headlines

Newsflash: AP needs a better app

AP News is a free, mediocre news-reading app for the iPad with a scrapbook-style interface and a surprisingly inefficient use of the iPad's screen space.

Articles appear as headlines with small photo thumbnails on scraps of paper, scattered spaciously across a linen background. You swipe to flip through stories in a given category (such as politics, sports, or health), or you can swipe across a column in the middle of the screen to switch between categories.

The screen is topped by local weather (in oversize Comic Sans, inexplicably), a large AP logo, and two large panels for viewing photos … Read more

The 404 911: Where we put our ear to the cloud (podcast)

Welcome to the bigger and beefier 404 Podcast! With Buzz Out Loud going weekly, we're taking the reins and reporting all the daily tech news headlines in addition all the discussion topics, voice mails, and jokes at Wilson's expense you've come to expect from our show.

We're also superexcited to have SoundCloud CEO Alexander Ljung in the studio for the second part of today's episode. SoundCloud.com is a music-streaming service that allows anyone to upload and share music across multiple platforms--blogs, direct links, and even cross-platform properties like Outloud.fm and Headliner.fm.

Alexander tells us all about how the company started with just a few musicians playing songs for one another, then slowly grew into a service with over 5 million active users uploading, playing, and sharing music. We'll also talk to him about SoundCloud's partnership with Facebook announced last week at the company's F8 Developers Conference, and what you can expect from the Web service in the coming months.

Stay tuned after the break for more discussion topics about this weekend's Facebook paid-services hoax, more Facebook privacy flaws, and more!

The 404 Digest for Episode 911

Amazon is set to announce a tablet on Wednesday. Amazon Instant adds FOX movies and TV shows. Netflix gets DreamWorks movies. More Motorola Xoom 2 leaks: Two models? Apple slashes fourth-quarter iPad orders, report says. Yes, Google Drive is coming. For real this time. Hoax! Fake Facebook fees. "Read" in Facebook--it's not a button, so be careful what you click! SoundCloud opens its first U.S. office in San Francisco. Outloud.fm lets you share tracks from SoundCloud. Follow Alexander Ljung on Twitter. Bathroom-break videos of the day: Boston Terrier dog likes his belly tickled and a cat's first day of exercise.

Episode 911 Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

News Feaster

The Internet is the Best Thing Ever for news junkies, and RSS feeds help make it that way. Pmcc's News Messenger is a free news reader that reads not only Atom and RSS pages but also HTML, so it can read headlines from sites that don't support syndication. It requires Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 or higher.

We extracted and saved News Messenger's program file, which immediately scanned for updated headlines when we opened it. The program displays headlines and brief summaries as well as time stamps in a narrow vertical column that can be configured to … Read more

Amazon lightens bookbags

Links from Tuesday's episode of Loaded:

Amazon lets students rent textbooks

Hackers attack News Corp.

Apple Mac OS X Lion launch tomorrow

CNN live news comes to mobile

Google buys g.co

Headliner.fm + SoundCloud = artists reaching new fans

American rock singer Rob Thomas needed a new way to promote his single, "Someday." His agent, Nick Lippman, used Headliner.fm to promote a campaign around the new song. Headliner.fm gives artists like Thomas a way to connect with other musicians, and gives those other musicians an incentive to recommend new music to their own fans.

Lippman, a vice president at Lippman Entertainment, said Thomas' fans were asked to create a cover image for the single, with the winner's design being chosen. "The contest was a success. We used it to target people who would be interested, because we knew hip-hop guys weren't going to care about his single," Lippman told CNET.

Headliner.fm can be used to help new bands find and book similar unknown, rising stars. Lippman said he uses reports from Headliner.fm to see which bands are talking about one of his up-and-coming bands, New Kingdom. "Finding similar acts that dig New Kingdom outside of their hometown helps us book tours with them," he said.

New Kingdom and Rob Thomas are two of the 78,000 artists using Headliner.fm's service. Headliner.fm's founder, Mike More, says the service is based on musician recommendations: "If you ask another artist to market for you, it's much more powerful than when the recommendation comes from a fan."

I spoke to More on Monday at the MusicTech Summit in San Francisco, where it seemed the tension between old-school music industry folks and digital media geeks softened. Even though many artists use Facebook fan pages and Twitter for their social-media presence, there's still a lot of noise to sort through, for musicians and listeners. Who has time to watch every tweet sent out by Rob Thomas? Existing social-media tools are also limited by the number of fans the artist has. Headliner.fm expands the social network to fans of other artists.

Last week, Headliner.fm partnered with SoundCloud, a start-up that allows artists to upload and share their music. For instance, a band can ask fellow artists to send out messages that link to an iTunes song download page, promote free songs to download, or steer new fans to their YouTube and Facebook pages. … Read more

CNN news app for your iPhone or iPod Touch

There are already several news apps available in the iTunes Store for iPhone and iPod Touch. Some bring you the headlines, while others bring you video, while still others get you the latest images in the news, but there aren't very many comprehensive news apps that bring you everything. Just today, CNN released its CNN App ($1.99) that not only brings you headlines, video, and images, but also adds other useful tools so you can remain in the know wherever you are.

The CNN App interface is immediately impressive upon launch, with sleek white text on a black … Read more

Get the news anywhere

AP Mobile News Network is one of your better choices for keeping up with the latest news on your iPhone or iTouch. This free, easy-to-use app has a gratifyingly responsive interface that gives you quick access to news headlines, photos, and videos. Headlines are broken down into Top News, Local (you can specify your zip code or use your iPhone's location), Sports, and Showbiz, with further subcategories (for example, baseball, auto racing, hockey, under Sports) that you choose from a slick, sliding horizontal navigation bar. The app also has more categories--like Business, Travel, and Politics--and it's easy to … Read more

Writing for the Machine: Hysteria among journalists

Last year, The New York Times published an article called "This Boring Headline Is Written for Google," which focused on the effect search engines are having on journalistic writing. The primary focus was on the negative impact of "writing for machines" and the corresponding loss of creativity such an endeavor entails.

What always amazes me is the fear and anger that many writers express about writing with search engines in mind. Just in using the phrase "writing for machines" they create among themselves a rather Orwellian hysteria, but it is only just that: hysterics. … Read more

Virgin Mobile adds Headliner music service

Virgin Mobile launched a new service today that brings a variety of music content directly to some of its cell phones. Headliner is an interactive music magazine that offers such content as music industry news, album reviews, artist bios, and concert dates. The service does not offer music downloads, but it brings a comprehensive set of information to the music fan as we found in our Headliner full review. The service is $2.49 per month, which may be hard to justify, depending on how big of a music fan you are. Also, since it's a Java app that … Read more