The Federal Reserve now has an iPad app (here). Unfortunately, I do not have an iPad and so I cannot access this and see how it works – whether it has push notification (say when the Fed releases a statement) or if it would have the ability to read the speeches to you (even better if it has videos of the speeches).
It would be even more awesome if it also allows Federal Reserve data to be graphed and manipulated – say let a user look at what the Fed funds rate has been at various times with a flick of the finger. Or, plot side-by-side graph of the Fed funds rate with its estimated yield curves. Or, let user examine what its balance sheet looks like over the course of the financial crisis. This is very much a personal wish list. But if realized, it would go quite a way on the path to better communication. I was talking to another economics graduate student some days ago, and he thought the Federal Reserve issues Treasury securities. (It does not.) This anecdote underscores the lack of general knowledge about the Federal Reserve.
Since I do not have an iPad. I have to make do with stone age technology – tracking Federal Reserve news from its RSS feeds on Google Reader. The four RSS feeds I follow are:
http://www.newyorkfed.org/rss/feeds/3.xml
http://www.federalreserve.gov/feeds/speeches_and_testimony.xml