“When you search, we instantly create a magazine out of your results. It’s faster, more visual, and easier to navigate,” explains the Flipboard team in a blog post. “And, for the first time, you can collect and save articles, photos, audio and video by organizing them into beautiful magazines. These can be private, or if you want to connect with like-minded enthusiasts, you can make them public and share them on Flipboard and beyond. Now everyone can be a reader and an editor.”

Users can hit the + button next to articles, create “magazine” names, and addd descriptions. There’s no limit to the number of magazines you can create (at least that’s what they say). In addition to news sources, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, SoundCloud, LinkedIn and Tumblr can be used for magazine content.

The new Flipboard also comes with more content, including a partnership with Etsy, which should mean good things for the rapidly growing online marketplace.

There’s a bookmarklet, which users can add to their browsers and use it to addd any piece of content on the web to Flipboard.

“If you’d like to be inspired, tap on ‘By Our Readers’ in the Content Guide, which contains a selection of magazines from staff and friends of Flipboard who’ve been experimenting with 2.0 in our beta program,” says Flipboard. “They include bloggers like Gardenista’s Michelle Slatalla, entrepreneurs like Kate Kendall, curators like Bureau of Trade’s Michael Phillips Moscowitz, small business owners like Elizabeth Leu, musicians like Linkin Park, and people with passions around graffiti, fashion, apps, horses, travel, food, kids and more. We’ll be highlighting many of them—and people like you!—in our blog in the coming weeks.”

Other new features include: a new content guide, commenting, more recommended reading, subsections in partner magazines, newspapers and websites, fast section switching, and optional Facebook Open Graph integration.

Flipboard’s redesign, of course, comes at a time when a lot of people are looking for replacements for Google Reader. For power users, Flipboard has hardly been an adequate alternative. Sure, it’s pretty, but for organizational and productivity purposes, it just hasn’t fit the bill. For the casual news reader, however, it’s an eye-pleasing experience, and possibly even better now.

Flipboard has a reported 50 million users. It’s unclear when the new features will make their way to Android.

“Now anyone with a Samsung GALAXY Note 10.1, GALAXY Tab series, Nexus 10 or other seven-inch or larger tablet that runs Android, can download Flipboard for free on the Google Play Store,” the company says. “Additionally, current Samsung tablet or Note 10.1 users will be able to enjoy Flipboard via an upcoming software update from Samsung.”

“With the new devices that Samsung, Amazon, Google and others have brought to market in the recent months, there’s a fast growing Android market,” said Eric Alexander , Head of International Development at Flipboard. “As more people buy Android tablets for themselves or others over the holidays, we wanted to make sure Flipboard is part of their tablet experience.”

Flipboard launched for Android earlier this year, and it has slowly been getting improvements since. In August, it got some improved navigational features, easier access to Google Reader feeds, in-app hints, and new shopping cart features. In October, Flipboard launched an update to its Android app, enabling smartphones to take advantage of its audio category.

The tablet optimization should not only make the app more appealing to users of these devices, it could very well make the actual devices more appealing to people, as Flipboard has become a very popular app for reading news.

“This means that you can now enjoy everything featured in our Audio category in the Content Guide—including segments from NPR’s Fresh Air and PRI’s The World—and more: you can connect your Flipboard to your SoundCloud account to flip through your Stream, Likes, Sounds, Sets and Groups. Find something you like, and press play to listen via Flipboard,” the Flipboard team explains in a blog post. “The music note in the top bar of the section controls your audio experience.”

The company launched the audio feature back in May for iOS devices. It’s coming to Nook and Kindle devices in the next few days.

Android users can get the updated app from the Google Play store. The update also comes with some bug fixes and performance improvements.

The app recently received some updates, with the latest one on Sunday, according to the Google Play Store. In the “What’s New” section on Google Play, it says the latest features include:

• Improved navigation within sections, visible when you tap on section’s name
• Easier access to Google Reader feeds and folders
• In-app hints that expose helpful functionality
• New shopping cart features (Gilt Taste section)
• Improved performance and bug fixes

Some of these features made their way to Android as early as August 11, but with the latest update happening on August 19, I’m guessing more bug fixes were pushed.

Even still, recent user comments in the store indicate there is still room for improvement. One user, for example, commented, “Has several scrolling issues on my nexus 7 tablet, which a shame seeing how flawless it work on my gnex. Maybe its not optimized for tablets yet…..I don’t know. I just wish they address this shortcoming on their next update.”

Another said, “Current UI works on phones perhaps, but the app should benefit from tablet-specific UI to make use of the bigger screen estate. Current UI makes the reading experience rather inefficient on tablets like Nexus 7, especially with the current limit of having only 4-pages.”

“Doesn’t show something as liked when u go back later,” another adds. “Unresponsive when selecting items…still…have to click several times. Can only get into google reader section if I carefully click the title…while I can click anywhere on other tiles and they open just fine. Needs the ability to share to all accounts rather than clumsily having to do so one at a time. And it isn’t shortening links all the time. Feed embedded youtube vids don’t always play. Would be great to have social media notifications.”

Regardless of the complaints, the app still has an overwhelmingly positive reputation. Even the “complaints” tend to come with some amount of praise sprinkled in. The headings for the three comments above were respectively: “Great on phone…good on tablet,” “Getting better, but needs tablet-specific UI,” and “Almost there.”=

Starting Thursday, all that will change. Flipboard will offer current subscribers everything the New York Times publishes. So if you have the app and you’re a Times subscriber, you no longer have to sift through social media feeds to get your news.

This is the first time the New York Times has brought its pay meter to a platform they didn’t own, but it’s all part of the publication’s new initiative to bring the New York Times to every format available (being called “NYT Everywhere”) for its paid subscribers.

The two companies will split the advertising revenue generated by the collaboration. It’s a significant partnership for both companies, and more importantly, it’s an indicator of where media is headed in the future.

Denise F. Warren, general manager of The Times’s Web site, comments on the new partnership with Flipboard:

“We realized that we have an opportunity to enable this kind of access for paying subscribers, and we thought it was something we ought to try and see how users react to it,”

Flipboard founder, Mike McCue, comments on the partnership with the New York Times:

“It is a major achievement for our company, and I think it’s going to set the stage for digital media and in the publishing world in general,”

“What we’re doing together is amazing.”

As always, the Top News section will still be available for viewing by non-subscribers. Flipboard has already made similar partnerships with media publishers like ABC News, USA Today, Wired and Vanity Fair. We’ll keep you posted as the New York Times continues to bring their publication to additional platforms.

“Now you can connect your Google+ account to Flipboard and see all the activity in your Circles in a beautiful magazine format,” Flipboard explains in a blog post. “You can ‘+1′ (Google’s version of ‘like’) any post from within Flipboard, or tap the status update to share, comment and reply.”

“The YouTube experience is similarly transformed, as video browsing becomes more like reading a magazine,” the company adds. “Flip through your subscriptions, uploads and favorites, or enjoy popular feeds like Most Viewed, Trending Videos and Top Favorites.”

Here’s what the app looks like:

The Google+ integration of Flipboard was announced earlier this week, and it should have a significant impact on Google+ use, but the Android release should have an even bigger impact, bringing the popular (on iOS) app to a much wider audience, which should also bode well for Google’s social network.

It may not bode so well for Google’s Flipboard competitor Google Currents, but I’m sure Google would much rather have a presence on Flipboard, and give iOS users less reason to be scared of a transition to Android. With Flipboard on Android (and Instagram, for that matter), some users wouldn’t have to give up their favorite apps to make the switch.

In the US, Flipboard will also be coming pre-installed on the Samsung Galaxy S III, and Flipboard itself is now available in Germany, Italy, Korea, Netherlands and Spain.

The discussion with Horowitz from the conference will be available here, once it has been processed.

Essentially, Flipboard users will be able to view streams from their Google+ circles as part of their news-reading experience.

Horowitz had the following to say in a Google+ post:

Bradley Horowitz 2 hours ago

Thrilled to announce our partnership with Flipboard!

We've seen incredible excitement from the Developer community around G+ API's…  Back in November, we began testing these API's with a number of select high-impact partners.  The feedback has been invaluable… we've learned a ton and adapted accordingly.

Today, I'm pleased to announce we're adding Flipboard to this list of partners.  *Flipboard told us that Google+ support was their number one requested feature.*  They've done a great job of integrating Google+ content and features (including extensive support for Circles) within the context of their product.  Their team is hugely talented and it's been a pleasure working with them.

I demonstrated an early beta build today – keep watching +Flipboard for more information on general availability of their Google+-enabled app. 283    35 Powered by socialditto

Given Flipboard’s popularity among iOS users, this is a good opportunity for Google to get more people engaged with their Google+ accounts. With Google losing its presence in the iOS Maps app, it’s one more way for Google to get in front of iOS users in general. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it makes up for the Maps situation, but at least it’s something.

It also looks better for Google+ to be present in Flipboard, among competitors like Twitter and Facebook.

Flipboard is available for Android, in beta, by the way.

It’s simple, I just had a Galaxy S III lying around and I extracted the .apk using AirDroid. So, there you go.

The app can be donloaded from the xda link here, then transferred to an Android phone for installation. Alternatively, it can be downloaded directly to an Android phone using the QR code below.

To use the app, users will need a Flipboard account. Luckily, user nutmegy at the xda developer forums has figured that part out as well. First, ignore the account login seen when starting the app for the first time, then press the red ribbon in the top-right corner of the app. Press accounts, and sign up for Flipboard.

Many users on the forums were also requesting Samsung’s S Voice software, but Valcho stated that he or she no longer had to the Galaxy S III phone. S Voice is Samsung’s answer to Apple’s Siri voice command software.

Go ahead and try out Flipboard for Android and leave a comment below to give other Android users your take on the app.

(xdadevelopers forum via ubergizmo)

General Livestand updates include the addition of an auto log-in, which allows users to pick up reading where they left off, a new user-tutorial and improved article presentation featuring full images.

Specific updates include:

A redesigned My Library experience: A pull-down feature provides an at-a-glance view of the latest headlines.

MyYahoo! and Google Reader: Tracking all your favorite sites and blogs can now be done with the integrated MyYahoo! or Google Reader feature. A few simple taps will bring all your feeds into your Livestand library.

Yahoo’s Livestand was launched as a Flipboard competitor last fall, along with AOL’s Editions. So far, the app has been doing well for the company, which is good news, in light of Yahoo’s woes of late. CEO Scott Thompson has recently released a letter to employees to better map out Yahoo’s direction while restructuring. All Things D posted a copt of the memo here.

It’s been introduced as a new app for Android devices, iPads and iPhones for online magazines.

“We’ve worked with more than 150 publishing partners to offer full-length articles from more than 180 editions including CNET, AllThingsD, Forbes, Saveur, PBS, Huffington Post, Fast Company and more,” Google’s Mussie Shore (product manager) and Sami Shalabi (technical lead) say in a joint post on the Google Mobile blog. “Content is optimized for smartphones and tablets, allowing you to intuitively navigate between words, pictures and video on large and small screens alike, even if you’re offline.”

“To get started, simply download the app and choose the publications you want to subscribe to for free,” they add. “You can also add RSS, video and photo feeds, public Google+ streams and Google Reader subscriptions you’re already following. In addition to consuming your favorite media, you can also use the trending tab to discover related content that matches your tastes.”

Google has also launched a self-service platform for publishers to design, brand and customize their content as they like. Publishers can also associate their accounts with Google Analytics.

The app comes with Google+ integration that allows for easy sharing of content.

It’s now available in the Android Market and Apple App Store in the U.S. I actually had trouble finding it searching the Android Market from my phone, but you can go here and scan the QR code and go right to it.

It looks nice, but will it replace Google Reader in your news reading habits?