Each morning, bleary-eyed, I retrieve the newspaper, glance at the headlines and toss it on the coffee table to read later.I know I shouldn’t admit to that — in a newspaper — but I’m an avid newshound. I want to know what’s happening right now, so I reach for the iPad instead and dive into the news of the day.At first, that meant visiting a handful of Web sites on Safari, Apple’s Web browser that comes installed on the iPad. It hit the usual suspects — my local paper, the Weather Channel, ESPN, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and CNN — before checking ... Read more

The phrase “if this, then that” is a bit of programming-speak: you tell the computer that if this happens, it should perform this action. Now, a simple new Web service called ifttt — pronounced like “lift” without the l — aims to take that concept to the mainstream. It provides a way for people to easily automate interactions between Web services, like Facebook, Twitter, Craigslist and Tumblr ... Read more