Maingear just took the wraps off an upcoming 11.6-inch notebook, the Pulse 11. According to Engadget, the small computer will be powered by the latest Ivy Bridge CPUs, with the standard model getting a Core i5 of unspecified clock speed. There is also support for up to 16GB of RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce GT650M GPU with 2GB of dedicated RAM is an option.
The cross-platform Read It Later mobile app, which allows users to save web content for offline reading, has now been renamed to Pocket. What's more, the app has become free in the process. The app is available for Android and iOS devices as well as a version optimized for the Kindle Fire's version of Android.
Reading app aggregator Pulse has boosted its content by making a deal with magazine publisher Bonnier, TechCrunch revealed. Bonnier will let Pulse app users access 20 of its special-interest magazines, including Scuba Diving, Parenting, Sound + Vision, and others. While Pulse has some 300 content partners in place right now, this deal is said to be its biggest to date.
MSN in the UK has added its own news app for the iPad. The MSN UK App brings to the tablet current news, sport and entertainment articles, and videos (free, App Store). This is Microsoft's first news information service to run natively as an app on a mobile system without first having to go to a Microsoft portal site.
Three prominent iOS apps have received major updates. The first two are the iPad and iPhone editions of Pulse News. Both have been upgraded to v2.7, giving them "cleaner" interfaces, designed to put more emphasis on the actual content. The new Smart Dock suggests feeds based on earlier reading, while the source catalog has been redesigned to use Cover Flow for easier category selection.
Google is crafting its own alternative to Flipboard, Zite, and other curated news apps for tablets, tipsters divulged Thursday. Nicknamed Propeller, details are vague but would make it a rare cross-platform app, serving both Android and iPad users. Not much is known about what it does from AllThingsD's source, but Rackspace's Robert Scoble understood that it's "mind-blowing good."
CNN on Tuesday confirmed rumors that it had bought Zite. The deal gives it control of the iPad news curation app (free, App Store). Zite will continue to run as a separate entity under CNN's wing but will get both the added reach and "advance the industry in a meaningful way," CNN's digital manager KC Estenson said.
A new study by the Reynolds Journalism Institute suggests that iPad ownership happiness was even higher than it was just this fall. Having already understood that 94 percent of a group of 1,6000 iPad owners were either somewhat or very satisfied late last year, about 70 percent of a 561-person follow-up group was more satisfied again. Only four percent were less satisfied, and 81 percent said they didn't expect to buy a rival tablet in the next six months.
Flipboard on Thursday confirmed that it had taken a $50 million investment based on a $200 million valuation. The company received money chiefly from Insight Venture Partners as well as Comcast and a host of major and minor investors, ranging from Kleiner Perkins through to Twitter's Jack Dorsey, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and Ashton Kutcher. The endorsement was based on enthusiasm for the concept of "social endorsement" that Flipboard's iPad app was creating, AllThingsD was told in an interview with Flipboard chief Mike McCue.
Pulse wrapped up the week by launching a major upgrade to its news reader. The Pulse News 2.0 update for the iPad (free, App Store), iPhone (App Store), and Android (Market) all add social feeds. Users can now get content shared by others on Digg, Facebook, Hacker News, and Reddit for conventional articles, as well as Vimeo and YouTube video clips.
Alphonso Labs has released v2.0 of Pulse News Mini, the iPhone version of its newsfeed reader. The update makes several major changes, most notably in terms of speed, as images and sources should load as much as three times faster. Scrolling actions in the app are said to be substantially smoother.
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.
AOL has taken its first concerted step into iPad apps with the tease of AOL Editions. The title takes a cue from Flipboard but, as teased in a video (below), may be more reactive. Instead of the user creating custom feeds, it would work based on interests and collate the content into a very stylized, magazine-like format with a clearer theme, such as music.
News Corp's tablet news project may have been jointly developed with Apple, a report this evening claimed. Using a combination of American media and its own sources, the UK's Guardian asserted that Apple engineers were helping a team of News Corp luminaries develop the project, now referred to as The Daily. Apple chief Steve Jobs and his News Corp parallel Rupert Murdoch would purportedly be confident enough as to unveil the project together, likely sometime in the next week.
Alphonso Labs has announced that its news reader, Pulse News Mini, is now available for free across all platforms. The RSS reader displays items within panning story bars, allowing users to view a colorful mosaic rather than simple text lists. The app also provides options for keyboard search, Google Reader import, and sharing via Facebook, Twitter or e-mail.
Alphonso Labs has launched an internationalized update of its news reader for iPhone, Pulse News Mini. The RSS reader iPhone app allows up to 20 RSS news sources and has easy find features via its Smart Search for adding new feeds. It uses a dashboard layout to allow users to check feeds while skimming a story. The v1.1 release adds language support for French, Spanish, German, Japanese and Chinese, in addition to the original English. The app now supports landscape view alongside customizable font sizes and the ability to swipe between articles.
Livescribe on Monday added two new capacities to its Pulse smartpen lineup. Customers can now opt for a 2GB or 4GB model, in addition to the original 1GB smartpen. The devices can also now be had in titanium and sport an ARM9 processor and the ability to save audio and handwritten notes through sync. The 4GB model can hold 400 hours of recorded audio or a combination of audio recording or even applications that will soon be available through a Livescribe Application Store.
