iPhone: Twitter is great for a lot of things, but if you’d like to filter out the noise and just see the news that’s all abuzz on the social network, free app Smartr will show shared links in a readable format.
RSS is a great way to keep up with the news, but some RSS feeds (like, say, the New York Times’ RSS) can overload you with news pretty quickly. Furthermore, you may miss out on some cool blog posts just because you don’t follow that blog religiously. This is one thing that makes Twitter great — in the people you follow (whether it be your friends or news outlets like the Times or Lifehacker), you’ve cultivated a custom stream of news and interesting links that doesn’t seem overwhelming, like RSS usually can.
Free app Smartr filters out just tweets with links in them (excluding things like Foursquare checkins, since those aren’t news stories), and gives you an easily scannable stream of article previews from your favourite sources. You can read the stories directly within the app, or send them to Instapaper or Read It Later to peruse later on. You can also share articles with Posterous, Tumblr, Facebook and email. If you find that it’s hard to keep up with the links your Twitter followers share throughout the day, this is a much easier way to flip through them and save them for later reading.
Smartr is a free download for iOS.
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