[Featured] Taptu App Officially Comes to Android with Exclusive Features; Interview

dgstorm

Editor in Chief
Staff member
Jan 5, 2011
2,205
130
taptu_overview_black.png

Today the social reader app, Taptu, gets its official press release confirming its launch for the Android Tablet platform. I was able to score an Interview with the apps creator and Taptu CEO, Mitch Lazar. Mitch believes that the Android platform, and more specifically Android Tablets will be his biggest growth market opportunity, and very few news readers have made their way to Android tablets.

Unlike most apps, Taptu is approaching Android differently than its iPad version and releasing three unique features not available on iPhone or iPad. Also, Taptu for Android tablets integrates Facebook and multiple Twitter accounts while letting users 'DJ the News' by organizing all their feeds into custom streams.

The app is built from the ground up for the the tablet platform and is now a universal app for both tablets and Android phones. Taptu goes beyond just reading RSS with the ability to mix and curate your own streams while providing a clean user experience people have come to expect.

Taptu has added three features unique to the Android platform.

  1. Themes: Change the color theme from dark text on a white background to white text on a background for better reading day or night.
  2. Full screen reading: Read articles in fullscreen instead of a tabbed look.
  3. Instapaper support: Don't have time to read it now? Send it to your Instapaper account to read it later.
The new version also allows users to import 100 RSS feeds from their Google Reader accounts, the previous Taptu Android app allowed for 30. To put this in perspective some competitors allow a maximum of 60 content sources total.

Taptu also allows users to control multiple twitter accounts from the Android app, a feature not available on their iOS apps.

My full interview with Mitch Lazar can be found at the link below. Here is a quote from the interview below, along with the full press release.
The inspiration came from exploring and evaluating how we can use our search tech to reposition it around a content and media experience that people would want to use every day, many times. With my background in content and media, I felt that the way in which we explore, share and read in the digital world is evolving from a reliance on single source media to one where people want to mix, mash and follow. Taptu is a powerful platform and the App is just a demonstration of what we can do with a search engine that has the power to deliver such a compelling experience around media. ~Mitch Lazar, CEO of Taptu.

Taptu Launches on Android Tablets with Three New Android-Specific Features.

The free app adds full screen reading, themes and Instapaper support to Android tablets and phones.

CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND & DENVER— May 5, 2011 — Today Taptu, a social media and mobile technology company, is announcing the release of Taptu for Android tablets, version 1.4 of its free Android application that aims to change the way tablet users connect with the world. Taptu is the pre-eminent next generation news service – built by journalists and scientists, and from the feedback of hundreds of thousands of consumers.

Taptu is dedicated to a cross-platform approach, building this new version from scratch rather than just porting an iOS version to Android. Taptu 1.4 for Android tablets adds performance enhancements to all Android devices and has made full use of Honeycomb’s APIs to provide an unparalleled tablet experience.

“We're not trying to mimic the same features across platforms, but rather we are building the best Android tablet experience from the ground up," said Mitch Lazar, CEO of Taptu. “After the millions of downloads of our first generation apps on iPhone and Android, we listened to our customers and further analyzed how they want to consume their news, manage their social networks and mix their favorite content sources.”

Using the Action Bar API, the Taptu app logo, for instance, is clickable and sends you back to the main screen. Transitions within the app are smoother, while scrolling is fast and effortless as a result of hardware acceleration. Lastly, the Fragment API makes it easy to use the same code for both phones and tablets, meaning the features of the app are also available on Android phones.

Taptu is already known for letting you ‘DJ the News’ by mixing stories on topics that interest you into your own streams. Now Taptu is also integrating new features into the Android app not available on the iOS app. Using the Instapaper API, Taptu gives users the ability to archive articles to read later via their Instapaper accounts. With the new Taptu themes, users can also switch between dark font on a white background, or white font on a dark background— allowing customers a better option for reading during the day or at night. Taptu 1.4 also takes advantage of the larger tablet screens with the ability to full screen article cards.

Taptu now lets any android device import up to 100 RSS feeds from Google Reader, which is more content sources than many competitors support, period. Combine this with the ability to integrate Facebook and multiple twitter accounts and Taptu becomes the most powerful service on Android tablets for both discovering and sharing news.

From the biggest stories of the week to your individual passions, Taptu allows you to keep everything organized in a clean and intuitive design. The company’s search engine heritage, allows Taptu to go beyond simple RSS feeds, by actually recommending sources, and enabling consumers to discover new content. Taptu’s search expertise and algorithms also solves showing customers the same story over and over, eliminating duplication seen on other readers.

Download Taptu now: http://bit.ly/grCLYF

About Taptu:

Founded in 2006, Taptu is an award-winning social media and mobile technology company based in Cambridge, England and Denver, Colorado. We build innovative platforms, tools and applications that enable highly personalized creation, curation, recommendation, search, discovery, management, consumption and sharing of content across all personal screen-based devices. Wapedia, Taptu’s popular mobile Wikipedia with over 1 million downloads, is also available for download at the Apple App Store.

See Taptu for more information.

Electronic Interview with Mitch Lazar, Creator and CEO of Taptu
 

kristeltips66

Senior Member
Sep 25, 2010
80
1
I would love to try taptu. I have been using snaptu for couple of years now and it's brilliant.
 
Top