With a focus on personalized news, Zite uses the twitter and delicious APIs to deliver a unique news aggregating experience. 

Zite feels less like a traditional news experience (flipboard tries to recreate newspaper/magazine reading) and more like curated rundown collected by a personal assistant. 

Price: Free.
Ads: None (publishers add them soon)
Content: ★★★☆ (3/4 stars) - Twitter, Google Reader, and Delicious API, but no Facebook integration. Content partnerships took a hit after cease and desist letters from The Washington Post, AP, Gannett, Getty Images, Time, Dow Jones. (source)
Endgame: A rumored $10 million CNN buyout came to went down Aug 31, 2011.

What’s missing: A more simple way to share topics or stories with friends. A CEO the responds to student inquiries and timeliness of this post on my part. 

A screenshot of the Zite home screen:

A screenshot of the Zite section screen:
 

A screenshot of the Zite story screen:

The Zite preview video:

How many times have you typed in a question on google like “What is new and exciting in the tech world?” or “What are the best home remedies for a sore throat?” more often then we’d like to admit right? It would seem though, every time you do type one of these questions in, almost without fail, Yahoo Answers pops up with an answer to that very question, and chances are there is one maybe relatively* (I use that term very lightly) accurate answer that addresses the question at hand, more likely though is there is a slew of inappropriate remarks that have the wherewithal of a thirteen year old boy and his buddies trying to sneak the words no0b and FCUK in as often as they can. Not exactly the most reliable of sources for accurate information.

Crowd-Sourced Answering

Enter from stage left, Quora, a new social platform that allows people to pose questions, and write crowd sourced answers. Crowd-Sourced Answers whats that mean? It means that any user can pose a question, and any user can respond, but, the difference lies in that others vote up the best answers, ignore the bad ones, and can make recommendations for edits to the best answers as to make them more accurate.

Why Quora?

Beyond the crowd-sourced accuracy model that Quora adopted from Wikipedia, which helps to ensure quality, reliable, and correct answers to the questions, Quora provides individualized features that help you aggregate information on all the topics you are interested in. Quora allows you to follow topics, specific questions, and specific users (a large amount of the Quora user base are very influence members of their communities i.e. Philip Kaplan, the entrepreneurial wizard from SyracuseU) which allows users to very quickly find information they otherwise wouldn’t have been privy to. 

Quora is proving itself as a strong startup through their crowd-sourced accuracy model, their easy and intuitive subscription model and the appeal of the wealth of knowledge that the user base collectively has. If you haven’t tried Quora yet, get on over there and start asking questions, if you can’t think of any here’s a suggestion: “Why is Quora becoming to popular?” I’m sure it’s users will have something to say. 

In 2009, Google launched Google Places which allows users to rate and review places and make recommendations to friends. For business owners, Google Places gives businesses the option to “claim” their business. What the hell does that mean? Well, it means business owners can verify the information listed for their company and once this is done, they can update it with photos, links, and offers. The more content rich your listing is, the more prominent your organic ranking is. This is especially of interest to small businesses that rely on Google search engines to gain exposure. For users on the go, Google offers a convenient mobile application supports iPhone and Android devices. As an avid user of foursquare, Yelp, and now Google Places (on my iPhone of course), I am ready to give you the rundown on whether this app is worth using.

Features

Main Page:

After downloading the app, the first prompt you’ll get is whether you’ll allow geotagging to detect nearby places. After clicking yes, you are brought to the main screen which is broken up into 10 initial categories: Saved places, Restaurants, Coffee (who knew it needed its own category), Bars, ATMs, Gas Stations, Hotels, Attractions, Pizza, and Post Office.

How It Works:

Once you click on one of the categories, for example, Coffee, it brings up nearby business listings in that category and shows what it is currently ranked. Once you choose one of the businesses, it will bring you to another screen that allows you rate and review it.

Love It

The Google Places app offers a great feature when you search for a place you can’t see listed. At the top of the screen, if I type in a place such as Target or the yummy Chinese spot up the street, it saves your search and automatically creates an icon on your Google Places interface. What is also cool about this is that if you tap and hold on the business for a few seconds, similar to iPhone apps, you can delete it. It is kind of like having apps within apps. It made me smile.

Leave It

What first struck me about the main page is how it eerily resembles the Yelp interface (see photo). The Google Places app itself does not offer any options for business owners to “verify” their business. It seems inconvenient for businesses that the app is so focused on the end user and doesn’t offer any options for them. Although I prefer the GP interface itself over Yelp’s, I think it sucks that users can’t upload photos as a part of the business (on Yelp you can). I understand that this is meant to give more control for owners but seriously, if I am having a droolworthy dinner at my favorite restaurant, I want to share those pictures with the world. Also, wouldn’t businesses want more interaction with their users that way? It would make their image seem much more personable I say.

In A Nutshell

The idea of it is nice, it really is. I want to love it so bad because it’s Google and I love everything from them but it’s boring. It doesn’t have nearly enough features to keep me interested as an end user. Businesses benefit more from the overall business model but the mobile app itself is too focused on the end user. It’s a tough balance to find in terms of business and user benefits and Google needs to keep looking for it.

Relevant Links /Additional Information http://www.google.com/local/add/analyticsSplashPage?utm_campaign=en&utm_medium=et&utm_source=et-glbl-places-htpt_mbl&pli=1 http://www.google.com/places/ http://www.inc.com/guides/201106/how-to-use-google-places-to-market-your-business.html http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google-places/id406513617?mt=8