In the days of yore, your morning rituals would include going through the newspapers over a cup or two of tea after which you would feel ready to face the world, fortified with news, analysis and editorial wisdom from your trusted news source.
Things have changed a little and now you consume your daily quota of news and information on the fly, on your mobile or desktop device. News aggregators have entered the picture.
Some great apps and websites sift through multiple news sources and hand you the latest news and analysis on topics and subjects of your choice. You can either glance through the headlines or read in-depth articles from your favourite publications.
Here are some websites and apps that you can use.
You cannot get more minimalist than this. Skimfeed is a huge board of RSS feeds of different publications arranged in a grid. You can't change the publications, but you can change the time frame and the number of links it fetches. Skimfeed has boards for topics such as tech, design, football, cars, Reddit, science and more.
On the left-hand side, there is a section showing all the trending news items of the day for a particular board. There are a couple of other formatting options as well which let you change the font size and the appearance of the website.
This is one of the best applications to consume news in a jiffy and, as a kind of bonus, it is contextualized for an Indian point of view. The app summarizes the news gathered from various news sources in just 60 words, with a link to the original article. You can swipe left to read the full story in an 'in-app' browser.
The news is presented in a card format and you can scroll through the list by swiping the cards up and down. You can also search stories based on topics and customise the feed according to your needs. The app is available on both iOS and Android platforms.
If you miss Google Reader this is the way to go -- a simple RSS feed reader which lists stories in the reverse chronological order. You will be able to read the headlines and a short description of the stories before clicking on it. If the website has full RSS implementation, you'll be able to read the story on the website or the app itself.
But this app doesn't curate the news for you. You need to manually add the publications to the list. Although it does help you to discover various feeds in different sections of news. You can either search for a specific publication or add the RSS feed manually through a link.
Twitter Lists
While some might say that this not an actual tool or an app, it is surely one of the most underrated features of the microblogging network. We all agree that Twitter is one of the best sources to get the news of an event fairly quickly after it occurs. You can add your trustworthy handles in a list of different topics and get your dose of news in under a minute. Alternatively, if you use a desktop, you can use Tweetdeck to look at a particular list.
Pulse was largely an RSS feed reader before LinkedIN bought it. Now, it delivers a mix of news from the industry that you are in, people that you follow and topics that you have liked on the platform. You have to have a LinkedIn account to access the services of the app. Additionally, it shows the news based on your location and from your contacts too.