Google on Thursday announced Google Currents, a news reading application that will compete with the likes of Flipboard, News360 and more. Currents allows users to customize their news feeds and browse through stories in a magazine-style interface. It is currently available for iOS and Android devices, including both tablets and smartphones. Google partnered with 150 different publishers and is offering content from more than 180 different publications. It also provides access to “Google trending editions,” which allows users to read the five most recent trending stories in a variety of topics, such as entertainment, sports or science. Users can add their favorite blogs and feeds and each edition is available offline as well. The application is free and is available in the iTunes App Store and the Android Market now.

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Flipboard, the popular magazine-style news application originally made available for the iPad is now available for iPhone as well. Flipboard allows users to flip through a single feed of articles and photos that have been shared across various social networks. It can also display stories from a variety of news categories including technology, design, “Flipboard picks,” photography, business, sports, style, travel, food and more. The user interface is among the best we’ve ever seen on a casual news application. Android and Windows Phone users may want to check out Pulse for a similar experience, though Pulse isn’t quite as impressive and novel as Flipboard. Flipboard for iPhone is free and is available in the App Store now.

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Adobe announced on Wednesday that its Digital Publishing Suite will offer support for Apple’s Newsstand feature in iOS. Newsstand will allow users to purchase popular newspapers and magazines directly from their iOS device. “With more than 600 titles created to date, the industry-leading Adobe Digital Publishing Suite includes full support for Newsstand subscriptions, which can significantly boost sales and advertising revenue by combining greater content discoverability with flexible payment options required by readers,” Adobe said in a statement. The company noted that publishers will be able to use Digital Publishing Suite to build Newsstand applications as soon as Apple releases iOS 5 and launches its Newsstand application. Read on for the full press release from Adobe.

Publishers To Create Newsstand-enabled Applications with Full Support for Subscriptions

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Sept. 7, 2011 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced that publishers will be able to use Adobe® Digital Publishing Suite to create magazine and newspaper applications that appear in the Apple Newsstand section of the iTunes App Store and the Newsstand folder on the iPad. With more than 600 titles created to date, the industry-leading Adobe Digital Publishing Suite includes full support for Newsstand subscriptions, which can significantly boost sales and advertising revenue by combining greater content discoverability with flexible payment options required by readers.

As a true cross-platform solution, content owners can use Adobe Digital Publishing Suite to target their new digital editions at iPad, Android tablets and BlackBerry Playbook devices.

“Digital Publishing Suite support for Newsstand will provide Adobe’s publishing customers the ability to deliver engaging content directly to the digital doorstep of subscribers on their iPads,” said Todd Teresi, vice president and general manager, Media Solutions, Adobe. “Adobe technology is fundamental to the transformation taking place across publishing and now readers will be able to easily obtain their magazine and newspaper subscriptions in one location and get access to the latest issue as soon as it is published, further accelerating magazine adoption on tablet devices.”

Publishers will be able to use Digital Publishing Suite to create files that are detected by Newsstand and automatically downloaded to the Newsstand shelf, eliminating long download times which can present a barrier to reading content on iPad devices. Applications built with Adobe Digital Publishing Suite and enabled for Newsstand will allow publishers to better merchandise their content with support for Newsstand push notifications and icon covers displayed on the Newsstand shelf, reflecting the latest issue of the magazine or newspaper.

“Tablet devices are changing publishing forever and Adobe Creative Suite® 5.5 software and Adobe Digital Publishing Suite helped us deliver an outstanding product in a new digital format,” said Emin Kadi, publisher and creative director at fashion and design magazine, Clear. “Now, with full support for iOS 5 Newsstand subscriptions, we will be able to further monetize our digital editions and make our content more discoverable.”

Adobe Digital Publishing Suite
Launched in 2010, Adobe Digital Publishing Suite is available in both Enterprise and Professional editions, targeting a wide range of business and media publishers. These hosted solutions allow business publishers, media publishers and advertisers to create immersive reading experiences that combine the visual impact of print design; the flexibility of the tablet format; the immediacy of touch interaction; and the engagement of interactive elements such as video, audio, animated infographics, and 360-degree views. Adobe Digital Publishing Suite tightly integrates with Adobe InDesign® CS5.5 and Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 software, empowering designers with industry‐standard page layout capabilities to create highly designed, engaging digital content that includes a new class of interactivity.

Availability
Publishers will be able to use Digital Publishing Suite to build applications enabled for Newsstand soon after Apple releases iOS 5 and the Newsstand application.

Additional information about Digital Publishing Suite is available at www.adobe.com/digitalpublishing and on the Digital Publishing blog. Connect with the team on Facebook at www.facebook.com/adobedigitalpub and on Twitter at www.twitter.com/adobedigitalpub.

In May BBC launched its official BBC News Android application, but unfortunately it was only available in the UK after its debut. Now Android users worldwide can download and install the application from the Android Market. We typically used to install third-party BBC News apps, but the official one blows those out of the water. Top stories are side-scrollable with beautiful headline thumbnails, and you can easily quickly listen to the World News Bulletin, the Live BBC World Service, or view a quick 1-minute global news summary — all from the home screen. There’s also an option to be notified of breaking news stories. If you’re a news fiend, this app is a must have.

[Via Android Central]

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BBC announced the availability of its free mobile news application for Android on Wednesday. The application provides quick access to BBC’s top stories complete with pictures, videos, and the option to share stories on Facebook or via email. Other features include breaking news notifications, pre-cache viewing, background sync, and a compact widget for viewing headlines from your home screen. There’s even an option to stream live BBC News video content, provided you’re running a phone with Android 2.2 and Flash pre-installed. BBC News for Android is available for free in the Android Market now. Update: for now it’s only available to U.K. residents.

[Via Gizmodo]

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On Tuesday, CNN announced the availability of its mobile news application for the Android platform. The app provides quick access to CNN’s main news stories and features — complete with a picture-driven user interface — and closely resembles the news organization’s current iOS offering. Other features include free access to CNN Radio, breaking news notifications, and the option to share live photos and videos with CNN — a feature CNN refers to as “iReporter.” We’ve installed the CNN application on our T-Mobile G2x, and enjoy the robust feature set it offers. We also dig the customizable widget that is bundled with the app. CNN for Android requires Android 2.1 or higher and is available in the Android Market now.

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In tandem with its announcement that it will move to a paid subscription model for online content, The New York Times said Thursday that it will also begin to sell subscriptions for news content in its mobile apps for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. As per Apple’s iTunes App Store terms, The New York Times will also have to fork over 30% of the revenues from each subscription sold. Users will be able to access the “Top News” content for free, but will have to subscribe for access to other stories. Eileen Murphy, spokesperson for the Times, told AllThingsD that content will also be available for Android devices, as well as BlackBerry smartphones, although it will not be selling subscriptions through those app stores. As we reported earlier, those viewing The New York Times content will be able to read 20 articles at no charge, and subscription plans will range from $15 to $35. The $35 option provides all access to digital content, although we also found that print subscriptions, which include full digital access, may save users some money each month.

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Thanks to reports filed by two financial analysts, the Internet has been abuzz with rumors and speculation about an alleged delay to Apple’s two flagship products: the iPhone and iPad. Citing last minute design changes and supplier bottlenecks, the unrelated reports both concluded that the launches of the two iDevices would be pushed back several months. Apple’s stock is currently trading down nearly 2.5% on the news.

Enter Reuters. Adding a little ying to the bearish analysts’ yang, the publication is reporting that its sources indicate both delay rumors are simply ”not true.” Citing people “familiar with the matter,” Reuters writes that both the iPad 2 and iPhone 5 should be delivered on time and as expected in the coming months.

It’s all hearsay at this point, but if Wall Street (and consumer) expectations are correct, we should see the iPad 2 unveiled in the next 30 to 45 days and a revamped iPhone sometime in June.

UPDATE: A new report suggests Apple will soon announce a March 2nd media event where, presumably, the company will unveil the iPad 2.

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In a short press release this morning, iMaker Apple, Inc. announced that it anticipates sales of its new Apple TV device to eclipse 1 million in sales “later this week.” The announcement was made a little early by Apple’s PR team as later this week most consumers, writers, and analysts will be sitting by their respective fires roasting chestnuts… or something like that. The new Apple TV was released on September 1st of this year — it has taken the company just under three months to reach the 1 million units sold milestone.

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I obviously wanted to be 100% sure about this before I posted a follow up post, but before I go into the details, I’d like you all to know about how we operate over here…

Yes, BGR runs rumors and information that is not always completely confirmed. That is part of the game we are in. What we and other quality sites do is research, confirm, and make our best editorial judgements before running information that is not yet confirmed. Over the past 5 years, I’ve had more exclusives in the mobile field than anyone or any site on the entire planet, and my accuracy rate has been ridiculously high. I’d guess above 95%.

It’s a knack, a gut feeling, a judgment call that you sometimes make when you are sharing valuable information that no one has ever reported on before. There have been countless, and I do mean countless things other fine writers at BGR and I have walked away from entirely. Not ridiculous tips like “the iPhone 7 has been released on Sprint and you can only buy it at Best Buy”, but rather high quality photos, or videos — things very hard to fake. And we walk away.

One recent example in memory actually is the Xbox Kinect. We had that exclusive story sent to us as an anonymous tip a day or two before Engadget published it, revealing it to the world. Someone sent to us a photo of the then unheard of motion-controlled Xbox accessory, and lightly detailed it for us. They worked at an ad agency and were filming this promo piece, so they snapped a quick photo and shot it over to us. We couldn’t independently confirm something so amazingly cool like a brand new way to experience and play video games, so we passed on running the story. Since we were the tipster’s favorite site, he sent it to us first, but still wanting to share the information, he sent it to Engadget who then ran the story. We’re not saying Engadget did a poor job from an editorial viewpoint because they might have confirmed the story with a source at Microsoft, but we specifically couldn’t, so we passed. That is just one example of hundreds on how journalists and reporters make decisions on whether to go with a story or not, and it is always better to be safe than sorry. Our reputation isn’t worth a small or large exclusive. There is no reason to burn our readers for a cheap uptick in traffic for a day or two. It is not how I or we operate, and never will be.

On to the Steve Jobs emails.

Jason Burford, someone who we have never worked with in the past, emailed us and said that he had a pretty interesting email conversation with Steve Jobs and wanted to share it with us, but wanted to be compensated. He sent us the email headers and we had some of our independent tech guys verify the email header information and then inform us whether they were legitimate. Their response was yes, that they were legitimate, and that the entire thread would be extremely hard to fake, if not impossible. After speaking with Jason and getting more background, I decided to run that story. There was an error in my write up where the last line in the article was written to be said by Steve Jobs, when in fact it was Jason who emailed that in reply to Steve Jobs.

The last line was a huge mistake on my part. Jason emailed me probably 8 times over the course of an hour. He then started emailing Michael and Andrew to have them get a hold of me to correct that last quote’s attribution to Steve Jobs when it should have been attributed to Jason. His emails were stuck in Postini, my spam filter, and I didn’t get to see them until Michael and Andrew both forwarded me his emails telling us that last line was incorrect. But that still doesn’t change Apple from telling Fortune and Engadget that this exchange wasn’t with Steve Jobs and was fake, right?

Well, I personally couldn’t give a damn if this email was with Steve Jobs himself or not. What I care about is whether this was with Steve Jobs’ email box, one that is obviously monitored by a bunch of employees at Apple, either in customer service or PR, or both. So, is it possible that Steve Jobs himself did not write those emails to Jason Burford? Without a doubt. Is it possible that these replies were fabricated, and didn’t come from someone at Apple sending emails to Jason Burford from Steve Jobs’ email address sjobs@apple.com? No. I believe 100% these emails are real, as I have been given access to Jason’s Google Apps email client and verified those headers to be legitimate, undoctored, and kosher. The replies were all real, the timestamps were all matched up, and the thread was consistent. This was not faked in any way whatsoever. Then there is also the logical part of me that would say, “why?” Why would someone waste so much of their time to have their name involved in something so stupid when they are lying about it? To the extent of having their parent’s company now dragged into this, who both probably had no idea of this email exchange?

Let’s go over it one more time… someone who wanted to remain 100% anonymous and only asked to be paid a nominal fee of a couple hundred dollars lied and completely made up this entire thing? Someone who showed me in his AT&T call records more than two calls from Apple representatives (Texas phone numbers, confirmed to be Apple Customer Relations) on the exact dates he said they called trying to resolve the situation after he had emailed Steve Jobs? Someone who repeatedly emailed me and the BGR staff to correct the last line in my story since it wasn’t accurate? Someone who has now had his name revealed to the public via a tasteless article from AppleInsider, and is now being called by reporters non-stop asking about this article and whether his exchange is true or not? They still wouldn’t admit this was fake? No, you know why? Because it wasn’t fake.

Steve Jobs might not have personally sent those messages, but there isn’t any amount of spin Apple PR honcho Steve Dowling could throw on at this point because those email messages came from Steve Jobs’ email box, and that’s all I or Jason care about.

And for the record, Apple PR has shockingly not responded for comment.

Here are the undoctored email headers if you’re interested. I copied them from Jason’s Gmail myself:

I am really excited to share that I will be speaking on a panel taking place at NYU on June 8th during Internet Week with pretty good company — Dan Abrams, Arianna Huffington and some other great folks. It is put together by Patrick Phillips of I Want Media, and if you are thinking of attending my first public appearance (yes, that sounds funny to my ears as well), I would act soon as seating is very limited.

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I wanted to share some amazing news with you all.

I am happy to report that BGR has been acquired by MMC. Moving forward, CEO of MMC Jay Penske and I are partners on BGR, and I couldn’t be happier. This will allow BGR to grow enormously. From a more comprehensive and diverse editorial staff — all the way to the relaunching of BGR as BGR.com with new features and functionality, the site will advance dramatically and continue our mission: to break the biggest stories in this category possible. I am the President, Editor-in-Chief, and General Manager of BGR, and will continue to run the business as well as the editorial aspects of the site — nothing will change there.

BGR was started by myself, Jonathan Geller, a little more than four years ago. In that time, it has grown from just a small passion project into a profitable, dominant online business that is ranked with some of the biggest sites on the web.  As I write this, BGR is, according to Technorati, ranked #49 out of every single site in the world. When I think back about how this was accomplished, and how with just a few great writers, and practically no infrastructure, we built something pretty mind blowing… I can’t wait to hit #1.

Thank you for making BGR your daily go-to for the latest mobile and gadget news, we will have more information over the coming weeks on what we are working on to make BGR better than ever. Press release is after the break!

- Jonathan

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MMC ACQUIRES BGR.COM ONE OF THE LEADING DIGITAL CONTENT SITES IN THE WORLD

Boy Genius Report and Jonathan Geller join MMC, Jay Penske’s growing digital media and publishing network

LOS ANGELES – April 27, 2010 – Mail.com Media Corporation, (MMC), the digital media company that owns and operates the Mail.com portal and email service as well as a growing portfolio of lifestyle brands including, Deadline.com, HollywoodLife.com, Movieline.com and OnCars.com, announced today its acquisition of BGR.com, one of the top mobile/gadget sites in the world. MMC also begins a long-term, multi-year partnership with Jonathan Geller, the highly respected founder known as Boy Genius from Boy Genius Report.

Launched in October 2006, BGR.com has grown quickly to become one of the top three sites in the mobile category. Demonstrating its appeal to a broad audience that extends beyond mobile, Technorati also lists BGR.com as one of the Top 50 most influential content destinations in the world, across all categories.

Like many kids with a fascination for technology and gadgets, Geller owned his first cell phone from the young age of 10 years-old. At 17, he began writing for Engadget. Not long afterwards, he started BGR as a passion project that quickly transitioned into the “go-to” site for breaking news for mobile devices and gadgets.

Now reaching over 1 Million users per month, BGR.com is the leading source for breaking news and analysis on products in-market as well as prior to launch. The site has also broken the news first on almost every new BlackBerry handset. In 2006, BGR.com was the first to report on AT&T’s second half product launches before the news broke in mainstream media. Over the last four years, BGR.com has been the first to break news and provide exclusive content about many of the most significant product launches–months before the release and formal announcement.

Commenting on the move to MMC, Geller said “I’m excited to be able to partner with Jay Penske and MMC on the BGR property. I look forward to continuing to grow BGR globally with the support of MMC’s talented team and extended network. Our new platform will allow us to deliver the same high quality exclusive breaking news that we’re known for, but to an even larger audience. I’m also excited to have the opportunity to expand BGR beyond just the mobile category to reach a new core of ferociously dedicated readers”.

The impact of the expansion cannot be underestimated. RIM’s stock price increased by over 30% immediately after BGR.com broke the news of their new devices. Motorola’s stock price grew by 8% following BGR.com’s review of the DROID. Testament to the fact that the immediacy with which new media sites like BGR.com and Deadline.com, that break news and report on major events first, does in fact, move the needle in the financial sector.

“We’re thrilled to announce our acquisition of BGR, and partnership with Jonathan. Very much in the mold of Nikki Finke of Deadline.com, Jonathan has singlehandedly built an influential site with original content that appeals to an extremely engaged and loyal following in one of the largest and most exciting categories online–and he’s done it all before his 23rd birthday” said Jay Penske, the founder, Chairman and CEO of MMC. “I believe MMC is a perfect fit for Geller and BGR.com–because we provide the most original and conversational content on the web, and have the skill-set, infrastructure and reach to accelerate the scale of the BGR brand”.

About BGR.com

BGR, or Boy Genius Report as it was formally known, was founded by internet personality Boy Genius (Jonathan Geller). Starting off writing for Engadget and Engadget Mobile, the then anonymous blogger quickly gained a massive online following by constantly breaking stories in the mobile gadget space. With the rise in popularity of Boy Genius’ columns, a formal website became a necessity.

Visit BGR on www.bgr.com

Follow BGR at http://twitter.com/boygeniusreport

About Mail.com Media Corporation (MMC)

MMC is a leading digital media company founded by CEO Jay Penske in 2004. The company owns and operates Mail.com, a global multi-media publishing platform. In addition, MMC owns a unique portfolio of lifestyle brands that provide the web’s best original content in categories including entertainment, automotive, breaking news, tech/gadget, media, finance, health, beauty, style and sports. Mail.com, OnCars.com, Deadline.com, HollywoodLife.com, BGR.com, Movieline.com, Fan.com, are all part of the MMC digital portfolio.

Apparently there isn’t enough to do in Washington these days. 20 House of Representatives lawmakers have pressed the FCC to investigate how and why Google decides to block certain phone numbers with its Google Voice service. After numerous complaints were filed by said Representatives, mostly from rural areas, the FCC has sent a formal inquiry to Google and asked for a response by the 28th of this month. Google insists that it is not a “traditional” phone company and should not be regulated as such. Just one more thing to keep the lawyers at the search giant busy, huh?

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RIM announced on Tuesday their new Web Signals technology that lets content providers push relevant and timely alerts directly to your Blackberry. Like SMS alerts on steroids, the new Web Signals will alert Blackberry users of the latest news, weather, sports, entertainment, financial information, etc. You won’t get plain old 160 character text alerts sent out en masse at regular intervals; the new Blackberry alerts will be automatically generated when new content is published and will provide one-click access to the associated online content. Can you see the content providers jumping for joy as they envision large increases in site traffic? Oh, yeah. Can you also see Blackberry users sinking under a deluge of push content? Nah, we didn’t think so either. Berryheads love their push content! At launch, RIM has Canada’s CBCNews, Thumbplay, Dada Entertainment, and The Washington Post on board and ready to launch their Web Signals powered alert services. Hey Blackberry users, let’s crank it up a notch and get on with some serious pushing!

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