News Feed

Five 'News Feed' stories September 2011 - May 2014

Review: Fresco for iOS condenses the headlines to photos, stories to quick descriptions

Sarah Guarino May 20 2014 - 8:06 am PT

Fresco News is a news reader app that delivers news in a whole new way by displaying informative, captivating, emotional photographs. It features content from political, sports, business, technology and entertainment news providers such as Aljazeera, BBC, Bloomberg, Boston Globe, CNN, The Guardian, Huffington Post, maskable.com, NY Post, NY Times, Reuters, Time Magazine and VICE News. Users get to scroll and flick through the images that convey the news.

Fresco presents the news in the form of a photo feed that illustrates each headline visually. Tapping a photo offers a brief description of the photo and the associated story. Tapping on it again allows you to view it in a fullscreen parallax-enabled view. You can also read the full accompanying article from a variety of news sources.

Compared to “traditional” news apps, Fresco is a helpful app that provides a practical, enjoyable news experience. For anyone who wants to stay informed of current events, the app provides a significantly less cumbersome method for getting the latest news.

Currently the photos in the feed come from professional journalism photographers, such as AP, Getty, or Reuters. In the app’s next update, the images will be a mix of professional and crowdsourced. The photo does have to be approved by the developers in order to show up in the app, but users will have the opportunity to be paid for their photos.

According to John Meyer, founder and CEO of Fresco News, when a newsworthy event takes place close to a Fresco user, they will receive a push notification informing them that they can be paid for photos of that event. The process of submitting a photo takes less than thirty seconds. Meyer is also working with news organizations to license their photos.

The next update will also contain more options for navigating within the app, allowing users to choose which feed to follow based on topic, interests, location or user.

As an avid news consumer, I will definitely be taking advantage of this free app, and highly recommend it to other like-minded news junkies looking to get the latest headlines. You can get Fresco News from the App Store for free.

Review: Wibbitz for iPhone creates video summaries from news articles

Sarah Guarino Oct 26 2013 - 12:00 pm PT

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Wibbitz is a free innovative news-reader app for iPhone that creates a video summary of text articles from major news outlets. It features political, sports, business, technology, and entertainment news providers such as CNN, BBC, Huffington Post, FOX, TMZ, and Sports Illustrated. Some specific local outlets such as the Jerusalem Post, UK Telegraph and Korea News are also available. The app summarizes the text and images in the articles into videos between one and two minutes long.

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Facebook testing silent, auto-playing videos in News Feed for its mobile apps

Jordan Kahn Sep 12 2013 - 2:25 pm PT

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Facebook announced today that its beginning to test auto-playing videos in News Feed for its mobile apps. Videos in the News Feed will automatically begin playing as users scroll, but they’ll be silent until users tap to switch to a full-screen view with sound:

Today we’re starting to test an easier way to watch videos on Facebook. Now when you see a video in News Feed, it comes to life and starts playing. Videos initially play silently, and if you want you can tap to play with sound in full screen. Scroll past if you don’t want to watch.

It didn’t mention specific platforms, but did post the image of its iOS app above. Facebook’s Instagram app, which implemented new Vine-like video features back in June, already auto-plays videos by default as users scroll.

The company’s blog post notes that the silent, auto-playing videos in Facebook will include videos posted by individuals, musicians, and bands initially, but it does have plans to “explore how to bring this to marketers in the future.”

The new feature will be rolling out as a limited test in the coming weeks through its mobile apps and “continue to roll out over time.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iCH9ReoH_I

Kickfolio changes name to App.io, brings iOS app demos to Facebook news feed

Jordan Kahn May 28 2013 - 8:16 am PT

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Kickfolio, a service that allows developers to offer demos of their iOS apps directly in the browser using an HTML5-based platform, today announced it is now allowing devs to embed their iOS apps directly in the Facebook news feed. The news comes as the company raises over $1 million in seed funding and changes its ‘Kickfolio’ branding to a more suitable “App.io”.

We’ve told you about the service before, which allows devs to embed playable HTML5 demos of their iOS apps directly on webpages and press releases for as little as $9 a month. Today the company is not only bringing that functionality directly to the Facebook news feed (as pictured above), it’s also announcing that support for Android is on the way.

App.io currently has about 3000 devs signed up, most of which are using the service as a marketing tool to drive users to the App Store. The company says the average user spends about 1 minute, 19 seconds playing the demo with 12 percent making their way to the App Store and those stats are expected to increase thanks to the new Facebook integration. App.io plans to integrate its service with other ad networks and platforms in the future and also launch tracking and analytics features.

You can play an App.io demo of an iOS app below and learn more on the company’s website here:
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Two of your favorites come together: Skype and Facebook

Seth Weintraub Sep 15 2011 - 7:23 am PT

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Announced on the Skype Blog, Microsoft-owned Skype now integrates with (5% Microsoft-owned) Facebook on Mac. With the update, your Facebook friends will be able to see your online status and Skype you without leaving the Skype application. As per usual with Microsoft applications, the Mac version trails behind the Windows version…and as a bonus, non-paying Skype users will now see ads.

Today we’re launching Skype 5.4 for Mac Beta. The launch introduces the same Facebook integration found in Skype 5.5 for Windows. We are excited to finally deliver Facebook integration to our Mac users.

Just like in our Windows client, you will now be able to IM and connect with your Facebook friends without leaving Skype. You will also be able to read and update your News Feed, as well as comment and ‘Like’ your Facebook friends’ posts – all within Skype for Mac. To connect to Facebook, simply sign into Skype, click on the Connect to Facebook tab and enter your Facebook sign in details.

We are also introducing an advertising platform in this new release, but if you are a paying Skype consumer or have Skype Credit, you won’t see any display ads; similar to the model that is currently being used in our Skype for Windows client.

Download Skype 5.4 for Mac OS X Beta. We’re sticking to 2.8, in case the snarkiness didn’t tip you off.
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