When you read, write, and in general make a good portion of your life about tech, you need to find a way to keep up on the latest news and trends.  You can scour the internet on your laptop, spend hours on your phone, and read your tablet before you go to bed, and maybe still not get all of what you are looking for.  If you’re like me, and want to get to the best of the news quickly, a news aggregator can really come in handy.  And the one that I use is Flipboard.  This is I love tech:  Flipboard!

Flipboard as a news aggregator is surprisingly simple – you create a login, tell the app what interests you, and let it do its thing from there.  It creates specialized “magazines”, based on your selected interests, and then allows you to “flip” through all of the stories in a rolodex kinda way.  Truth be told, some of Flipboard’s charm is the unique scrolling animation, which allows you as the reader to interact with your magazine in a very tactile and almost non-digital way.  There’s something fun about flipping through the stories, and its also a very natural gesture that most Android users will be used to.

My technology magazine

You get by default a Cover Story magazine that contains the top stories of the day, but you can create multiple others.  I have a “Technology” magazine (pictured) that I flip through whenever my schedule permits.  Stories are pulled in from a wide variety of sources; I’ve seen articles from the PhoneArena, ZDNet, the Verge, CNET, and Tech Crunch.  Other smaller independent sources are there as well, but the point is you get a variety of stories that are curated to your specific tastes.  I get information on mobile phones, laptops, tablets, and just tech news in general.  All of this can be scanned at a glance to determine if you want to do a deeper dive into the material.

There is an element beyond just the reading material as well, which gives Flipboard another layer to explore.  You can “like” posts in a social media way, which not only gives feedback but also helps to better align future content with your interests.  There is an offline saving feature, to allow you to mark something to read later via Pocket or another offline reading bookmark app.  The app will suggest future topics that could also interest you, allowing for the app to improve itself for you over time.  And while it does feature ads (because the app download is free) they are easy to flip past and aren’t too intrusive overall.  I’ve never had a reading experience ruined by their ad model yet, and I doubt it would bother most average readers.

It’s clean interface, on-topic suggestions, and it being plain old fashioned fun to use makes Flipboard a winner in my book.  If you’re short on time but long on interest in the news of the day, give Flipboard a look.  It’s available on both Android and iOS platforms.

Cheers!