Wednesday App Review: Flipboard

If you don’t already have the Flipboard app on your phone, then you need to go download it. Right now. I know, I know… it sounds pretty boring. An entire app designed simply to read articles–how could that possibly be exciting for anyone but news junkies and bibliophiles? Even the name “Flipboard” brings to mind awful presentations from my high school and college years, where some professor stood at the front of the room and droned on about something or other while clicking through a presentation and we all pretended to care. It makes me think of slanted news articles and tabloids, but I assure you that Flipboard is none of those things. In fact, if I had to describe it, I would say that Flipboard is basically a Pinterest for articles. Intrigued yet? Here’s how it works: when you download the app, you create your profile and get to select your interests from an absolutely exhaustive list. And I really mean that–Flipboard has more than 34,000 different topics to choose from. I barely got past the fourth or fifth page before I called it good, but the options are pretty varied and include everything from NASA to cupcakes. Once you pick what you want to read about, then Flipboard will gather together the top articles all across the internet that relate to those topics and present them to you. When you find an article you like, you can click it to read or create your own “magazine” where you can stack articles that you intend to read later or simply want to save to refer back to. You can also share articles and magazines with friends. Flipboard has content both from private bloggers and world-renowned magazines, so the variety is, again, pretty impressive. I absolutely love the user interface of Flipboard. It is super clever and just plain fun to use. With a flick of your finger, you can flip through articles that are relevant to your pre-selected topics. Not interested? Flip past it. Look cool? Save it for later or click and then flick through the pages to read it. All of the articles I’ve come across are designed to be read on a smartphone, so the text is the perfect size and doesn’t run off of the page. Even long articles are a breeze and are broken up so you’re not faced with a wall of text, which is pretty nice. The images are clear and the text is sharp–you really can’t ask for much more. Flipboard is free to download and is available for iPhone, Android and Windows Phone, not to mention online once you’ve made an account. And, like I said before… unless you totally hate reading and keeping up with your favorite topics, then this app really is a must have. Until next week, happy reading everyone!]]>

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