Dr. Who's Reading Room

…Flowboard requires iOS 6 and an iPad, but it creates presentations that are published through its platform and easily viewed on the web, rather like Prezi.

Essentially, Flowboard is a streamlined tool for creating linear presentations, galleries, or magazine-like content with internal and external links, text, images and video.

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—	Make Presentations and Publish on the Web with Flowboard - ProfHacker - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Thinglink Mobile »

ThingLink Mobile is coming. Sign up for a waiting list!

(Source: app.thinglink.com)

Early adopters rejoice!

Y Combinator’s demo day is coming up next Tuesday, but one of its startups has given us all an early surprise to tide us over. Collections is officially launching the public beta of its content manager Mac app today with initial support for Facebook photos, Instagram and Google Docs. The free software aims to reimagine Apple’s Finder tool for the Internet age by pulling together your digital life into one convenient place. Think of it as a stripped-down version of Tweetdeck for content (e.g., photos and documents). It gathers together the feeds from your different accounts and lets you like or comment on the photos and edit the documents. (via Collections Mac App Combines Facebook, Instagram and Google Docs)

Apple recently released a Podcasts app for iOS. This application has a number of performance and interface issues, but some podcast listeners may find it superior to using the Music app (though many standalone podcast apps have far more features than Apple’s app).

When you look at the Podcasts app, it seems as though you can only subscribe to podcasts that are in Apple’s store. This is not true, but the way to subscribe is unintuitive.

When you’re in the Podcasts app and viewing your podcasts, there’s a black bar at the bottom of the window with a Search field to the right. Paste a podcast URL into this field and tap on Search. A dialog will display asking if you want to subscribe to the podcast. Tap Subscribe to add it to your podcasts.

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—	Subscribe to any podcast in iOS Podcasts app - Mac OS X Hints

We’re all very familiar with the concept of All You Can Eat, from the artery-clogging Vegas buffet to the less-literal digital equivalents such as Netflix for TV shows/movies, the various digital music subscription services, and even Audiobooks.com for audiobooks.

In April, Next Issue Media launched with a similar idea for magazines. Pay a monthly fee and get access to a bunch of digital magazines from Conde Nast, Hearst, Meredith, News Corp., and Time Inc. The problem? It was only available for some Android tablets. As of Tuesday, iPad users get to join in the fun with a catalog of nearly 40 magazines, and the promise of more to come. (See the complete list at the end of this story.)

As an avid reader of magazines on the iPad—I subscribe to several through Apple’s Newsstand, with individual apps, and via Zinio—I was excited to get a chance to play with the iPad version of Next Issue prior to its release. (via Hands on: Next Issue all-you-can-read magazine iPad app Review | Macworld)

Have new meme generator app… nothing to say.

Apple Store app adds in-store pickup, accessory purchase | Macworld »

Salespersons? There’s an app for them.

by Dan Moren, Macworld.com Nov 8, 2011 8:22 am

As rumored last month, Apple updated its Apple Store iOS app on Thursday, expanding its in-store pickup pilot program to all of its U.S. retail locations and adding a new EasyPay feature that lets customers buy some items simply by scanning their barcodes.

Apple is rumored to be creating a new digital storefront for newspapers and magazines that, like iBooks does for print books, will serve as a standalone iPad app for purchasing repurposed print content.

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AppleInsider | Apple planning standalone digital newsstand app for iPad - report

This is one of the hoped-for features I saw as the great promise of the iPad.

It could bolster the Fourth Estate by providing a viable subscription model for digital news.
Electronic distribution could contribute to cost-savings.
Electronic distribution, with appropriate investment in alternative energy, could be more “green” than paper.
Assuming Apple allows for the sharing of demographic data, niche advertising could further bolster publishers’ revenues.
Social features already appearing online for crowdsourcing and curating knowledge would become more widely dispersed and mobile.

I keep imagining the very different physical desk and home office I would have if this came to fruition (and could afford and justify the purchase of the device).

In a Twitter message just posted earlier tonight, Sean Kovacs announced that Apple will “most likely” approve his GV Mobile application once he resubmits it to the review process. Kovacs noted in an earlier twitter message that his application fully complies with all 110+ of the recently announced “guidelines” for App Store approval and rejection. GV Mobile was pulled from the App Store back in 2009 along with another application written by Riverturn called Voice Central. Both applications are native interfaces for the Google Voice service, which aim to make placing and receiving calls, listening to voice mail, and using SMS messaging easier using your Google Voice account. During the same time period that these two applications were removed from the App Store, Google itself was waiting for approval for their own Google Voice application, which was, according to Apple, neither accepted or rejected but remains “under study”. Whether or not Google’s Application will now get in the App Store as well remains to be seen, but if GV Mobile makes it back in, Google should too.

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—	“Native Google Voice app coming back to App Store” Will it run on an iPod Touch? What does AT&T think about this?