So what is Zite and why do I love it? The app is described as "a personalized magazine." The personalization comes from your Twitter account and/or Google Reader feeds. I configured Zite to pull from both on my iPad.
Zite pays attention to what you read and suggests more articles in those same areas. The more you use it the more it learns about you.
I gave up trying to stay up-to-date on all the RSS feeds I'd gathered over the years but Zite is a great way to dip back into that stream. I know I'm not catching all the feeds but I'm reading from them a lot more than I used to and it feels like I'm coming across significantly more relevant content than I did using an RSS reader.
Zite is terrific but far from perfect. It tends to be slow and often refreshes itself when it probably doesn't need to. If it just checked my feeds 3 minutes ago there's really no need for it to refresh them again now. This should be a user-configurable setting not something that automatically happens all the time.
My bigger complaint has to do with the customization options for new content sections. There's a box where you can "enter your own" section but that's misleading. In Google News I have a bunch of custom sections set up to search for specific phrases. You can't get that granular with Zite. If your search string isn't one of their existing sections you're out of luck. That means I still have to use Google News to track all these other items. I hope they'll let you create truly customized sections in a future release. It's a huge opportunity to make this an even more compelling app.
Zite is a must-have app for pretty much everyone. Best of all, it's totally free. I wouldn't be surprised to see them offer a premium version for pay. Heck, if they'd add that full custom section feature I'm looking for I'd be more than happy to pay $5 or even $10 for this one. Highly recommended.
No comments:
Post a Comment