006Shortly after Apple called it the “best iPad app of the year,” awesome social reading app Flipboard has a major new update out that adds a couple of much-requested capabilities to the social network reader for the iPad: it now supports Flickr and Google Reader feeds.

As Sarah Perez at ReadWriteWeb reports, it actually incorporates most of the functions possible in Google Reader, including starring items, sharing items, marking as read, and so on. That’s certainly a lot more than the Pulse RSS reader has yet managed to do.

I tried the new feature out, and it is really neat to see my Google Reader Feed appear as my own personalized magazine. Given that I don’t know many of the people who are my Facebook friends, but I personally selected every newsfeed I want to read, this feels more like a personalized “me-gazine” than ever.

On the other hand, I don’t think this is going to supplant Reeder as my normal Google Reader reading method any time soon. As the screenshot demonstrates, I can only see a few stories at a time, from all my sources put together, flipping backward through time—and given that I have to scan through literally hundreds of headlines per day seeking bloggable nuggets, I just don’t have the time for pleasure browsing all of them like that.

Reeder lets me focus on single sources and go through and check all their articles off one at a time, and I do that starting the moment I wake up—I take the iPad into bed with me since I use Easy Relax Ultimate to help me sleep, and go through my Reeder feed before I even get out of bed in the morning.

Of course, for the average person, who doesn’t have to worry about digging for gold, this could be the best way yet to read Google Reader.

However, Robert Scoble notes that this still isn’t quite the version of Flipboard he is waiting for.

What version is that? The one that will filter through all of these social networks and use the technology they purchased when they acquired the Ellerdale Project to really find the good stuff out of the thousands of items that are aimed at me every day.

If Flipboard is coming out with something like that, sometime next year, it could make an already great thing even better.

On a related note, Wired has a spotlight on Flipboard, talking about what makes it such a great way to read content on the iPad.

NO COMMENTS

The TeleRead community values your civil and thoughtful comments. We use a cache, so expect a delay. Problems? E-mail newteleread@gmail.com.