I've got news for you!

With a multitude of news aggregator apps out there are a few that stand out from the crowd, but there is one in particular that has taken things one step further in the right direction by reading the article to you and the person reading is not Mr. Roboto!

For starters a good news aggregator app essentially needs to feed you the latest news stories daily and present them in a way that is enjoyable to read.  FlipBoard up to now seems to have received the most  attention and for good reason.  The content is fresh and the layout of this app resembles a magazine when you are reading especially on the iPad.  Very nice, but this is old news and many of you probably already have this one.

Another oldie but goody is News 360 I really enjoy as well.  The layout is not as nice as FlipBoard, in my humble opinion, but it is a nice interface and it tailors the news presented to you based on your history of reading habits.  I have found myself using this one more often and if you are among my Facebook friends you may have noticed that many of the articles I share come from this app.

There are other good ones like Google Currents and others you may wish to share with us in the comments.  The last one that has received some attention recently is Summly.  They recently updated the interface and it does give a nice summary of the article before reading the whole thing.  However, I tried it recently and stumbled on an old article from November 16th 2012 about how Google maps is coming to the iOS.  Weird content experience.

Ok so you have the basics now on some good news aggregators, but none of the ones mentioned read to you.  I know of a an app that reads news, but it uses the computer voice and is not pleasant to the ears.  So who is setting the bar is this category?  Umano!

Umano is as news aggregator where you can choose the content that is interesting to you and add it to a play list.  You can have up to 20 items in your play list for it to read back to you.  The reading is done by people NOT a computer reading word by word!  this makes listening to the article a pleasant experience. 

In addition the app lets you download the readings locally to your device for offline reading so no data use while you are on your way to work or school in the car or walking around or jogging!  I like to listen while I am working now so I can concentrate on what I am doing, but getting valuable information in the background like listening to the radio. 

I do not feel Umano can replace the news aggregators mentioned in this article, but this is a great app worth trying for this unique approach and of course it is FREE:-)