My Taptu: Bringing order to your mobile phone apps

If this Friday is dragging, here’s a little something to keep you occupied: installing My Taptu on your phone.

My Taptu, the social newsreader app, has just been upgraded to provide custom made content streams, and it may well be the perfect way to navigate an increasingly buy stream of information competing for our attention.

Managing the apps
My Taptu sits as a layer on top of your mobile apps, and will organise everything from your Twitter streams to your news sources – all under one roof. This means you can look at everything without having to keep swapping between the individual apps – very clever indeed.

The new version (1.3) of My Taptu lets users “DJ the news” – meaning you get to gather up content and create your own streams according to whatever themes you fancy. You can make a stream from scratch, or the app can import your RSS reader, for example.

The app will suggest similar sites for you as well, based on your choices – and it will suggest articles from new places that you might not otherwise have discovered. You can tap into pre-made streams on various topics, such as sport, art or something related to your work. The app will let you tweet without leaving the My Taptu screen – and you can also have a stream that shows you newsstories shared by your Facebook friends.

Personalisation
Mitch Lazar, CEO of the Cambridge / Denver-based company, said:

“The ability to DJ your news and create your own mixed stream is the ultimate way to personalise your news and social media experience. Our customers have been telling us they are craving more control over the streams and we’re delivering that today. It takes My Taptu from a passive experience to a highly personalised and engaging one. Our StreamStore is loaded with thousands of feeds from blogs, magazines, newspapers, and even Twitter gurus, so we are confident there’s something for everyone.”

The app also gets cudos for the way it looks – while an RSS reader is very convenient, it’s hardly going to win any design prices. My Taptu presents the information in a grid of boxes – it’s not revolutionary but it’s quick, easy and user-friendly and that’s been proven a winning formula more than once before.

So while it takes a little while to set up, with importing all your favourite places, the app seems like it could become a valuable tool in keeping track of things. Not to mention keeping it from all getting out of hand with all this data coming at us all the time – we’re busy people you know!

Free from iTunes and Android Market.