There are no shortage of online news apps to curate your favorite websites or just discover new ones. Google News, Flipboard and Feedly are good examples. Microsoft is throwing their hat into the fray with the new AI news app called Hummingbird.
When you first install the Android app it will ask you to register an account with your hotmail or Linkedin email address, of course you can take it out for a spin without having to do all of that. The benefits of logging in with an account is Microsoft being able to serve you news item that are populated with articles that they think you’ll be interested in. Just like other AI-powered services, the more you use it, the better it will understand you and your preferences. When you tap on an article, it will open in the original site but you will still see the Hummingbird title bar if you go to the reading mode so you can easily go back to the app’s main page.
There are options to mute specific genres of news sources, so you can keep your feed centered around your interests, such as tech reviews or books. If there is something you are really keen about, there are social media sharing options, natch.
Hummingbird is not available yet in most countries, but can be downloaded from Google Play or the Good e-Reader App Store.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
