Reading the News on Your Kindle Fire

Are you having fun with your Kindle Fire? Here's a couple of cool ways to stay up on the latest news.

You'll want your Kindle Fire in front of you as you work through this post.

PULSE
The Kindle Fire comes with the “Pulse” app loaded. It’s a pretty cool way to stay on top of the news—very visual. When you first open it, you’ll see a little “chalkboard style” tutorial, which I’ll summarize now. Basically, you scroll vertically through the various news sources, and then horizontally through the stories from each source. When you see a story you like, tap it to open the full story. You may also see a link to the original source on the web.

Now to customize your Pulse newsreader: You can set up 5 separate pages (or tabs) of content. And you can choose exactly what news sources you want displayed on each of those tabs. To get started, click the little sprocket (those little gears that Fred Flintstone's company made) at the top left of the Pulse app. You will see each page displayed, with 12 slots for sources. Touching the little X on the left side will delete that news source from the page. Once you’ve deleted those sources you don’t want, click the + at the bottom of the page you’re working on. You’ll immediately see a rather overwhelming display of large “banner/buttons” of the FEATURED news sources. Look at the very top of the page—you’ll see the categories of Featured, Browse, Search, g reader.*) Tap browse and you’ll see a whole page (keep scrolling down) of categories of news sources. Tap on to display the whole list. You’ll see + either with a background of blue (you can add this one) or a + grayed out (you’ve already got this one.) When you’re done, use your back arrow to backtrack to the next page and continue. Back on the “Manage your sources” page, where all five of the pages are displayed, you can touch the page titles and type in your own titles.

Once you’re completely finished, back out to the Pulse home screen that shows all the news stories. Whenever you want the stories updated (and that often depends on the sources) tap the little reload button on the top right of the Pulse home screen. It looks like an almost circular arrow.

US NEWSPAPERS
The USNEWSPAPERS app is free from the Amazon App Store. Tap Apps on your Kindle Fire, and then Store. Tap the “News and Weather” category and scroll to US Newspapers. As I write this, it is No. 4, but Amazon updates the popularity of it’s books and apps hourly. Click purchase (checking to make sure it’s still free), and then follow the onscreen directions. Once it installs, you can open it to see a whole list of US Newspapers. If you’d like to add another newspaper it’s as simple as clicking the menu button (looks like a little paper with writing) at the bottom of the screen, and clicking the left button that shows a newspaper with a green +. You’ll be prompted to enter a name and website URL for the news source. I tested Havre de Grace Patch and it works perfectly.

There is also a sister app called UK Newspapers. If you have family or friends in the UK, or are just interested in their “take” on news, it’s another great free app.

Channelcaster
I also use Channelcaster, which works almost exactly like Pulse, but I hesitate to recommend it because of the current $4.99 price tag. I got mine free when Amazon featured it as their free-app-of-the-day.

Next: General Kindle Fire Tips