Rik's Blog

Am back

I implemented my spam stopping fixes only to break the blogging software - agghh.. Eventually I stripped back everything and got it working and restarted. Fingers crossed we're up and running more.

So, to my first new entry:

I've been trying out a lot of RSS readers on my latest phone - HTC Desire HD.

First off was Pulse from alphonsolabs. Great reader, and a very slick UI. The overall UI fits perfectly for a smartphone or tablet, allowing you to flick up and down through the various feeds quickly and easily. The downside at the time was lack of feeds on the smartphone versions - just 25. Version 2.0 changed that and upped the streams to  60! However - to do that they've had to split the streams into bundles of 12 streams across 5 pages. IMHO this goes against what the original UI was all about.. Yes I can customize whats on what page, but why limit to 12 streams. In previous version having all 25 streams there in 1 page wasn't an issue - in fact I wanted more! Now I have pages and pages...

In between these 2 versions of pulse I tried a few others, but what really stood out and am still using is Taptu. At first glance it's very similar to Pulse. But digging a little further things get better. First off the number of streams was higher (is now less since Pulse went to 2.0) which is always good. But more importantly it has 1 really cool and useful feature. You can merge the streams into a single stream enabling you to quickly scan through similarly related streams in one easy swipe across the screen - very useful when scrolling through news from various sources, but similar materials - e.g. Android news sites. The downsides are there too though - main one being that restriction of 30 streams While some might say the UI isn't as slick as Pulse's I actually prefer the card mechanism deployed in Taptu - is far easier to read for me. However, I think some ability to customize backgrounds and card colours could vastly improve the UI for all.

As nice as both of these readers are (and there are a bunch of others out there) they miss one important aspect. I don't just browse these news streams on a single device. I use my smart phone a lot, but not as much as my laptop, or my desktop, or even my work laptop. Which poses a problem - how do I prevent myself reading the same topic again and again as I move from one device to another. All of these readers fail completely at this hurdle... Not only do they not provide a desktop client, then do not sync across devices. Which is why once again I find myself falling back towards Google Reader and it's android app. It may not be as slick, it may not even be well targetted to touch screen devices - but it's the only tool out there that ensures I don't waste a lot of time reading news I've already read!