1. AP Mobile

 
Get breaking news, photos and videos straight from the Associated Press, no subscription fee required. Also included: photo galleries and video clips.

Download: AP Mobile

2. Flipboard

 
This gorgeous “social magazine” takes headlines and photos from your favorite blogs and websites and arranges them into flippable, magazine-style pages. You can choose from more than a dozen hand-crafted sections or pick your own online news sources—and if you’re feeling chatty, you can connect your Facebook and/or Twitter accounts to see what your friends are reading.

Download: Flipboard

3. Google Currents

 
Google’s take on Flipboard boasts a handsome, easy-to-browse layout featuring news sites that have been optimized for smartphone readers. Like Flipboard, Google Currents lets you choose your own sections and sites, or you can also take a gander at popular stories that are “trending” on Google.

Download: Google Currents

4. gReader

 
Fans of Google Reader—the essential Google service that lets you subscribe to the RSS (short for “Real Simple Syndication”) feeds of just about any blog on the web—shouldn’t leave home without this handy app.

Just connect gReader to Google Reader, and the app will sync and download your most recent Google Reader articles to your handset. Once you read a story on gReader, it’ll be marked as “read” in your Google Reader account.

Download: gReader

5. Pocket

 
Apps like Flipboard and gReader are great for scanning the latest headlines, but what if you want to settle in with a 40,000-word New Yorker feature?

Enter Pocket, an app that lets you download and read online news articles—the longer the better—on your phone. You can customize font sizes and styles, pick from a trio of different page background, and swipe to turn pages, just like on the mobile Kindle app.

Download: Pocket

6. Pulse News

 
Like Flipboard and Google Currents, Pulse News lets you browse stories from “curated” news sections or your favorite websites. The twist? Instead of flippable pages, Pulse News serves up scrollable rows of eye-popping photos and headlines.

Download: Pulse News

7. Zite

 
Here’s a great magazine-style Android app for anyone who’d rather not bother with building their own library of news sites. Just fire up Zite, pick a few basic news categories and start reading—and as you do, Zite will “learn” the types of stories that interest you the most.

Download: Zite

Bonus tip

 
No cellular signal? All the apps featured above will save your most recently synced articles to your phone’s memory, meaning you’ll always have something to read—even if your Android phone is temporarily cut off from the world.

Even better, some apps (like gReader) will automatically download the latest news daily or even hourly.

For more details on how a specific app handles “offline” reading, check its Settings menu.

Looking for more Android tips? Click here!

The post 7 free, must-have Android apps for news junkies appeared first on here's the thing.

In a blog post Tuesday, Google said it was consolidating the Android Market, Google Music, and Google eBookstore sites into Google Play to reduce the “hassle” of finding and organizing apps, tracks, videos and books for your various Android devices.

That’s the theory, anyway. In practice, Google Play (which you can check out right here) looks an awful lot like the old Android Market.

You can still browse for apps just as before, with the main app product pages (like this one) serving up product descriptions, screenshots, user reviews, and buttons for buying and/or installing a given app to your Android device.

Up at the top of the Google Play page, just above a rotating carousel of promos, you’ll find tabs for “My Music” (the new home of Google Music), “My Books” (which replaces the Google eBookstore), and “My Movies” (for video rentals and purchases).

OK, so what happens to your old apps from the gone-but-not-forgotten Android Market, or your Google Music tune collection? Don’t worry—they’re still there, just where you left them. Indeed, the books and albums I bought from Google Music and the eBookstore are present and accounted for, except now they’re sitting under a “Google Play” banner.

What will be changing, though, is the Android Market app on your Android smartphone or Tablet. Google says it’ll be upgrading the app to the “Google Play Store” app in “the coming days.”

Google is also promoting the Google Play launch with daily discounts during the next week; check out this blog post for more details.

So, what do you think: will putting all of Google’s Android wares under a single “Google Play” roof make it easier to shop for apps, music, videos and books? Or will you miss the Android Market? Let me know what you think!

The post “Google Play” is new home for Android apps, music, videos, and books appeared first on here's the thing.