The iPad is great for many things, but one of the best uses for me is relaxing on a Saturday and flipping through the latest news. There are plenty of basic news apps that grab all the latest headlines for you, but some offer a sleek layout that lets you browse the news using an elegant interface.

I recently reviewed Trapit for iPad, a fairly new newsreader you can train to give you the latest stories about any subject. You simply search for a keyword and Trapit makes a "Trap" of the latest news stories on that subject that you can swipe to browse or tap to view the whole story. Check out my review linked above.

There are a couple other great newsreader apps that offer similar layouts, so I decided to put them up side by side so you can choose the best one for your purposes.

This week's iOS apps are a couple of newsreaders for perusing the latest stories on your iOS device. The first lays out all stories from several sites vertically, then lets you swipe horizontally to see the latest news stories from one site. The second is possibly one of the best newsreaders available, laying out the news and social site updates kind of like how you would read a magazine.

Pulse News for iPad (free) gives you all the news from yo... [Read more]

Pigs...in...spaaaaaaaaace! (It just never gets old.)

It seems like only yesterday that Angry Birds blasted into space. Now it seems they've made contact with Martians.

Well, sort of. Rovio, in partnership with NASA (no, really), just released a new "Red Planet" update for Angry Birds Space (Android | iOS).

The episode comes as part of a free update that went live yesterday in the App Store and Google Play store.

In these 20 new levels, the pigs have hijacked the Curiosity Mars Rover. As always, it's up to the birds to save the day.

Speaking of which, Red Planet introduces no new fowl to fling, but Rovio has created a new astronaut pig. Also on tap: two new "antenna egg" levels.

The update promises to let you "dodge explosive volcanoes and fire asteroids," and if you find the three hidden rovers and landers, you'll unlock even more bonus levels.

The catch, of course, is that you have to play through (i.e. unlock) all the previous episodes (including ... [Read more]

Apple's Mountain Lion and Microsoft's Windows 8 are now out in the real world. And this time more than ever, the two companies are taking the computer into two distinct directions.

After using both of the new operating systems, it's easy to see that each is more solid, more stable, and filled with more-compelling features than ever before. It's also true that Microsoft's radical new operating system is gorgeous, but this is not a beauty contest. Like I pointed out in my review for Mountain Lion, I still think Apple made the better choice in keeping the touch-screen and desktop OS separate. In applying Windows 8 to both tablets and desktops, Microsoft has added a significant learning curve for both devices, and ended up making the OS needlessly difficult and jarring, especially for desktop computer users.

In fact, I've realized that we're now at a place where we've never been before. In a big change from 11 years ago, Windows 8 is the slick upstart competitor, whereas Mountain Lion adds useful changes, but is the more familiar user experience. If you'll remember, when Mac OS X first arrived on the scene in 2001, it was a huge change from Mac OS 9. The Dock, the various graphical changes, and window animations were a big shift from what Mac users knew; Windows 2000 (an... [Read more]