Whether you are educating yourself on the conflicts in the Middle East or just getting the rundown on Miley Cyrus’ latest antics, odds are you’re tuning in to more than one outlet for news.

We live in a golden age of content — in quantity if not always in quality. Checking all your favorite blogs, papers and magazines can be a hassle, particularly if you have a wide variety of interests. Getting all of your news in one place is one guaranteed way to make your life easier.

That’s where Pulse News comes in.

Originally conceived by a pair of Stanford University graduate students as part of a design class, Pulse is a news aggregation app available for Android or iOS. The free app pulls news from across the web and brings it together in easy-to-digest, topic-themed pages that can be read on your phone, tablet or computer.

To start, users have the option to pick out pages on topics they are interested in: technology, politics, entertainment, etc. After the pages are selected, the app automatically assigns several “channels” to each page. Each channel provides content from a popular news outlet that falls under the page theme. For example, a technology page might include channels for Engadget, Gizmodo, CNET, Wired and the Next Web. Users can customize each page by adding or removing channels.

Every time the app is opened, the latest stories from each of your selected channels show up as thumbnail images superimposed with headlines. From there you can read short article summaries directly from the app or go directly to the original site. Depending on your preferences, the app can send notifications when new stories come in.

Stories can be flagged to be read later or to be synced with Pocket, Evernote or Instapaper.  Pulse also highlights stories shared by your friends, and allows you to share your own favorite stories via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+.

It’s worth noting that Pulse is far from the only news aggregation app out there. Other popular options include Feedly, Flipboard, Google Currents and Zite. Each app has its own distinct flavor in terms of design, functionality and content. If you get the chance, try out a few of these news apps to see which one works best for you. However, Pulse is a personal favorite for its sleek, image-heavy user interface design.

Published on September 8, 2013 at 11:12 pm

Contact Linda: lggorman@syr.edu