothly be introduced into an article view. If you want to just scan the feeds instead, you swipe horizontally to see the next article. Slicker still, when you scroll through each news source, you see a small preview of article icons that cycle through.
Adding stuff to read is easy too! You can use Taptu’s “StreamStore”, which really is a collection of news feeds, or link up with your Google Reader account to add more familiar feeds (max 30). A huge plus is that you can mix and match sources (like Gizmodo and Lifehacker, let’s say) on the go (like creating folders) so you’re not overwhelmed by so many streams and rows.
It’s like having a personalised digital newsstand where instead of displaying magazines, it shows articles. Taptu is also available on iPhone and Android but the bigger screen size of the iPad makes it a much more dynamic experience.
Who’s it good for?
People who like to read. People who love to engage with what they read. People who are bored of RSS feeds. People who
Why’s it better than alternatives?
It’s a lot easier to add, delete, mix and match reading sources. That way it feels like having another option in your reading repertoire rather than an extension of something you use to read already. Also, the sources and categories Taptu curates makes it seem like it’s its own standalone reading source.
How could it be even better?
The interface is pretty and nice to use but I didn’t feel entirely at home with it. There seemed to be a lack of gestures when I wanted to use gestures (jumping out of an article) and too much gestures when I didn’t want to use a gesture. Also, it may be the fault of the RSS feeds itself but some pictures seemed out of order and there isn’t a really great solution for truncated feeds (which technically isn’t their fault). The app is decently quick but can get choppy when you load in too many feeds.
Taptu for iPad [iTunes]