The Social Radio is an app that audibly reads Tweets from your Twitter timeline. The hands-free technology allows Twitter users to catch up on their stream without having to stop what they’re doing to swipe and read through all the updates.

The app is both mobile and web based with the webapp being invite only at this time. Tweets are read aloud with Twitter user name followed by the tweet itself and finally a reference to accompanying link if applicable.

Tweets are clear and concise. We had no trouble hearing the tweet or understanding the dialogue, but there was minimal mispronunciation of proper names. There are multiple voices, both male and female, though there doesn’t appear to be a way to choose a permanent voice. Volume seemed to be in line with traditional music/radio apps so adjusting through the phone volume buttons was adequate control. The Social Radio does have audio settings which can be set to Headphone/Bluetooth Mode and Speaker Mode.

Through regular use, it becomes apparent that having a lot of followers is detrimental to digesting all the Tweets. We found that using a custom list to segregate the Twitter accounts with highest priority and then directing The Social Radio to read the Tweets from that list was more beneficial. Users get the Tweets of most interest read to them and filter out much of the noise associated with Twitter without having to cut down on followings.

Along with separation of Tweet reading through lists, The Social Radio can read through trends from 24 different countries or worldwide allowing users to keep up to date with a hot topic. There’s also the option to search for a specific topic. Marketers or customer support professionals who want to stay on top of tweets about their company can punch in their brand name and listen to Tweets about their company.

One of The Social Radios’ largest bragging features is that of music integration. Users can listen to music playlists while listening to their Tweets. The idea at first can seem a little excessive, but listening to music while hearing the Tweets read isn’t really bothersome. It’s more of a personal preference and having the feature built-in is nice.

The Social Radio is truly a wonderful tool. The benefits extend beyond the reading of Tweets with aid for the blind or otherwise visually impaired, hands-free access for driver safety, headphone/bluetooth capability during fitness workouts or commuting along with other real world uses. The Social Radio supports multiple languages and reads common emoticons. The Android and iOS apps are currently free, although The Social Radio acknowledges they won’t be forever.

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Anyone who likes to be ‘in the know’ or up to date on their favorite topics likely use RSS feeds to gather that information. RSS feeds compile a list of recent stories from blogs, e-magazines and any other website that offers regular articles and stories. The only trouble with RSS feeds is collecting them all in one command center type location for easy viewing. Headslinger collects all your favorite feeds, helps you find new ones, promotes sharing of stories and does it all with a splash of panache.

A Headslinger account is like having an entire digital magazine/newspaper stand at your fingertips. The main account view displays sources (RSS feed sources) in a grid-like format. Picture a smartphone with icons depicting each feed. Click any one of the sources and Headslinger displays the most recent articles along with Twitter and Facebook feeds for those sources if they exist. There’s an additional option titled, “who’s reading this?” which displays other users reading the same feed. The information is helpful for adding users to your slinglist, more on that later.

When readers view a source page, their favorites are displayed as navigation icons along the top in what’s described as a navigation bar. From there, users can move from favorite to favorite quickly and precisely. Favorite sources are categorized into folders for organizational purposes and make navigating a lot easier if favorites get numerous. The navigation bar has a quick change option to move between folders so that users are always moving forward. As an example, if you are an avid sports fan and have a lot of sports sources, but are also a weekend tech enthusiast, simply change folders to view all sports or all tech sources without bouncing from website to website.

The ‘slinger’ part of Headslinger deals with sharing. When a user finds an article interesting or especially worthy of reading, they can ‘sling it’ which gives the article weight among your viewing interest and informs others its worth reading. Slinglists collate the articles outside the feed sources for easy reference.

There are a number of other options to explore with Headslinger including interacting with other readers via shared stories and sharing to social sites. Headslinger is a free service that delivers the convenience of RSS feeds in one place, does it fast and keeps the graphic quality high without detriment to the interface. Definitely worth a look if RSS feeds have you scattered.

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The post Headslinger Gathers All Your RSS Feeds In One Place first appeared on GeekITDown Computer Services & Technology Solutions.