40Tech

We’re always looking for a better way to filter and experience all of the content we discover on the web. Thankfully, there are a ton of great feed readers and news discovery apps out there. Three of the standouts, Flipboard, Zite (which we somehow never wrote an article on, directly), and PressReader, have recently received some significant updates. Some might even call them game-changing. Either way, they’re significant enough that we feel the need to share them with you, so read on! Enjoy! And comment, of course…  

My little girl is three. Three-and-a-half, to be exact — and before now, we never had to worry about her putting things in her mouth. I’m not sure what changed, really, but now we have to watch her like a hawk. And we do — but, unfortunately, it was already too late for my iPad stylus. For both of them…

The first one, she chewed on. It was pretty much a write-off. The second one, she decided it would be fun to see what the business end tasted like. Now I’m down two pens. They were the cheap kind, thank the tech gods, but that’s still about $40 down the drain! So I decided: the next stylus will be one of my own making. One that will cost me nothing to make, and that I can easily repair. And thanks to the wonders of the internet, making that happen was easy peasy.

When we first told you about Hotspot Shield, it was to use the free Virtual Private Network to bypass blocked media, as well as increase your browsing security. Over a year later, we posted a tutorial on how to use the VPN to watch US Netflix outside of United States, using your iOS devices. Unfortunately, the Hotspot Shield sign up process for iOS was broken soonafter, and their customer service team didn’t have a lot to say about it. Now we know why: Anchorfree, the creators of Hotspot Shield have released an iPhone app that makes all of the steps go away, and even solves a few of the problems.

In keeping with their Big Push, Google released a new version of Gmail with a major facelift, as well as released — and then pulled — their long-awaited native Gmail app for iOS.

The new Gmail look, as is to be expected, has a few minor annoyances to accompany some great new features, and the app is actually very cool, but was pulled due to a notification system problem.

Check out the feature-list for both below.

We give cloud storage a lot of love here. And why not? Having access to, and the ability to share, your files wherever you are is peachy keen — and convenient too. It’s a competitive world, though, and the main contenders – Dropbox, Box.net, and SugarSync – have been battling it out via pricing, free storage offerings, and promotions to ensure they get a solid chunk of the target market that is you. The latest play has come from Box.net – and it’s a doozie: 50GB of free storage just for logging in to their iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch app (similar promotions for some other platforms, as well).

It’s been two days now since iOS 5 officially landed – and it’s a hit. There are always a few hiccups, of course, and there are things that could be better and worse, but it’s pretty much the biggest update that iOS has seen since Copy and Paste. In fact, the update was so anticipated that the amount of people trying to get it all at once overloaded Apple’s servers and, ironically, left a lot of customers with an unfortunate upgrade experience. The error 3200 problem seems to be resolved now, however (I had no issues last night), so feel free to jump on in!

Before I upgraded, one of the biggest questions on my mind was how apps and services would be able to integrate into some of the cooler features — like the new notification centre. I was extremely pleased to see that the Springpad team is, as usual, at the head of the curve. They’ve already turned the notification centre into something that will not only make your life easier, but it’ll make things easier for your iOS-using friends as well.

Steve Jobs was an innovator, a forward thinker, and an incredible entrepreneur. He took no prisoners in the battle with his competition and wasn’t afraid to make fun of them, belittle them, or otherwise express his opinion. He used that persona to help create a sense of elitism and superior quality around Apple products that catapulted the brand to wild success – a success only strengthened by the fact that the quality of Apple products often was superior.

It’s been a long time coming. Since I got myself an iPhone, and especially since the iPad, I’ve joined the ranks of the millions of users out there who have been waiting for a simple and easy way to clip web content on my mobile device. I’ve used Read It Later and Instapaper, I’ve copied things into email and sent them to Evernote, Springpad, Producteev, and myself. I’ve even used the desktop clipper bookmarklets with reasonable — if time-consuming — success. That’s all in the past now: Springpad has hooked up the mobile world with a new and improved web clipper that is near to seamless.

Last week, when it was still August (where the hell did the summer go?), Evernote released the mother of all iOS updates. There was a lot to it — a cool redesign, a lock feature for premium users — but the big deal was the inclusion of a rich text editor and the ability to access notes in shared notebooks.

The new features aren’t as robust as the desktop version of Evernote, of course, but are nonetheless dripping with the sort of awesome that makes you want to find your Irish roots and dance a merry jig.

Here are the highlights:

If you have Netflix, you have the ability to stream a wide array of movies and television shows for less than $10 per month. The digital streaming library isn’t as impressive as their mail-out catalogue, but any way you look at it, that’s a pretty decent price for what you get. And what you get is a lot. Old shows, new shows, crazy amounts of anime, and even some favourites like Glee, the now (sadly) cancelled Stargate Universe, and 2009′s Star Trek movie are on there. Unless you live in or visit a country other than the United States, of course.

If you do happen to be on the other side of that imaginary border line, however, and you have an iOS device, you can use a VPN to access the US Netflix streaming library — and you can do it without spending a dime if you use Hotspot Shield.