aggregator

Even in a Silicon Valley flush with young college dropouts, 16-year-old Summly CEO Nick D'Aloisio's age is still an attention grabber.

And despite his age, or maybe because of it, he's perfectly comfortable with reincarnating his product -- technology that can automatically summarize information -- as needed. D'Aloisio's company released a news reading app today that summarizes news articles, creating a sort of CliffsNotes for the news, for the iPhone.

It'll be the second time the London-based teenager has repackaged his product, and this time he did it because he feels like the consumption … Read more

News.me, the social news service that bought and revived Digg in July, announced today that it was ditching its iPhone and iPad apps.

These apps bring users curated news links from throughout the day and present them in a Twitter-like format. The only problem is the display may not be Twitter-like enough.

According to News.me's Jake Levine, the reason they're shutting down the apps is because Twitter's new API guidelines make it difficult for the company to meet the new Display Requirements. Apparently, Twitter's guidelines require News.me to look a little more like … Read more

Betaworks delivered on its promise and launched the newly redesigned Digg Web site today. In fact, the site even comes a day earlier than expected. Just yesterday, Betaworks revealed that the news aggregation site would have a complete makeover that would do away with the headlines list, add photos, and integrate Facebook and Twitter into Digg scores.

"On July 20, we announced that we were turning Digg back into a startup and rebuilding it from scratch in six weeks," Betaworks wrote in a blog post. "After an intense month and a half, we managed to get the … Read more

Here's the simple truth about news on the Internet: Any original article can be (and often is) quickly rewritten and redistributed across the Web--sometimes in ways that credit and direct readers back to the original source, sometimes not.

Now some optimists hope to establish codes of conduct for so-called content aggregation, the NYT's David Carr reports.

Although aggregators can often send a lot of traffic to the site where an article first appeared, that's not always the case.

Last year, for example, writer Simon Dumenco wrote a column for Advertising Age on Steve Jobs' death. Soon after, … Read more

Along with the news that Reddit was spinning out into an independent company last September, the community-curated site also said it was searching for a new CEO.

That new CEO started the job today. Yishan Wong comes to Reddit with an engineering and management background; his last position was Director of Engineering for Facebook.

In a blog post, Wong writes that he was shocked to learn he got the position because even though he had worked at startups and managed large teams of engineers, he didn't have previous CEO experience.

"At first, I didn't really quite believe … Read more

Zite, a leading news aggregator app for iPad and iPhone, says it has struck its first section sponsorship deal--with Intel.

According to Zite CEO Mark Johnson, the chipmaker will sponsor the aggregator's technology section. In addition to seeing an Intel logo in the section banner (on the iPad), Zite users will see occasional sponsored content from Intel's MyLifeScoop site interspersed with the app's standard selection of articles from a wide variety of publications. The sponsorship is expected to last three months.

Although Zite has an existing pact in which women's sports apparel maker Lululemon Athletica creates … Read more

It's been a great week to be a news junkie with an iPhone. On Tuesday, iPad darling Flipboard finally appeared on Apple's smart phone. Yesterday, Google launched its aggregator, Currents. And today, completing the trifecta, Zite unveiled its all-new iPhone app.

Previously, Zite had been available solely for the iPad. It established its place in the increasingly crowded aggregator field by focusing on personalization--giving users something of a Pandora-like experience with news: Like something and want to see more from a specific publication or writer? No problem.

Now, the company--which was bought by CNN in August for a … Read more

Google recently revamped Google Reader to a healthy dose of criticism. If you're unhappy with the changes to Google Reader, we've highlighted some alternative feed aggregators to consider.

We've broken down the choices to Web, Android, and iOS, but some apps are available across multiple platforms and devices.

Feedly (Firefox and Chrome) Feedly is an aggregator that actually pulls feeds from Google Reader. It offers different viewing styles, including titles, magazine, mosaic, and full article. Feedly also has one of the most comprehensive sharing options we've seen. Items can be sent to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, … Read more

Appy Geek is a real-time technology news aggregator that pulls from thousands of curated sources. Running the same engine as its older brother, News Republic, this app is just as smooth, smart, and easy to zip around.

One of the first things you notice about Appy Geek for Tablets is its unique interface. It features dual sliding panels, with one coming in from the left side of the screen and the other from the right. Tap the world icon on the left, and the corresponding panel slides out with a 3D floating tag cloud for picking topics to read about. … Read more