This Monday morning we wanted to encourage you to check out a post on another blog because hey — it’s about us! Our friends over at Conduit, an innovative web and mobile publishing tools company, were curious about Trapit and decided to talk to Trapit Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer Hank Nothhaft, Jr. about where the idea for Trapit came from and why it’s unique. Head on over to the Conduit Blog to read the full post now as part of their Startup Spotlight series.

We’re pleased to announce the release of version 1.3 of our iPad app. This latest release incorporates some of our most requested features: Buffer, Pocket, and portrait mode.

Settle into your favorite easy chair and get comfortable because Trapit now rotates! Papasan sitters rejoice, set Trapit in your lap however it fits best, landscape or portrait. 

Share the best of your discoveries to more social networks with the intelligent sharing app Buffer. Buffer allows you to easily space out your posts over time to keep your sharing steady, but not overwhelming. Buffer let’s you Tweet through the weekend while you’re disconnected in a cabin in the woods. Use Buffer to share to your LinkedIn Profile or Groups, Facebook Pages or News Feed, and Twitter.

And should you need some reading material while at your cabin the woods, take the best of Trapit with you with new Pocket integration. Pocket (formerly Read It Later) allows you to save and read content later, even without an Internet connection. With the inclusion of Pocket, Trapit now offers integrations with all of the leading “save it for later” services including Evernote and Instapaper.  

We’re happy to announce the release of a new version of our iPad app, now available for download at the iPad App Store. Along with some bug fixes and greatly increased stability, version 1.2 includes some popularly requested new features—Instapaper and Evernote integration. Now you can take your favorite Trapit discoveries offline (on a plane or into the woods!) and keep them with important notes and research.

Just touch the “Save For Later” icon and now, in addition to Trapit’s own reading list (a great place to keep track of your favorite articles) you can send the discovery to your Instapaper or Evernote account with one quick touch.

We’re pleased to be one of today’s featured apps in the New and Noteworthy section of the App store. Download Trapit’s free iPad app here.

Did you know you can access a list off all of your traps directly from the browser view? Simply pull slowly straight down with your finger from within the browser view to access a full list of your traps. From there you can navigate with one click to any of your other traps.

We’ve been hard at work and are extremely pleased to announce that Trapit’s new iPad application is out and now available for free download on the App Store!

Trapit on the iPad is a great way to keep up with long standing passions or explore new subjects. From knitting to triathlons,  personal finance to literature in translation, politics to summer drink recipes—whatever matters most to you.

Log in to your existing account or create a new one to experience Trapit on the iPad. Create Traps using the discover bar, the idea generator, or browse and subscribe to a broad selection of Traps curated by the Trapit team. 

We’ve revamped our design and navigation and maintained the features you love. Three different browse views make finding the best of your Traps easy. Save important or special discoveries to your reading list or share them with friends on Facebook, Twitter, or over Email.

If you like Trapit on the Web you’re going to love it on the iPad. Check out our promo video below. 

Trapit for iPad from Trapit on Vimeo.

Ever wonder what it might be like to have an astrophysicist on staff during an important celestial event like the once in a lifetime (if you missed it in 2004) transit of Venus that took place yesterday? Expect a variety of safe viewing options and informed commentary. Expect to see your co-workers in a welder’s mask. 

Kelly checks out the Venus transit safely. 

Experience it vicariously with Ethan’s play-by-play of our Trapit parking lot viewing party over at his blog, Starts with a Bang. 

Did curation exist before the web? Of course it did—who hasn’t been to a museum exhibit, read a newspaper, or flipped through Found magazine—but the Internet has created awesome new potential for this, as Gary puts it, “fundamental human characteristic.” 

Content curation and distribution was the subject of a recent Spark Tech Talk podcast featuring our own CEO Gary Griffiths along with Oliver Hsiang from StumbleUpon, Guillaume Decugis from Scoop.it Check out the discussion out below.

Here at Trapit we’re always working on improving our technology.  Today, we are pleased to announce the release of a new classifier algorithm that should bring your traps better, more consistent flow of interesting and relevant content from over 100K spam-free sources.

This particular release improves our ability to get you breaking content in real time. This will improve the performance of Traps covering fast moving topics, like sporting events, where timeliness matters. It will also improve your ability to train and narrow your fast moving traps to follow a particular aspect of a topic. 

We also expect an increase in the content flow into some traps on narrower, more slow moving topics, which means you should get more articles on your favorite hobbies like knitting or rock climbing.

Finally, this classifier release will improve the performance of brand new traps and allow us to do a better job of learning about your content preferences using implicit signals—like which articles you share, save to your reading list, or spend more time reading.  

Share your feedback on the new classifier by writing us at feedback@trapit.com or find us on Twitter at @trapit.

We are extremely pleased to announce the hire of Liz Lufkin as our new Chief Content Officer. Liz previously served as Vice President at Yahoo for Front Page Programming and is an accomplished journalist, and a pioneer in content optimization and personalization technology.  

While at Yahoo, Liz supervised all front page programming and content, attracting over 170 million users per month. She also pioneered development of Yahoo’s content optimization and personalization technology and grew editorial performance over 300% since 2006, driving more than 1 billion clicks a month to the Yahoo media network (News, Sports, Finance, Entertainment, Celebrity, Lifestyle).

Liz brings a wealth of experience and expertise that will help lead and shape Trapit’s overall content strategy and next phase of development. 

Check out what Peter Kafka of AllThingsD has to say on Liz’s hire here.