As a CPA, one of my hobbies is following the news, as I’m sure is the same with many of you. Two of my favorite tools to digest news are my iPhone and iPad, and I use a variety of apps to check in on what’s going on daily. Here are three of my favorite apps.

Twitter

At this point, must of us are probably familiar with Twitter, a one-stop shop for news across business, politics, sports, pop culture, and everything else in between.

The biggest advantage for me is easy access to the information that is trending and the ability to absorb it in bite size chunks, which is great if I’m on the go or in between meetings.

Personally, I am a big fan of the lists feature. I have created lists for my favorite business handles, as well as sports, politics and even Indiana-specific news. This helps me to easily navigate and see what is going on in these specific worlds.

Some of my favorite follows are Michael Rapoport (@rapoportwsj), business and accounting reporter for the Wall Street Journal; Inside Indiana Business (@IIB), an organization that posts relevant Indiana business news daily; and if I want something a little lighter, Robert Raiola, CPA (@SportsTaxMan), a CPA who specializes in the sports industry and has posted interesting tweets related to the NFL and NBA salary caps, as well as quirky tax rules and how they have affected the sporting world (ever heard of the Jock Tax?).

Overall, Twitter is a great app. However, one of the areas I struggle with is the sheer amount of information and finding what is most important to me. That brings me to the next app on my list.

Download Twitter on the iOS App Store here or on the Google Play Store here.

Nuzzel

In today’s environment, with the sheer amount of options available to capture and absorb the news (Twitter, newspapers, TV, hundreds of internet sites), it is hard to sift through it all. Nuzzel helps solve this problem for me.

What it does is see what your friends are tweeting and posting about (by connecting to your Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook accounts) and collates these articles into a news reader. For instance, if five of your Twitter follows have retweeted the same Wall Street Journal article, that article will pop up in your Nuzzel feed. In theory, if the people and Organizations I am interested in care about this article, I should too, right? This one is a go to for me in getting ready for the day. 

Download Nuzzel on the iOS App Store here or on the Google Play Store here.

Pocket Casts

What happens when you want to check in on some news but can’t? Maybe during that tough work day in busy season where you really need to put your head down and grind it out, or on your commute in to work? That’s where podcasts come into play.

There was a recent Open Forum post about podcasts, and they are becoming ever more popular.

Pocket Casts is my go-to app that I have been using for many years. It allows you to skip ahead in 45-second increments in case you want to get past those pesky commercials (sorry any marketing folks out there!) and syncs seamlessly across all my devices.

Some of my favorite podcasts are Success 2.0 by CJ McClanahan, a business coach out of Indianapolis who posts interviews with relevant business people weekly, and provides great advice to businesspeople and entrepreneurs.

Another favorite is How I Built This by NPR, which has interviews with founders of now-famous businesses, detailing out how they started their businesses and what made them successful. Some of my favorite interviews from this podcast are Angie Hicks of Angie’s List and Jerry Murrell of Five Guys.

Download Pocket Casts on the iOS App Store here or on the Google Play Store here.

I hope you have enjoyed reading about some of my favorite apps. What are some of yours?