I have been playing with the app Trapit, which came out on the iPad earlier this week. There is also a web-based version which had come out earlier. However, I will only be reviewing the iPad version.
First, what is Trapit. Trapit is a way to gather and view topics that interest you. Just enter a word or phrase and Trapit will pull current information on the topic from the web. To read an article you tap on its image, it will give you a brief synopsis and ask you if you want to read the full article. When you read an article you like you give it a thumbs up. If you see something that you aren’t interested in give it a thumbs down. When you thumbs down an article Trapit will ask you why, did you think it wasn’t relevant, did you dislike the source or was it spam. Once you have five thumbs up on a specific word or phrase, Trapit will begin to learn your likes and dislikes and start to provide more of what you are looking for. You can share to Twitter, Facebook and through email. On the web version you can also share to Google Plus and Pinterest. If you don’t have time to read an article right away, you can save it to your Reading List. As news discoveries come in they show up in a column on the right hand side of the screen. You can also see what new discoveries came in for a specific topic by clicking on the icon that looks like a circle with four arrows coming out of it on the menu bar at the top of the screen. The next page will show you which topics have new discoveries.
I like Trapit, however I did run into a couple of problems. First it has crashed a couple of times. Second, occasionally when you tap on an image, nothing happens and you have to restart the application to get it to work. Finally I hope they add the ability to share to Google Plus and Pinterest. If you are interested in following a specific topic or topics, then I recommend trying Trapit.