Issue 2 of The Loop Magazine is out today, right on schedule. This is an extension of Jim Dalrymple’s The Loop website, described like so in the App Store:

The Loop magazine will serve as an extension of my interests on The Loop
Web site, which includes music, design, technology, games and Apple, among
others. Each issue will feature a number of really great authors that
I’ve come to know and respect over my nearly 20 years writing about Apple.

The Loop Magazine is a similar style to Marco Arment’s The Magazine – with a clean, minimal look and a strong team of writers. Issue 2 features articles from Matt Gemmell, Rene Ritchie and other notable contributors.

It’s published twice monthly, and subscriptions cost $1.99 per month. It’s already a favorite of mine.

Here’s an App Store link for The Loop Magazine.

The Evernote app for iPad and iPhone has been updated today, to Version 5.3. This update adds Reminders as a new feature which lets you pin notes to the top of your list to help you remember those that are most important.

You can also add due dates and receive notifications in the app and via email, and mark notes as Done when you’ve completed them. Here are the remaining items on the change list for this update:

Enhanced security with XAuth

• View all applications that access your account from Evernote Web Settings
Business: toggle between personal and business tags in the tag view
Numerous bug fixes, including:
• Fix for an issue causing certain large notes to duplicate on sync
• Fix for several offline search issues

For those who use Evernote for task and to-do tracking the new reminders features should prove hugely useful. I rarely use Evernote that way, but I do at times for some projects and I’m sure I’ll end up making good use of these features.

I know we have plenty of Evernote users here. What do you all think of this latest update to the app?

Mailbox, the popular iPhone email app, now has an iPad version – as of today. The app is know for being clean, minimal, and making email management easier. Here’s a slice of its App Store description:

The fast, fun mobile inbox that puts email in its place. 
Note: Currently for Gmail only. Other email platforms coming soon.
Mailbox is a completely redesigned inbox that makes email light, fast, and mobile-friendly. Quickly swipe messages to your archive or trash. Scan an entire conversation at once with chat-like organization. Snooze emails until later with the tap of a button — they’ll return to your inbox automatically so you can focus on what’s important now.
Mailbox checks your email from the cloud, then delivers it to your phone securely. You can even get push notifications for new messages. Add all your GMail accounts for speedy access on-the-go.
Mailbox makes getting to zero — and staying there — a breeze. After you experience a clean inbox, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.

I’ve tried out Mailbox on the iPhone and briefly on the iPad today. It’s certainly got an elegant and effective UI. The reason I can’t make any great use of the app is that it does not currently support Gmail Labels, which I rely on heavily.

Are any of you Mailbox users, on iPhone, iPad, or both?

Here’s an App Store link for Mailbox; it’s a free app and a universal app designed to run on both iPad and iPhone.

The Zite app for iPad has been updated today, to Version 2.3. Zite is one of the leading news magazines apps for the iPad and learns from your interactions and tailors the content for you as you go along using it. I’ve seen many apps that claim to do this sort of thing, but Zite is by far the most effective at it.

This latest update is focused on further improving the app’s recommendation engine and tweaking the UI to make it even easier to use and to find the best content more quickly. Here are the new features listed for the 2.3 update:

· We’ve made huge improvements to our recommendation engine to ensure that the stories we deliver are a good match for your interests.
· Articles that you’ve read before will be greyed out (synced across all your devices).
· We’ve enhanced some articles with pull quotes.

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