Zite magazine for iPad learns from reading habits
updated 10:05 am EST, Wed March 9, 2011
Zite intros learning iPad magazine app
Young startup Zite on Wednesday put out its namesake iPad magazine app (free, App Store) with a promise of a unique learning feature. While it curates Google Reader RSS feeds and Twitter, much like its rivals Flipboard or Pulse, it gradually shapes the feed based on a past reading history. It not only checks which articles are being read but checks how long they've been read, the size of the articles, and how interest is mounting on the web.
The app has its own category selections and lets the reader get automatic suggestions based on a given category. The company's founders, including CEO Ali Devar, come from the University of British Columbia's Laboratory for Computational Intelligence and are using their research to refine the results.
Sharing works outwards as well with e-mail, Facebook and Twitter as options.
The app works with iPads as far back as iOS 3.2. Zite hasn't said whether it plans to move to Android or other platforms in the future.
Intelligent magazines have quickly become one of the most popular sub-categories on the iPad and so far have had little play outside of Apple's platform. The lack of a tablet-optimized OS has partly been at fault, and apps like Pulse have only just begun reaching Android through the release of Android 3.0 devices like the Motorola Xoom.
