The Launchpad is a series that introduces Mashable readers to compelling startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. If Rooster works as intended, you'll never have an excuse not to read a book again. Plympton, a digital publishing startup with a focus on serialized fiction, unveiled a new iPhone app on Monday called Rooster, which curates suggestions for books to read and then pushes the book out to users in timed installments.
Newly launched iOS application TheNeeds is the latest attempt at offering users a better, more personalized news-reading experience with a service that focuses not only on your interests, but also how those interests evolve over time. The app, something of a competitor to the magazine-like Flipboard, or a community site like Reddit, helps to surface the best articles, blog posts, videos, social…
Users of popular save-for-later app Instapaper can now stream saved videos directly to their television with Apple's AirPlay, while all-in-one document management app Documents has been redesigned with a flat, iOS 7-inspired user interface.
Yahoo News Digest, a news curation and summary app launched last month, is now available in the UK for the iPhone and iPod Touch....
We’ve previously noted that Stitcher Radio is one of 8 great apps for listening to podcasts on the move, letting you tap-in to your favorite online radio shows on demand, encompassing tens of thousands of live stations....
I love podcasts. When I’m stuck on a train, cooking in the kitchen or running around my local park, they offer a wonderful escape and explore many of my favorite hobbies, interests and pastimes. There are an overwhelming number of podcasts to choose from – it’s never been easier to produce a show and share it with the world – so keeping up with them all can feel like a full-time job....
LinkedIn has been growing rapidly in Asia-Pacific, as it announced today that it just crossed 50 million registered users in the region — that’s nearly triple the number in less than three years. The company opened its regional center in Singapore in May 2011....
New app Metadata+ tells you whenever a drone strike kills somebody overseas. Working by pulling data from the UK’s Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the app plots the location of each strike on a map, and then sends a push notification…
Persistence, it turns out, does pay off. After rejecting it five times, Apple has finally approved an app that tracks every U.S. drone strike and sends a push notification to users every time a flying robot carries out a deadly mission around the world. Josh Begley, the data artist and developer who made the app, finally got through Apple's careful approval process on Friday, more than a year and a half after the first rejection by the company's App Review Team.
The first months of having a baby are rough, regardless of whether you are a repeat parent, like me, or a rookie just entering the exhilarating and exhausting fray. In those newborn months and even through the first year, most weary-eyed parents go into survival mode, yet miraculously adapt to all of the challenges that come with the transition.
Video news startup Watchup</a, is announcing that it has raised $1 million in additional funding. Co-founder Adriano Farano, a former journalist himself, has said that his goal is to create a new version of the daily newscast. To do that, Watchup released an iPad app allowing users to assemble playlists of news segments from sources like the Associated Press, the Wall Street Journal, and…
The market for news reading on your smartphone is getting crowded. There are excellent, immersive, highly customizable apps like Flipboard and Feedly, more curated options like Yahoo News Digest, Circa, and Slashdot founder CmdrTaco’s Trove — and that’s not even mentioning the full-on firehose of news that is Twitter. Investor, entrepreneur, and blogger Jason Calacanis believes that no one has yet solved the basic problem: an app that truly brings the news into a mobile-first format. But he says his...
In the world of news consumption, there’s certainly no shortage of ways consumers can find out what’s going on. Some popular services have emerged, including Flipboard, Circa, Feedly, Zite, and others. However, with multiple publications reporting on the same thing, readers could run into duplication and grow tired of trying to find unique and relevant content....
Jason Calacanis is getting back into the news business with a new app called Inside, which highlights and summarizes the top news stories. Although Calacanis has been involved in several startups and startup events (including the TechCrunch50 conferences, prior to an acrimonious split), he may still be best known as the founder of Silicon Alley Reporter and especially of Weblogs, Inc., a group…
Cult of Mac has long had a thing for standup desks – for years, publisher Leander Kahney has written posts great and small at an Ikea kitchen table propped up on canisters. His DIY version outlines the basic problem: a…
An advantage that tablet magazines have over their paper-based relatives is that they can be updated with new content. So, when our writer Josh Ong spoke to Microsoft about how the Surface tablets’ Touch Cover was designed to keep users productive, it was a perfect fit to add to the recently-launched, productivity-themed issue of our SHIFT magazine for iPad....
News Republic — the iOS app which describes itself as the “definitive news app” — has received an upgrade, including several significant improvements. Version 4.0 boasts a fresh, iOS 7 optimized look featuring a new icon and added space in…
Readability, the popular ‘read-it-later’ service that first came to the iPhone and iPad two years ago, has been redesigned for iOS 7 and introduced its new social sharing feature called Recommendations to the iOS app....
Popular 'DVR for the web' app Pocket was updated Wednesday to add support for AirPlaying saved videos to Apple TV, while social media behemoth Facebook announced a mobile ad pilot program that may be the company's first step toward competing with Apple's iAds.
From books and magazines, to op-eds and reviews, if the digital onslaught has been responsible for anything, it’s been for delivering a myriad of content. Oftentimes, way too much content, in fact....
Feedly, the popular RSS service that has replaced Google Reader for many, has released an update for its iOS app which introduces the speed reading feature that first landed on its Android app earlier this month....
As sad as it may be, many people just don’t have the time to read these days. When we say ‘read’, we don’t mean 140-character-long rants on Twitter, or 150-word news nuggets on the BBC. We mean books, magazines and long-form articles....
Some folks out there really, really, really like any app that Yahoo puts out. At least, that’s the picture we get from looking at the recent reviews of its Yahoo News Digest app, introduced yesterday. The app is currently flying high in the charts, and features a 4.5 star rating with 282 massively positive reviews. Taking a closer look at the review listings, many of the people leaving…
In tandem with its keynote at the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Yahoo announced 'News Digest,' a new iOS app that aggregates, condenses and delivers the day's top news to users twice a day.
When the news-summarizing startup Summly shut down last March, it was easy to imagine the company had simply been swallowed by the Yahoo machine. Like so many founders before him, Nick D’Aloisio had sold his company to Yahoo only to see it shuttered soon after. Its core technology was absorbed into Yahoo’s news app less than a month later, used to summarize the day’s events. That was the last we heard from D’Aloisio, who sold Summly to Yahoo for a reported $30 million at the age of 17 — until today....
