July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Google launched an update for digital magazine iOS app Google Currents today, which features a new user interface, lots of navigation changes, and a greater emphasis on real-time news.

It’s also really freaking pretty.

Historically, Google hasn’t really followed a specific template when designing applications for each of its many services on iOS. For instance, the iPhone version of YouTube, Google+, and Maps didn’t have much in common aside from being able to use the same account to log in. But that seems to have changed with the latest version of many Google iOS apps, which feature a unified set of design elements (fonts, colors, search bars, and so on) — with Google Currents being the latest example.

The update brings the digital magazine app’s navigation in line with what we’ve seen on the latest versions of iOS apps for Gmail, YouTube, and Google Maps. Currents’ has a search bar that sits at the top of the interface, and a button in the top right corner reveals a YouTube-like sidebar. Opening the sidebar reveals a new breaking news section feed from Google News, an option to add new sources, and several news categories. Clicking a category reveals a sublist of publications.

You also don’t have to use the sidebar, as you can scroll between simplistic categories pages and news sources by swiping left to right. Navigating articles for each source is done by scrolling vertically. You even have the option of including a breaking news feed in each category. Also, to switch between sources within each category, you can click a “Short List” located in the top navigation bar. This seemed like over kill to me at first, but after using the app for a while, I do think it’ll get used often because it speeds up your capability to zip through a ton of news sources.

Overall, Google Currents’ design is crispy, pretty, and consistent with the company’s other iOS apps. If you want to follow a high volume of news sources in a short amount of time, the latest version of Currents is worth getting reacquainted with.

Check out some screenshots in the gallery below, or download the latest version of Google Currents for free in the App Store.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Popular digital magazine app Flipboard is getting some attention from Google in the form of Google+ API support, the company announced today at the Le Web 2012 conference in London.

The support will give Flipboard users access to content streams from the search giant’s social network. The stream will give you access to things like Google+ updates/posts, photos, videos, and other data without having to visit the social network directly. Google+ is hardly the only social network to integrate with the digital magazine — support for Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, and others is already available. The news of the Google+ stream does comes as a bit of a surprise, though, because Google has its own — albeit less popular — digital magazine app, Google Currents.

We don’t have an exact date for when the new Google+ streaming in Flipboard will go live, nor do we know exactly when Google will begin offering a Google+ API for other developers and programs to start using. However, Google VP of product management, Bradley Horowitz, who spoke about the new Flipboard integration at Le Web, did talk a bit about why we don’t have an API yet. He said Google doesn’t yet have good “noise” filtering controls when it comes to Google+, and the company wants to make sure it has built something that won’t cause developers to go back and rework their own creations to preserve the user experience, according to Robert Scoble.

Via TheNextWeb

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With this free app, you can get professionally produced content from around 150 initial partners, including Forbes, PBS and others, each of which create special editions of their content optimized for tablet and smartphone viewing.

If that kind of media sounds too high-brow, you can also browse through YouTube videos, download music and movies, and engage with your friends on Google+.

Here’s a demo video explaining more about how Currents works:

Once you download the app, you can pick out your subscriptions, which will be delivered free of charge. If you’ve already got online subscriptions, including RSS feeds or public Google+ streams, you can add those, too. Or, you can just click the “trending” tab to see popular content that you might also find appealing.

Google is giving content publishers, including bloggers, a handy self-service platform to help them design and customize their content for Currents. And of course, Currents integrates with Google Analytics, so you can see all the nitty gritty details of who’s reading your stuff.

Currents was formerly known as Google Propeller while it was being developed. It and Yahoo’s Livestand were intended to provide variation and competition with Flipboard’s popular iOS app — and to offer a more visually appealing way for mobile users to get around content, in general. That design style is creeping quickly into many modern web apps, as well.