Sam Dolnick

The new Digg does a great job of finding a weird mix of stories from all over the Web. This has become one of my go-to apps to kill time. It's got a great feed called Digg Deeper that ties into your social media accounts and features trending stories. It has also has some nice design flourishes -- at night, the background goes dark and the text goes white to make it easier on the eyes.

They just released an entirely new app that's very clean and well designed. They bet big on Following features -- you can pick any topic or storyline and follow it with one tap. The next time you open the app, stories on that topic are there waiting for you. Some version of this feature will become standard in news apps before long.

I'm fascinated by what publishers are doing on big messaging platforms to reach new audiences. WeChat, which is enormous in China, has seen some very cool experimentation from BuzzFeed, the Wall Street Journal, and others.

You can set push alerts for any player or any team, taking personalization to the next level. And it really works. The NBA's alerts have replaced my SportsCenter search for last night's highlights.

They just released a new app for the Kindle Fire that Jeff Bezos supposedly had a big hand in developing. It doesn't take many risks, but it's very handsome and easy to read. My favorite feature is the section of explainers, called Backstory, that's part of the navigation bar. It brings basic information about big stories to the forefront in a smart way.

A brand new app with a very handsome card-based design that has big ambitions to replace the browser on your phone. I haven't stopped using Chrome yet, but Wildcard is pretty intriguing. Lots of the publishers featured here look better in Wildcard than they do in their own native apps.

I have switched from Paprika to the Times' new Cooking app thanks in large part to the great newsletter written by Sam Sifton. It has a great voice, plenty of attitude, and recommendations for how I actually cook -- not very well, but enthusiastically.

I'm biased but the design, curation and aggregation of outside content make this just about the best news app out there. It's a curated version of the Times that you can actually finish. And the aggregated reads are perfect for when you don't feel like reading the news.

Beautiful, immersive stories that are really well designed for mobile. Browsing the collection is like shopping for a magazine story and I haven't found a dud yet.

Beautifully designed, easy to use. It's great at surprising me and bringing me stuff I wouldn't otherwise find. It doesn't throw a lot of music at you, which I appreciate. But it lets you listen on a guided tour to their recommends.

Nice mix between playful and newsy. And it cracks the personalization puzzle as well as anyone has. My favorite feature is that you can say that you have 20 minutes to listen and the app will serve up 20 minutes of content tailored for you. Brilliant.

It reliably has the quickest news alerts, along with smart Follow features that are easy to change. I use this to follow big stories like Ferguson or Ray Rice and the alerts keep me up to date without ever forcing me to open the app.

My favorite app for organizing and finding podcasts. It has great, useful alerts that tell me when a new podcast is ready, so that I never have to guess or remember what's available when.

I LOVE this one. It finds the best links on Twitter and alerts me when people are talking about them. I end up using social media less often, which is good for getting things done, but more efficiently. You can set how many alerts you want, and what time to receive the daily digest of links. I get mine right before my evening commute.