Yahoo News Digest and Aviate Launcher

Yahoo Aviate Launcher

Google Play store has countless home replacement launchers that promise to make your smartphone experience simpler and interactive with a new look and interface. However many of these come with so many tweaks that it is a task unto itself to understand them. One launcher that caught our attention with its simple and organized UI is Yahoo Aviate.

The first set up screen of the app lets you select 10 apps that you use most, while the second screen lets you select the type of application you use most. You can choose up to five domains. The launcher offers a clean and simple layout that is divided into five screens and everything is just a swipe away.

The sub section screen has App collections that include categories like entertainment, productivity, social, utilities, photography, etc. You can also create an app collection of your choice. Another swipe to right will take you to the app drawer that displays all the applications on your phone in an alphabetical order.

Aviate follows an algorithm (designed by studying the Android users interaction with their smarphones) to make your phone smarter by offering intelligent information throughout the day. Whether you are travelling, at work, at a restaurant or just relaxing at home, Aviate automatically displays apps and information that are useful to you based on what you’re up to.

Swiping left will take you to the smart home screen where you can set your location, add widgets, app collections, set events and get news updates. It also pulls your most popular contacts into a list of Favorites that you can access by just a simple swipe up from the home screen.

Yahoo News Digest

In the potpourri of news applications, users often struggle to find something useful and balanced that offers relevant information without any hassle. This app from Yahoo is informative, quick and offers easy to digest content.

1) Yahoo News Digest delivers a summarized version of the top International news, in an easy-to-navigate design. Mimicking human behavior of reading news twice a day, the News Digest app provides comprehensive yet easy to grasp news stories from various categories like Technology, Sports, Business, Social and World. Plus, it does it once in the morning (8 am) and then in evening (6pm).

2)There is not much to customize in the application, which is a little drawback. The screen shot shows the available options in settings menu. You cannot choose which type of news you want to read or the source of the news like in Flipboard. You can only select the edition and the time of Digest. But this is something which makes this app quite simple to use.

It is not like other news services that offer a never ending thread of information and customizationthat make you a victim of information bombardment.

3)Compiled by Yahoo editors in UK, US and Malaysia, the “Digests” provide a definitive summary of all the top International news so that users can stay on top of what’s happening in the world. The news stories integrate text, images, maps, tweets, and references of events. The interface is quite minimal, and by scrolling down you will see the linked items (images, videos, etc.) and a right swipe will take you to the next story.

4)Another interesting feature of the app is the retro phone style circular widget at the bottom, which keeps track of stories you have read from your daily digest and on completion, displays the day’s quote from famous personalities. This offers a sense of satisfaction as you can actually see that you are done with the day’s news items.