Zite Is Latest iPad News Magazine, Promises To Learn Reader's Tastes

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Chances are you read a lot of tech news in your average day. Gadgets, iPad apps, and all that sort of thing are just waiting to be read about. And while some news magazines like News Corp / Apple spawn The Daily give you news on your iPad, Zite is looking to one-up them by learning about your preferences while you read it.

Once you’ve downloaded the Zite app–which is, by the way, a free download–it will start sifting through your Twitter feed and GoogleReader account and various other online news sources in a bid to get you the things you want to read.

And that’s just to get the grist mill rolling; while you’re reading, you’ll be offered the opportunity to rate and favorite news stories, such that Zite can then get a better handle on what you want to read. If you find yourself marking as a favorite several articles about dogs, for example, Zite might then put up an article about the next big dog show, and so on. Basically, Zite loads what it thinks you will like in advance, and doesn’t load what it thinks you won’t enjoy.

Early word suggests that the Zite only gets better with use, which makes some sense, though it’d take a hands-on view with it to see just how well the app does of weeding out the stuff you’d rather not read. I’ve seen these kinds of things before and they do a fair job, though they’ve screwed up both ways  as well–expecting perfect responses out of this sort of thing is a terrible idea in general.

But considering, as I said above, that the app is free to download, it’s hardly going to be a huge risk to give it a try. It may not be The Daily, but it might just be where you get your daily fix of news.