My Circuit

Now Oyster Releases the First True Netflix-for-E-books App . Netflix and Spotify have built multi-billion dollar enterprises by offering subscription services for film and music, respectively, but no company has actually made this form work for digital publications. Now, Oyster has disclosed its first try to change that. Oyster, a New York-based startup, made headlines late last year when it broadcast lifting $3 million from Founders finance to construct out a service that would offer "unlimited access" to e-books. On Thursday, the startup commenced its e-reading app for iPhone, which is accessible on a first-come, first-served invitation-only cornerstone for now. With the iPhone app, users get access to more than 100,000 ebooks from hundreds of publishers including Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Melville House and one of the "big five" announcing houses, HarperCollins. Oyster will ascribe users $9.95 a month to read as numerous e-books as they like. "People love a...

Last week Google introduced a radical new mail app, built on top of Gmail, that promises to cut through the pain of managing your inbox. Countless apps and extensions have promised to relieve the suffering of email, and I'm always open to trying another one. I spent the past few days using Inbox as my primary email app, and here's how it works.  Inbox's approach is focused on giving you access to the most important information first, eliminating the need to dig through emails for essentials such as attachments, photos, and travel details. Its smart reading function abandons the classic chronological presentation of email in favor of grouping similar messages together and prioritizing them by importance.  The main dashboard, titled simply, "Inbox," acts as a feed of all your incoming mail, which is placed into smart categories Inbox calls "bundles." Your Inbox comes with a set of pre-categorized bundles such as travel, purchases, updates, and social media...