News & Trends Apps (Keeping Current)
Jeff Maston gave a presentation on reddit. http://www.reddit.com/ is a website where users enter current topics, news, trends, etc.... into "subreddits" (individual web pages within the site) that are theme based. Each entry is voted up or down in importance by users. The top voted entries are filtered to the main reddit page. You can learn more about reddit at http://www.reddit.com/about/. In order to vote on reddit you will need to setup a free account. The free account also allows you to save and organize the "subreddits" you are interested in seeing. The disadvantage of a site like reddit is that there is a ton of information flowing through the site at any time and there can be a lot of entries that are not of any value and some that are flat out inappropriate. The advantage of the reddit is that all this information and source-crowded information allows mostly only really important news and resources to be voted to the top of the web pages. Using an account and selecting topics that interest you will provide you with great current information and resources on those topics. An example of a subreddit is this one on tablets: http://www.reddit.com/r/tablets/ This is a great place to ask questions, get recommendations and read up on the latest tablets. You will also find subreddits for each major tablet platform, like Apple iPad and Android and even specific subreddits for tablets like the Nexus7 or KindleFire. These are great places to learn tips and techniques for using your specific tablet, find out about bugs or problems with updates and learn about new apps.
There are reddit mobile apps for all of the major tablets available. The standard reddit app in Google Play and the Apple iOS store works well. The iOS version was demonstrated in our meeting. There are also alternative apps that can be used to manage reddit. The Alien Blue app for iOS was demonstrated at the meeting. This app is currently available for the ipad and iphone and provides a more streamlined user interface than the standard reddit app (free) and some additional features for organizing your reddit account. The Alien Blue for ipad app is $3.99 but worth it if you find yourself spending a lot of time on reddit.
All Things D
Brandy Thatcher presented the AllThingsD app to the user's group. AllThingsD.com is a website devoted to news, analysis and opinion on technology, the Internet and media. But it is different from other sites in this space. It is a fusion of different media styles, different topics, different formats and different sources.This website provides really current information and resources on anything related to the digital world. There are mobile apps available for both Android and Apple and more information on them can be found here: http://allthingsd.com/mobile/. The Apple mobile was demonstrated in our meeting. The app's magazine like interface provides easy reading. Visiting this app once or twice a week and browsing through the stories is an enjoyable way to keep current on the world of technology.
An added bonus app:
Create an account with http://www.readability.com/ and use it to store and organize articles that you want to read later. It's a very easy to read text based format for collecting and archiving articles you want to read later. It works with Flipboard and many other apps. You can set readability up on many, many devices including tablets, phones, ereaders and even your computer. By logging into your readability account on each device all of the articles you saved will be synched and you can access them from any device. Brandy demonstrated in Flipboard how you can select and article and select the read it later link then by choosing the readability app the article is saved to the app.
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