If you own an iPad, you might want to create your own digital magazine that contains material based on your interests. Today we show you how to create one with the recently released free app called Zite.
Zite was released just a few days ago, and has received good a good amount of fanfare from around the tech community. It gathers news based on your interests from Twitter, Google Reader, and other customized content.
1. Download Zite for the iPad through the iTunes App Store via iTunes or directly from your device.
2. The first time you launch it, you can start creating your magazine automatically by signing into Twitter and Google Reader. You can also skip that step and choose from different categories or create your own as well.
3. Tap on Twitter and enter in your username.
4. Tap on Google Reader and you’ll need to sign into your Google account.
5. After signing in you need to click Grant Access so Zite can find your Google Reader interests.
6. After signing into Google Reader and Twitter, Zite will start building your magazine.
7. Now you’re ready to start reading your customized magazine. Just swipe across the screen to start reading.
8. Here’s an example of how the layout looks. The interface is very clean and well organized. There is a nice Sections area on the right side that shows your topics of interest.
9. Just tap on a topic to turn the Sections sidebar off and go directly into the articles pertaining to it. Having it off will give you more screen real estate to read your content. To get back to your Sections, tap on Home or Sections again.
10. Tap on Customize and you can select other sections for your magazine.
11. It allows the ability to enter your own topics as well.
12. Just tap on an article headline to pull it up. Then from the Personalization bar you can vote on the article, get more articles from the site or author, and also allows you to share the article via Twitter, Facebook, or email.
13. Zite makes it very easy to create a custom digital magazine based on your interests. There are a couple of caveats though. At the time of this writing it would crash periodically and due to its popularity, sometimes you would get a message telling you it being used heavily and is running slower.
Overall Zite is a great application for creating your personalized digital magazine. It’s similar to another app called Flipboard, but you might like this method more. Try it out…it’s free and better than paying for a commercial digital magazine where you’d only get maybe a couple articles you’d like to read.