Ad-Free Plugin for Taptu on Android

Posted by on May 16, 2012

As you may have seen on our Android app, we’ve had to introduce ads as a way to earn a bit of revenue to keep us going and to continue funding new features.

A number of you have told us you would be willing to pay for an ad-free experience.

Today, we’re launching our ad-free plugin for our Android app as an in-app purchase. For a small fee (a mere pittance!) you can now get rid of ads on your home screen of Taptu.

You may still see some ads on the article cards, or if you read the story directly on the web — these ads come from the publisher of the article and we can’t remove them.

We hope those of you who’ve asked for the plugin will let us know how it’s working for you. Thanks for the feedback and using Taptu.

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Introducing Taptu-Guardian Environment App for Android

Posted by on May 14, 2012

Hello Taptu Android fans:

Today, we’re launching the Taptu Guardian Environment App for Android. In January, along side the Guardian, we released the iOS version of the app. Since then, the app has racked up healthy downloads, and its composite rating in the App Store is 4.5 stars out of 5. But one thing we kept getting asked over and over again: where’s the Android version? It’s live today, and can be downloaded from Google Play here.

Like its iOS counterpart, the free app–powered by Guardian content–lets you get all the latest green news, comments and images on your mobile or tablet. The app, of course, is completely customizable and lets you read articles from the Guardian’s Environment section but also from other well-known sources for green articles such as Al Gore’s Blog, Mother Jones, AlterNet, SciDev and Yale Environment 360.

Are you watching specific environment news? You can create your own keyword stream from any of our curated streams (Green Living), or from a single source stream (Mother Jones). For example, if you’re really interested in recycling, you could create a “recyling” key word stream from Green Living.

Moreover, like our main news reader app, you can bookmark articles to save them, send them to Pocket (formerly Read it Later) or Instapaper, or share it via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or email.

We hope you’ll give the environment app a try. Let us know how you find the app. We can be reached on Twitter at @taptu, on our Facebook page, or via email at [email protected]

Thanks!

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Taptu 2.1 Now Live: Synching Across All Devices & More

Posted by on May 14, 2012

Hi Taptu fans:

Today, we’re introducing a whole load of new features in our latest update—2.1–for Taptu. We hope you find our app one of the most—if not the most—comprehensive readers on the market. The updates run across all of our apps: iOS, Android, Nook, Playbook, and Amazon.

So, what do we have for you?

1) Synch Taptu Across ALL Your Devices: That’s right, you can now synch your news across all of your devices and you don’t even need to create a new user profile. You can simply log into Taptu using Facebook, Twitter, Google or LinkedIn and all of your mixed and mashed streams from your favorite sources and topics will update in real-time on all devices. And, when an article has been read in Taptu it will be marked as read on all devices.

2) Search Streams for iOS: Search streams have been a hit with our Android users, and we’ve now added the same capability for iOS users.

iPhone and iPad users can now create a stream for any topic from a keyword. How do you do this? Let’s say you want to read news on just “the iPad”. You can either create the search stream from a single source such as TechCrunch, Taptu’s curated Technology streams, or your own mixed stream of technology news. The keyword stream will pull all articles with the term “iPad,” in it.

3) A Significant Face Lift: Taptu has a new look and feel—cleaner and less cluttered. We’ve redesigned the home page and the article cards to make discovery, navigation and sharing even easier. Stories you are reading in Taptu now include links that take you directly to more stories.

4) Localized Versions for Germany, France, and Spain: We’ve translated Taptu in German, French and Spanish. We’ve also created country-specific StreamStores with topics and streams specifically for our fans in German, France and Spain.

5) Taptu now fully supports the new iPad’s retina display.

6) Speed and performance improvements: faster and more fluid, Taptu has gotten a significant boost in speed.

As always, we welcome your thoughts and questions on Taptu. The easiest way to contact us is through @Taptu on Twitter, or on our Facebook Page, or via email at [email protected] Thanks for trying out Taptu!

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Taptu for RIM Playbook is Here!

Posted by on February 22, 2012

Hello Taptu fans:

Do you own a Playbook? We’re happy to let you know today that we’ve taken our popular Android / IOS app and ported it to RIM’s Playbook tablet. You can do all the same things that has made Taptu a 4.5 star app on the Android Market and a 4.5 star app on the App Store.

You can find the news sources you love by searching for RSS feeds or import them from Google Reader.

You can discover new sources through our mixed topic streams that pull in articles from a variety of news outlets and blogs. These topic streams can be found in the StreamStore, or by searching, and cover everything from food and fashion, to finance and business news, and everything in between.

Of course, you can DJ your news, a favorite feature with many of our current users. If you have five different sports streams you follow, you can merge or “DJ” these into one stream to create your own personalized sports stream. Moreover, you can color code it and name it to tailor it further.

You can also interact with your social media. You can Tweet, RT, Quote a Tweet from your Twitter stream as well as replying to someone you follow, quoting their tweets and adding your comments or retweeting directly from Taptu.

On Facebook, you can update your status, Like and Comment from your Facebook stream. If you see something a friend has sent that you want to Like or Comment on, you can do it right inside the app.

Our Playbook app is available now in BlackBerry App World. If you have a Playbook, we hope you’ll give it a try and let us know how you find it. You can download it here.

Thanks!

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Four Ways Big Media Can Survive In The Tablet Era

Posted by on February 3, 2012

Our CEO Mitch has just written an article on how publishers can take advantage of tablets that has just been published on Forbes.com. It’s no secret that reading habits are shifting: Pew Research Center reports that 29% of all U.S. adults already own a tablet or e-reader, thanks to a massive holiday gift-giving push. EMarketer estimates that in 2011 U.S. adults spent 65 minutes consuming mobile content, compared to just 18 minutes on print magazines and 26 minutes on newspapers. As the revolution continues to get digitized, Mitch writes there are four essential rules that publishers need to follow if they plan to compete:

1. On tablets, news is absorbed through personalized streams and flicks. Apps are the new content search experience.
2. Publishers will try to build their own mobile platforms. But platforms already exist to serve them.
3. Syndicate or die.
4. A new revenue model needs to emerge for the tablet revolution.

To read Mitch’s full article, please go to the Forbes.com article here.

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Press Release: Taptu Announces Blogger Outreach Competition, Blog App-lifier, Opens Up Tapform Platform for Two Lucky Winners

Posted by on February 2, 2012

Taptu taps into blogosphere, creating a mutually beneficial, month-long contest that rewards the winners with a free custom news app reflective of their blog content

CAMBRIDGE, England & DENVER – (February 2, 2012) – Taptu, the social media and mobile search technology company known for “DJ-ing the news”, announces today an exciting competition, Blog App-lifier, now open to any blogger in Europe or the US. The competition is simple to enter and boasts a fantastic incentive: a custom-built news app created around the winning blogs’ content as well as any other topics of interest.

The app built for the winners will take advantage of Tapform, Taptu’s unique search-based news aggregation platform that already powers apps for The Guardian and Dutch publication De Pers. Tapform will turn any content into an interactive app that generates streams determined by specific keywords that pull information from websites, blogs and RSS.

How the Blog App-lifier contest works:

  1. Email [email protected] with contact details (name, age and email address) along with the blog name and URL.
  2. The Taptu team will send back a personalized coded bit.ly link, which will record how many recommendations you influence to download and use Taptu on your smartphone or tablet.
  3. Write a blog post and tell Taptu and your readers why you want to win and why your readers would want an app of your blog. You must use the bit.ly link to encourage your readers to add Taptu to their smartphone or tablet so your success can be tracked.
  4. Tweet a link to the blog post using @Taptu and #TaptuComp in the tweet

Full terms and conditions can be found here.

Like the large publishers already using Tapform to power their mobile experience, the winning blog will be transformed into a similar news aggregator app with highly visual streams and the option to feature related content that will appeal to their readers. The Tapform backed app will strengthen the blog as a whole and help grow readership by bringing in mobile readers.

The competition heats up today, February 2, and will end on March 30, with the winner announced on April 15.

Try Taptu today:

For iOS:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/taptu/id392240746?mt=8

For Android:
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.taptu.streams&feature

About Taptu:
Founded in 2006, Taptu is an award-winning social media and mobile technology company based in Cambridge, England, and Denver, Colorado. Taptu builds 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 4 million downloads, is also available for download at the Apple App Store and on the Android Market.

See http://www.taptu.com for more information.

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Taptu wins Best News App Ever Award!

Posted by on January 27, 2012

We were confident that Taptu is the ‘best app ever’ but now it has been proven, as earlier today it was announced that we won the Best App Ever awards 2011 for Best News App on the Android platform. The Best App Ever Awards, now in its fourth year, were created to celebrate the best mobile apps and games available as voted by its readers and this year it had over one million votes overall.

On the iOS platform alone, the number of apps available has reached over 500,000 which means competition was tough. It’s a great feeling that our hard work to develop and design Taptu has proven so popular amongst its users and it was seen as a winner over other credible news reader apps such as Flipboard, Pulse and Google Currents.

Not content with awarding Taptu with Best News App, it was also honorably mentioned for both Most Useful App and Best Visual Design which is fantastic as we work hard to ensure that our social news reader enables the user to enjoy reading the news from a visual aspect as well as having the ability to totally personalize their experience.

Well done to everyone involved with Taptu, and thanks to everyone for voting, it means a lot to us.

KP

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Press Release: Maak je eigen Pers!

Posted by on January 24, 2012

Persbericht

Amsterdam, 23-01-2012

Dagblad de Pers viert vandaag zijn vijfde verjaardag, en lanceert ter ere daarvan samen met Taptu de iPad- en iPhone-applicatie De Pers Krant. Met deze app kunnen lezers een volledig op maat gemaakte Pers samenstellen, door een eigen mix te maken van de secties in de krant, en zich te abonneren op auteurs en dossiers van De Pers.

De Pers ziet bij lezers een groeiende behoefte aan gepersonaliseerde informatie, en speelt daarop in door alle content uit de krant op maat aan te bieden, in plaats van een PDF-versie van de papieren editie. De krant is daartoe een samenwerking aangegaan met het zoek- en aggregatieplatform Taptu, gebaseerd in Cambridge, Groot-Brittannië en Denver, Colorado (USA).

De Pers Krant is gebouwd op Taptu’s zoektechnologie en platform, Tapform, dat media- en internetbedrijven van een eigen sociale nieuwsaggregator voorziet. ‘Taptu is internationaal de enige partij die een volwaardig applicatieplatform biedt en bovendien de mate van personalisatie mogelijk maakt die wij zoeken’, zegt hoofdredacteur Jan-Jaap Heij van de krant.

Lezers kunnen in ‘streams’ alle secties van de krant, een groot aantal dossieronderwerpen en alle afzonderlijke auteurs toevoegen en desgewenst verwijderen. Van de afzonderlijke streams zijn de inhoud en de vormgeving ook in te stellen. Lezers kunnen bovendien zowel hun streams als afzonderlijke artikelen via social media met anderen delen.

De Pers versterkt met het uitbrengen van deze applicatie zijn rol als innovator in digitaal uitgeven. Het laatste nieuws kunnen lezers volgen via depers.nl en de onlangs vernieuwde mobiele versie daarvan in HTML5. Digitale edities zijn te lezen middels de HTML5-webapplicatie iPers (alle platforms) en via externe applicaties als Pressreader, Magworld en Tablisto. Met De Pers Krant wordt daar voor iOS een digitale editie op maat aan toegevoegd. Een Android-versie verscheen al eind december 2011.

Meer informatie:

Jan-Jaap Heij, hoofdredacteur De Pers

0031616477336

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Press Release: Taptu Launches on Samsung’s Bada Platform, Expanding Global Footprint of Popular Social News Reader

Posted by on January 20, 2012

Taptu available now on new Wave M and Wave 3 phones

CAMBRIDGE, England & DENVER –(January 19, 2012)—Taptu, the social media and mobile search technology company, today launches its popular social newsreader app on Samsung Bada devices.

The new app represents Taptu’s expansion to feature phones and cements its dedication to a cross-platform, global strategy with apps on iOS, Android, Barnes & Noble NOOK Tablet as well as Amazon’s Kindle Fire and now Samsung Bada phones. Taptu for Bada gives users access to Taptu’s signature StreamStore, which features over 200,000 unique streams comprised of an array of popular websites and blogs spanning almost every topic.

“What has always set Taptu apart from competitors is our extensive news aggregating platform and algorithms,” said Mitch Lazar, CEO of Taptu. “Taptu for Bada is an extension of our vision for a Taptu app for any mobile device.”

Taptu for Bada also features the StreamStudio that lets users DJ the news, mixing and matching the topics and sources to create the perfect stream of news for them and their unique set of interests. The combination of high quality hardware and touch-based user interface on Bada devices make them an ideal fit for Taptu’s slick, visually engaging reading experience.

As part of the launch Taptu is also announcing that Samsung will be featuring Taptu on two Bada phones, the Wave M and Wave 3. This will provide users a turnkey solution for accessing and organizing all the news that is important to them.

Bada users can download the app here:

http://www.samsungapps.com/topApps/topAppsDetail.as?productId=G00003446609

About Taptu:

Founded in 2006, Taptu is an award-winning social media and mobile technology company based in Cambridge, England, and Denver, Colorado. Taptu builds 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 2 million downloads, is also available for download at the Apple App Store, Android Market and as a Barnes & Noble NOOK app.

See http://www.taptu.com for more information.

Media Contact:

In the US:
Bob Patterson
VSCpr for Taptu
[email protected]
415.302.9806

In the UK:
Dianne See Morrison
Director of Communications
Taptu
[email protected]
07988 539 921

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Press Release: Announcing the Taptu Guardian Environment App

Posted by on December 20, 2011

New app optimized for tablet and smartphone devices features slick interface and reading experience

CAMBRIDGE, England & DENVER, Colorado – (December 20, 2011) – Today Taptu announces the launch of the Taptu Guardian Environment app, the ultimate application for iPhone and iPad dedicated to environmental news.

The app brings together environment content from the Guardian’s Open platform as well as other media brands known for their environmental coverage such as Yale Environment 360, Mother Jones, BusinessGreen and the New York Times. The app gives environment enthusiasts a comprehensive way to discover, read and share the latest news and photos through a beautiful and intuitive user interface. At the same time, the Taptu platform allows users to mix and match stories from their favorite topics to create their own perfectly tailored environmental news service and share those customized content streams with the social web. Grouping together stories from all content providers featured in the app, under the related stories feature, provides readers with a potentially different perspective on trending environmental issues.

“This is a fantastic example of how media publishers could distribute their content and create a deep news vertical and tablet-centric experience using Tapform,” said Taptu CEO Mitch Lazar. “The Guardian’s Open Platform has enabled us to create this app and together with our powerful technology we have produced a rich and highly personalized application that provides all customers with a slick reading experience.”

Features on the app include:
· An optimized touch interface
· The ability to customize and merge different streams to create a tailored reading experience
· A customized StreamStore featuring Guardian and third party curated streams on environmental topics
· A powerful way to discover new sources and articles through “related stories” tool
· The ability to view photos from the Guardian picture archive as a slideshow
· Ability to share stories on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter
· Save stories in the stream for later viewing with Instapaper, Read it Later or Taptu’s Bookmark Stream

Commenting on the app, Damian Carrington, head of environment at the Guardian, said: “We are thrilled that Taptu created an environment app using the Guardian’s content API. As part of our digital-first strategy we encourage the innovative use of our content to create new products, and this app provides an engaging user experience, while also allowing readers to manage their favourite topics in a highly customizable and social way.”

Taptu announced Tapform in September of 2011 as a way to bring news content to mobile while making it engaging, entertaining and inherently social. The first app built on Tapform is the Taptu Guardian Environment app, available for download now.

Download the new app for iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch here

About Taptu:

Founded in 2006, Taptu is an award-winning social media and mobile technology company based in Cambridge, England, and Denver, Colorado. Taptu builds 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 2 million downloads, is also available for download at the Apple App Store and on the Android Market.

See http://www.taptu.com/ for more information.

About the Guardian Open Platform:

The Guardian Open Platform launched in 2009 and gives partners access to:
· Its content API, a database of 1 million articles
· The Data Store, directory of important and useful data sets curated by Guardian journalists
· The World Government Date Store, a search engine for data published by various government departments around the world
· The Politics API, a wealth of information on election day results, candidates, parties and constituencies
· The MicroApp framework, which allows partners to serve content, data and tools directly to users of guardian.co.uk .

Guardian News & Media became the first newspaper publisher to open up its database to partners, who are encouraged to re-use Guardian and Observer content in a creative way on their own websites and to build applications for other digital platforms.

The Open Platform has a number of models for sponsorship, revenue sharing, and commission-based partnerships to help brands and businesses reach audiences in new ways and on a range of online platforms.

Media Contact

In the US:
Bob Patterson
VSCpr for Taptu
[email protected]
415.677.9125

In the UK:
Dianne See Morrison
Director of Communications Taptu
[email protected]
07988 539 921

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