United Kingdom
Very
good
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"Taptu - DJ Your News" - Tap Into The Headlines!
Tested version: 1.4.0
Latest version: 2.0.5
Requires Android: from 2.1
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Summary
Keeping up with the latest headlines has never been cooler. Whether it's about the latest natural disaster to hit North America, a dirty political campaign or your favorite sport's teams results - the news offers something interesting for everyone. In our current digital age, however, it can be difficult to sort through the barrage of stories to find exactly what you're looking for. "Taptu - DJ Your News" positions itself as a hip and cutting-edge news app that is meant to provide users with a personalized experience.
Find out how this app with a Finnish-sounding name compares to other news apps on the market in today's review.
Test video
Features & Use
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From the get-go it's obvious that a tremendous amount of work and creativity has been put into Taptu. When you first launch the app, you'll be guided through how to use the app with a colorful and well-designed tutorial. It's structured like a mini graphic novel with each screen representing a specific tip on how to better utilize the app. There's just no getting around it - everything is über-cute, stylish, funny and kind of adorable.
It's easy to get charmed by the beautiful packaging, but what does the app actually have in store? On the most basic level, Taptu allows you to add your personal favorite news streams to create a customized news feed put together from various sources. Sound familiar? Well, it should because Taptu is very similar to Pulse News - an app that got a great review from us a while back. Both Pulse and Taptu are based on the idea of presenting different sources of news vertically while browsing horizontally within each specific news source. This is a great way to layout and organize the news - no doubt about it. If these apps appear to be so similar, what's the big deal with Taptu?
Taptu comes with a so-called StreamStore - a virtual library of different news feeds. Don't let the name scare you - all news streams are completely free. Not all news sources (e.g. BBC News) allow you to read full-length articles, but Taptu always allows to view the entire thing in your browser if worse comes to worse.
Just press the + sign to add new feeds to Taptu. You can either select from a couple dozen of featured feeds (including such popular sites as The Huffington Post, The Onion, but also some really obscure random ones). Taptu also lets you add Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn as individual news feeds alongside blogs and more traditional news sources.
For a wider selection you can search for news sources in the Topics section based on different categories. There's a wealth of different feeds out there - I managed to find every major news source that I follow religiously online. If you are looking for something more obscure you have two options: search for the RSS feed using the integrated Bing search (death stare at Microsoft!) or integrate your Google Reader feeds into Taptu. Amazingly, Taptu allows you to add 100 Google Reader feeds. Adding your own RSS feeds is usually hit or miss because the formatting is often way off. Using Google Reader is probably the better way to go for viewing RSS feeds in Taptu.
As with any news app, Taptu allows you to bookmark your favorite articles and share them with people via email and social networks. By marking an article as a favorite, Taptu automatically adds it to a Bookmarks feed that appears at the top of the screen (can be repositioned to any spot afterwards).
Taptu also gives you the tools for total customization. Tap the pencil icon to edit the layout of your news feeds. There you can move feeds around, merge them together (a great feature) or delete them altogether.
Bottom Line:
Taptu - DJ Your News is a great news app that gives you a lot of freedom and flexibility to create a custom news experience. I have to admit that Taptu is so similar to Pulse that I have difficulty distinguishing between the two. One of the advantages of Taptu is that it allows space for more news feeds than Pulse at the moment. This is quickly changing, however, since the latest version of Pulse has increased the number of feeds to 60 from 25. Taptu may not be the most original app, but it does offer an impressive set of different news categories and sources and is definitely great alternative to Pulse. And as a sidenote - please be sure to check out their crazy add campaign. It's worth a look.
Screen & Controls
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As much as the introduction and tutorial are cute, the design of the actual app is functional but modest. Thankfully, everything is extremely simple and self-explanatory. Swipe up and down the screen to scroll between news sources and slide side to side to read more articles from the same news source. To access Taptu's Settings press the menu button. There you can adjust the way your streams look in terms of fonts and themes.
A neat little gimmick is the fact that "Taptu - DJ Your News" refreshes all your feeds when you shake the device. You can also enable cool sound effects along with it. All in all, everything can be adjusted with the help of just four buttons at the top of the screen.
Speed & Stability
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Your Taptu experience will depend a lot on the speed of your device. Some of the graphics components are pretty demanding. Taptu - DJ Your News should work like a charm on newer devices, but it may be a bit sluggish on older Android 2.1 devices. Obviously, Taptu is geared towards the higher end devices and runs splendidly on the Nexus S.
Price/Performance Ratio
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Taptu - DJ Your News can be downloaded for free from the AndroidPIT App Center.
Reviews of this app in other languages
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Wapedia: wikis & encyclopedias
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Taptu Wapedia is the fastest way to access content from Wikipedia and many other wikis. (...)
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Jun 1, 2011 4:44:56 PM
what? seriously? taptu works way better on my nexus s than pulse ever did on my old htc.,..
Jun 1, 2011 4:49:03 PM
oh and the taptu youtube ad campaign is totally dope btw: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymzQRIvx8Kg
Jun 1, 2011 8:27:18 PM
Yan,
Thanks so much for your feedback and view on Taptu. While we are flattered that you hold us in such high esteem with our fellow competitors, Taptu has actually been in the market since 2006. Our company grew out of the Cambridge Science Park in the UK and we built our technology on the science of mobile search. Taptu has won numerous industry awards for its design and user interface as early as 2007 and 2008, based on a similar visual card layout for mobile search and discovery.
What makes Taptu different—or at least what our fans have been telling us, and writing in their reviews on the Android Market—is our feature we call “DJ Your News.” This lets them mix, mash and merge their favorite feeds into one single stream. So if you’re into technology news, for example, you can mix Engadget, Gizmodo, TechCrunch and even Androidpit all into one single stream, rename it, and watch all the stories flow in one place. Give it a try in our StreamStudio! We’ve had great feedback on this feature, with fans sending in the streams they’re mixing like the ones on hip hop, mobile phone photography, wine, coffee, and even robotics.
As for our ads, we're glad they've struck a nerve with you. We achieved our goal. The point of the ad is that anything your into is accessible and available on Taptu... from your most niche passions to your widest interests. If your Into It, Taptu It!. Love it, Taptu It. Follow It, Taptu It. Seen It, Taptu It. Taptu is all of your interests in one place! It puts an end to your App hopping dilemma. In fact, we think our videos our so cool, we're challenging others to make better ones and launched a global video competition with one of Hollywood's top FX studios to invite customers like you to make their own video to show us how you Taptu. The winner gets an internship with the studio in their choice location of LA, NY, London or Bombay. We look forward to seeing your video there on our You Tube channel! Thanks for sharing your thoughts and I hope you give Taptu another test drive.
@MitchLazar, Taptu CEO
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Market Comments
Mark, Apr 18, 2012
Oh dear... Was really fast but new ui update seems to have replaced gloss with speed... shame.
Joel, Apr 18, 2012
The best! Unlike Pulse, this doesn't run all the time and suck the battery down. I love it.
Josh, Apr 18, 2012
Thanks but..... Quality app, but now the new GUI is a complete eyesore...why ruin a good thing? :(
Alex, Apr 18, 2012
Great RSS Reader Since there are 3 sizes, if big is too big and small is too small, then medium should be just right. I like the bigger feeds.
Skyfall, Apr 18, 2012
Updates ruined it You have ballsed it up good, changing stream size gone ans I have this terrible looking app now, please change it back.
Chris L., Apr 18, 2012
Oh no! Used to be the best news app on the market. What happened? New UI is horrible! Bring the old back! Is there any way to uninstall update?
fatman_walking, Apr 18, 2012
Taptu sucks now Taptu *was* my favorite android app. Now the tiles are either too big or too small and no longer have the detail they used to have for twitter and Facebook views. Bring back a way for me to have my old Taptu look!
JOHN, Apr 18, 2012
Garbage since update! You can no longer hide ads. No more most shared stream. Get PULSE instead.
Brian, Apr 17, 2012
Hate the new look Ruined a great app. It's not an 'improved UI' it's horrible. Don't fix what wasn't broken, please can we have the old version back?
Wolfie, Apr 17, 2012
Great app! Have to revise my initial review of 4 stars.. Do NOT like the new update. Lags in loading cards, card view is ugly, all around unhappy. I used to look forward to the easy reading of everything, now it is just frustrating, very sad such a great app has gone backwards :( Initial review-Have had no problems. Really nice way to keep everything in one place
Robi, Apr 17, 2012
Favorite app UPDATED REVIEW: New update has made the small view too small, the medium too large, please correct or offer more choices and I'll return this to five stars! Tried other readers, this is by far the best.
Ian, Apr 17, 2012
Awful update... I have to fully agree with Paul's review, after the update with "improved GUI" the display is now either too small or too big. This was my favourite app on my Xoom, but this GUI update is awful! Hope I can uninstall the update and revert, if not I will be looking for alternative app! If developers read this, please please give us the old GUI back as this is not an improvement!!
Alexander, Apr 17, 2012
Best reader This reader is even better than Pulse, allowing you to add Twitter and Linkedin - and that says a lot! The new UI looks amazing!
Oscar Lizandro, Apr 17, 2012
excellent wow! I love the new interface. pulse defenitely has to step up its game now
Ernesto, Apr 17, 2012
THE BEST I have tried everything, feedly, G currents, pulse, channel caster and let me tell you Taptu is the best by far.
Peter Long
Sticking with Pulse Reader for the near future...This looks like just a total rip-off...