New app optimized for tablet and smartphone devices features slick interface and reading experience

CAMBRIDGE, England & DENVER, Colorado – (December 20, 2011) – Today Taptu announces the launch of the Taptu Guardian Environment app, the ultimate application for iPhone and iPad dedicated to environmental news.

The app brings together environment content from the Guardian’s Open platform as well as other media brands known for their environmental coverage such as Yale Environment 360, Mother Jones, BusinessGreen and the New York Times. The app gives environment enthusiasts a comprehensive way to discover, read and share the latest news and photos through a beautiful and intuitive user interface. At the same time, the Taptu platform allows users to mix and match stories from their favorite topics to create their own perfectly tailored environmental news service and share those customized content streams with the social web. Grouping together stories from all content providers featured in the app, under the related stories feature, provides readers with a potentially different perspective on trending environmental issues.

“This is a fantastic example of how media publishers could distribute their content and create a deep news vertical and tablet-centric experience using Tapform,” said Taptu CEO Mitch Lazar. “The Guardian’s Open Platform has enabled us to create this app and together with our powerful technology we have produced a rich and highly personalized application that provides all customers with a slick reading experience.”

Features on the app include:
· An optimized touch interface
· The ability to customize and merge different streams to create a tailored reading experience
· A customized StreamStore featuring Guardian and third party curated streams on environmental topics
· A powerful way to discover new sources and articles through “related stories” tool
· The ability to view photos from the Guardian picture archive as a slideshow
· Ability to share stories on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter
· Save stories in the stream for later viewing with Instapaper, Read it Later or Taptu’s Bookmark Stream

Commenting on the app, Damian Carrington, head of environment at the Guardian, said: “We are thrilled that Taptu created an environment app using the Guardian’s content API. As part of our digital-first strategy we encourage the innovative use of our content to create new products, and this app provides an engaging user experience, while also allowing readers to manage their favourite topics in a highly customizable and social way.”

Taptu announced Tapform in September of 2011 as a way to bring news content to mobile while making it engaging, entertaining and inherently social. The first app built on Tapform is the Taptu Guardian Environment app, available for download now.

Download the new app for iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch here

About Taptu:

Founded in 2006, Taptu is an award-winning social media and mobile technology company based in Cambridge, England, and Denver, Colorado. Taptu builds innovative platforms, tools and applications that enable highly personalized creation, curation, recommendation, search, discovery, management, consumption and sharing of content across all personal screen-based devices. Wapedia, Taptu’s popular mobile Wikipedia with over 2 million downloads, is also available for download at the Apple App Store and on the Android Market.

See http://www.taptu.com/ for more information.

About the Guardian Open Platform:

The Guardian Open Platform launched in 2009 and gives partners access to:
· Its content API, a database of 1 million articles
· The Data Store, directory of important and useful data sets curated by Guardian journalists
· The World Government Date Store, a search engine for data published by various government departments around the world
· The Politics API, a wealth of information on election day results, candidates, parties and constituencies
· The MicroApp framework, which allows partners to serve content, data and tools directly to users of guardian.co.uk .

Guardian News & Media became the first newspaper publisher to open up its database to partners, who are encouraged to re-use Guardian and Observer content in a creative way on their own websites and to build applications for other digital platforms.

The Open Platform has a number of models for sponsorship, revenue sharing, and commission-based partnerships to help brands and businesses reach audiences in new ways and on a range of online platforms.

Media Contact

In the US:
Bob Patterson
VSCpr for Taptu
bob@vscpr.com
415.677.9125

In the UK:
Dianne See Morrison
Director of Communications Taptu
Dianne.Morrison@taptu.com
07988 539 921

Taptu Announces Dutch Publishing Giant De Pers as One of the First Customers of Its Tapform Mobile News Aggregating Platform

CAMBRIDGE, England & DENVER—(December 20, 2011)— Today, Taptu announces that respected Dutch publisher De Pers is one of the first customers of its powerful search-based news aggregation platform for mobile devices, Tapform. De Pers has chosen Taptu to power mobile experiences for their digital content because of Tapform’s superior search technology, slick interface, and unique fusion of news and social media in easy-to-read, customized streams.

Built on Taptu’s search technology, Tapform opens proprietary APIs, allowing any third party to create its own social news aggregator. Publishers can create highly visual streams around specific topics or present a filtered stream of stories based on keywords from a wide choice of sources including, but not limited to, websites, blogs and RSS.

“We are excited to announce one of the first of many partners using our Tapform product to bring their content to the mobile audience,” said Mitch Lazar, CEO of Taptu. “Working with De Pers has shown just how versatile and powerful our technology can be, and we are looking forward to bringing our know how to other publishers looking to provide a mobile experience.”

De Pers tasked Taptu with building an app that could encompass and highlight all the great content in their portfolio people have come to rely on to discover and share news.  The De Pers app features a StreamStore with all their digital properties, and the app is localized for Dutch speakers.

“De Pers has chosen to work with Taptu because of the flexibility they offer for delivery of our content,” said Jan-Jaap Heij, editor in chief of De Pers. “The Taptu platform allows us to offer De Pers content in every way imaginable. We want our readers to personalize their paper completely, and by working with Taptu this has become possible.”

Tapform provides two great advantages for publishing partners. First, working with Taptu takes the hassle and cost out of going mobile. Whereas some companies have hired developers to build mobile apps from scratch or paid hefty fees to buy news readers, Taptu provides a simple and inexpensive platform that can accommodate any digital source.

Another advantage is Taptu’s experience in mobile search and aggregation. Developed by Cambridge scientists, Taptu’s search algorithms provide the most relevant streams of content available on mobile devices. Their knowledgeable developers also provide other assistance such as localizing the De Pers app to the Dutch language.

To learn more about Tapform please contact Taptu at: kp@taptu.com

About Taptu:

Founded in 2006, Taptu is an award-winning social media and mobile technology company based in Cambridge, England, and Denver, Colorado. Taptu builds innovative platforms, tools and applications that enable highly personalized creation, curation, recommendation, search, discovery, management, consumption and sharing of content across all personal screen-based devices. Wapedia, Taptu’s popular mobile Wikipedia with over 2 million downloads, is also available for download at the Apple App Store and on the Android Market.

See http://www.taptu.com/ for more information.

About De Pers:

De Pers, founded in 2007, is a leading newspaper in The Netherlands and the only high quality free newspaper in the world. De Pers is also a leading innovator in the transition from print to digital publishing with several apps, HTML5 web apps, websites and extensive social media integration.

Media Contact

In the US:
Bob Patterson
VSCpr for Taptu
bob@vscpr.com
415.677.9125

In the UK:
Dianne See Morrison
Director of Communications Taptu
Dianne.Morrison@taptu.com
07988 539 921

Taptu version 2.0 updated with support for Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and new search-based streams for the most topical news reading experience on mobile

CAMBRIDGE, England & DENVER—(November 17, 2011)—Taptu, the social media and mobile search technology company, is announcing version 2.0 of its popular social news reader app for Android phones and tablets with support for Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and a unique new feature that lets users turn any keyword into a contextual stream of news.

“Taptu 2.0 is the most visually appealing and useful way to find and consume content on Android devices, especially tablets,” said Mitch Lazar, CEO of Taptu. “The new app marks the launch of Endless Mixtape search-based streams, a feature unique to Taptu born out of our search algorithms and heritage that allows users to customize their news and information experience more than any other app of its kind.”

In addition to a more beautiful and easy to use interface, Taptu version 2.0 introduces Endless Mixtape streams that use search technology to create targeted streams for any topic.

Taptu is best known for letting users DJ the news by mixing and matching different publications, blogs, RSS and social media feeds to create customized streams of social news content. With version 2.0, users can now take customization to a whole new level by creating tailored streams based on a specific keyword search or by filtering existing streams to only include stories that pertain to a specific keyword or topic.

For example, Lady Gaga fans can go to the SteamStore and use this new feature to create a “Lady Gaga” Endless Mixtape stream. The stream would glean all stories featuring or mentioning Lady Gaga from Taptu’s curated Music, Fashion and Celebrity streams as well as their immense collection of publications, blogs, RSS and social media feeds. Similarly, sports fans who mix and mash up college football news, could create an Endless Mixtape Taptu stream of Florida Gators, to capture just the news about their favorite team from a mashed up college football stream. Endless Mixtape streams allow users to have stories and social media content pertaining to specific people, products, places, events, teams and topics delivered to them in real time.

Android users can also use search to dig into streams they already follow, such as Taptu Technology Stream, and filter out just the stories related to a particular subject such as “Android” or “Ice Cream Sandwich.”

Other features on Taptu 2.0 for Android include scrollable widgets, giving users the power to bring their favorite streams right to the homepage of their Android phone or tablet. Scrollable widgets also allow the user to flick through the top stories for each stream before having to actually open the app.

From the biggest news of the week to stories that cater to individual passions and specialized interests, Taptu allows users to keep news, blogs and social feeds organized in a clean and intuitive design. The company’s search engine heritage allows Taptu to go beyond simple RSS feeds by actually recommending sources and enabling consumers to discover new content. Taptu’s search expertise and algorithms also eliminates duplicate stories to ensure that users don’t see the same story over and over.

Click to download Taptu 2.0 for Android phones and tablets now.

About Taptu:

Founded in 2006, Taptu is an award-winning social media and mobile technology company based in Cambridge, England, and Denver, Colorado. Taptu builds innovative platforms, tools and applications that enable highly personalized creation, curation, recommendation, search, discovery, management, consumption and sharing of content across all personal screen-based devices. Wapedia, Taptu’s popular mobile Wikipedia with over 2 million downloads, is also available for download at the Apple App Store and on the Android Market.

See http://www.taptu.com for more information.

Media Contacts:

In the US:

Bob Patterson
VSCpr for Taptu
bob@vscpr.com
415.677.9125

In the UK:

Dianne See Morrison
Director of Communications | Taptu
Dianne.Morrison@taptu.com
07988 539 921

Free NOOK Apps™ deliver customized, touch-based news streams

CAMBRIDGE, England & DENVER – (November 10, 2011) — Today Taptu, the social media and mobile search technology company, is announcing the launch of its popular Android social newsreader on Barnes & Noble’s NOOK Color Reader’s Tablet™, perfect for people who love to read and discover all types of content in rich, beautiful color.

Known by many Android and iOS users as the best way to curate and consume customized news, Taptu is now available in Barnes & Noble’s NOOK Apps™ store for NOOK Color customers to follow and share content from mainstream interests to niche passions and hobbies. The massive influx of Web news options today makes Taptu an essential tool for staying organized, informed and up-to-date about what matters most. Now NOOK Color customers can use the same great app to create and share their own playlists of personalized news, media and social updates.

“Taptu on NOOK Color just makes sense. Our goal is to provide the best way to consume media on-the-go and Barnes & Noble provides an incredible canvas for people to access and read what matters most to them—a perfect match,” said Mitch Lazar, CEO of Taptu.

Taptu is known for being the only app that lets users ‘DJ the News’ by mixing topic-based stories, publications, blogs, RSS feeds and social media posts and updates from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn into customized streams of news. Taptu delivers over 175,000 streams from major media sources, websites and blogs, with 110,000 original streams curated by users. The app also includes other great features including Instapaper and “Read It Later” integration for saving articles to read at another time, the ability to choose between light and dark themes, and the option of reading articles full-screen to take advantage of NOOK Color’s seven-inch VividView™ color touchscreen.

Taptu’s clean, intuitive design gives users a slick and unique visual experience with the option to choose the size and color of streams, and the company’s search engine heritage pushes the envelope beyond simple RSS feeds, actually recommending sources and enabling new content discovery. Taptu’s search expertise and algorithms promote plurality and a different perspective by identifying contextual, related content for each story. Additionally, automatic elimination of duplicates in the stream ensures every item is relevant and not something people have seen before.

Download the free Taptu app today for NOOK Color here.

About Taptu:
Founded in 2006, Taptu is an award-winning social media and mobile technology company based in Cambridge, England, and Denver, Colorado. Taptu builds innovative platforms, tools and applications that enable highly personalized creation, curation, recommendation, search, discovery, management, consumption and sharing of content across all personal screen-based devices. Wapedia, Taptu’s popular mobile Wikipedia with over 1 million downloads, is also available for download at the Apple App Store and on the Android Market.

See http://www.taptu.com for more information.

Hello Taptus fans,

Today we are very excited to announce an exclusive offering for our friends on Nook Color. The Taptu Fashion Application is now available to download.

Taptu Fashion is our little tribute to the world of Fashion, the from the best loved fashion magazines to the fashion bloggers and the people that make all of us look good….

We have brought together streams that will let you stay up to date with the latest trends, find out what Sarah Jessica Parker was wearing last night or even figure out tips about staying beautiful and keeping fit.

Taptu Fashion still gives you access to streams from a wide range of other topics, i.e. news, sports, finance, etc; with Taptu Fashion, you can also check what your Friends are doing on Facebook or what the people you follow Tweet about. Taptu Fashion is not just the ultimate guide to Fashion but the best companion for your news.

Last but not least, our favorite DJ-ing feature is also available on Taptu Fashion. We hope you will create more streams about fashion and share them back to your friends to help them stay in tune.

Give Taptu Fashion for the Nook a try and let us know what you think!

And as Miranda Priestly would say: “That’s all.”

Bye for now,
KP

Hello,

When you work at a start-up, you need to improvise sometimes….

When you have to shoot a video–in this case an intro to our newly launched Taptu for Nook app–for example, and you have forgotten your SLR tripod at home, you’ve got to figure out another way to stabilize the camera. That’s where a rack mount server comes in handy–especially because you can use the rails to attach the camera too.

A few engineering books to elevate the server are as useful as the server itself.

You also need to ensure there is no reflection from the ceiling – so a whiteboard is your best friend.

Next comes the Nook with Taptu installed; 4 pieces of white tack to attach the device on the table; and last but not least a few cushions to kneel on to record the video, voice over it, etc…and there you go!

So…4 Engineers and 1 Editor united, using standard office equipment in a Technology company and the video is shot: 3, 2, 1 and ACTION!

KP

Hello Taptu fans:

We’ve been heads down here at Taptu to bring you our latest iOS version: 1.6.1 is now available to download. What’s new? Well, lot’s of things (listed below):

Updated Logo: It’s time we had a new logo to reflect as much as possible what the app is all about. We hope you like it.

Preview a Stream before you add it: Whether you are adding a Stream from the Topics or one you found after Searching, you can now Preview the Stream before you add it by tapping on the “eye” icon.

Add a Stream from the article page: Is the article you are reading around a topic you are passionate about? Our search engine is powerful enough to indicate which other Topic Streams the story you are looking at appears and lets you Add them directly from the article pages.

Support for Read It Later: You can now save articles you like to Read It Later – one of the best Apps out there to do so. Don’t forget you can always Bookmark those stories inside Taptu as well.

Alerts: If for whatever reason, Taptu servers are not working, we will immediately notify you with an alert. Another one will be sent to you when everything is back to normal.

Finally, we’ve tuned up the app even more, fixing a few bugs and making the overall Taptu experience speedier and more stable. We hope you enjoy the latest update.

Thanks, KP.