Flipboard: promising new iPad app, but having issues

The best new proof of concept of magazine-as-iPad app has got to be Flipboard. It brings together stories from your social network into an interactive, magazine-style environment. The idea here is that your “lead” stories are those your friends found most important and interesting. (Watch the video below to get an idea of how it works.) The interactivity is terrific. The program is very popular. In fact, it’s so popular that it doesn’t work. Kind of. It still pulls stories from several well-known sources, but the key feature – pulling those stories from your social network into the “magazine” – essentially crashed. The app was so popular that Flipboard couldn’t handle all the requests. So now you need to download a new version of Flipboard, one that prompts you for your email so you can get in on the beta. I’m looking forward to getting my invite and giving Flipboard the full test. Meantime, I still suggest you download the program to get an idea of the possibilities.