Death and Dying

It’s very rare that I conduct reviews of apps, because I don’t like outing myself as that much of a fanboy, and it’s rare that I feel strongly about an app that doesn’t already have tons of strong feelings posted about it all over the internet. But this app is different. It’s called Zite, and it’s the Pandora of reading online content on an iPad. http://www.zite.com/ When I installed Zite, it asked if I wanted to start from scratch, or tell it a little about my interests by incorporating my Twitter and Google Reader feeds. I opted to include those, because they would tell such a program about what I generally look for online.

Zite claims it would alternatively offer up random content, paring down its offerings to topics that interest you based on which articles you actually read and rate. Its goal is to create a magazine-style aggregator like Flipboard, but unlike Flipboard, it automatically populated itself with content and learns what you like.

The app opens with this Top Stories page that is actually several pages of articles to get you started. I haven’t yet figured out how these top stories are chosen, but I suspect they’re based on popularity with other users of the app or visitors to the sites from which the pages are garnered. If you already know what you want to read about, there’s an option to browse by sections, which are also auto-populated by your tastes.

When you want to read an article, you simply tap on the title or pane and the content expands with Zite’s native minimizer, again very much like Flipboard. Unlike Flipboard, however, Zite seems awfully good about maintaining inline content and can even identify content that must be viewed on a website, in which case Zite provides its own native browser.

Another major departure from Flipboard is the unobtrusive toolbar on the right that expands to show more options than your standard rate and share buttons. Right off the bat, I’ll point out that they totally hit the nail on the head with these features. Keeping it minimal, they let you easily send an article to twitter, Facebook, or a contact via email, or save it to Instapaper for later reading. This is the perfect amount of options; they didn’t get bogged down trying to include a million different Digg, Reddit, Deli.ci.ous, Readability, etc. links and stayed with the core sharing services I use. You can also see that the sidebar lets you peruse more content from the site that brought you the current article, or look for more pages in the same category. Again, it’s the balance of minimalism and thoughtfulness that really make this experience worth endlessly repeating.

How well does it work in practice, you ask?

I can tell you in no uncertain terms that I spent my entire morning within the confines of this one app, heedless of my growing Google Reader feed, ignorant of the persistent tweets in my timeline, and oblivious to the status updates of my friends. I’ve never felt so interested in the content I found online; Zite took all of the tediousness out of following the news and keeping up with my interests. I heartily recommend it to everyone who uses an iPad.
Oh, and I neglected to mention the app is free.