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The iPad have transformed into an excellent reading platform, thanks to well-designed news apps like Reeder and Flipboard. Both of these apps are updated throughout the day as it culls links from Google Reader, Twitter, Facebook, and other sources that you manually select.

But Zite, a recently-released iPad reading app, offers a new spin on the formula: auto-curated personalized reading. Zite feeds you content based on the buzz happening in your social networks, articles you’ve read, and how you’ve rated them. Zite works surprisingly well, and sports a very wallet-friendly price (free!), making it a news app that every iPad owner should at least sample.

What It Is, Setup Unlike Flipboard, which simply displays your RSS feeds and social media links in a magazine-like layout, Zite is an iPad app that analyzes your RSS and Twitter feeds and digs up related articles from a wide variety of sources. You don’t simply follow the sources in your feeds as you would so with Flipboard; Zite uses them as springboards for fetching articles with similar subject matters. As such, it can serve as a discovery tool that lets users find cool websites that they never knew existed…

When you first fire up Zite, you’re presented with a trio of boxes that let you sign in to Google
Reader, Twitter, and Delicious. I logged into the first two, but you can skip this step completely and instead select content categories to begin reading. Tapping “Next” began the page-building process.

I began my Zite reading experience on the “Top Stories” homepage. I skimmed a list of story titles, blurbs, and thumbnail images in the left column, and categories

Gadgets
Mac News
Technology
Google
and More.

In the right column. A featured story stretched across the top of the page, and a “Customize” icon positioned in the lower-right corner let me select additional categories ranging
from “World News” to “iPad.” I tailored the experience by keying terms into the search box (Film, TV, Social Media, and Travel Blogs. The last page offers you the option to “Enter Your Own” Keywords.

Next Zite Builds Your Magazine and you are all set!!

Check it out in the App Store.