Switchfast Blog: The Future of IT
Apps at Work: Sorting through the News with Reeder for the iPhone
Friday, November 19, 2010 by Michael Lewis
Since the iPhone App Store launched in 2008, I've spent a lot of
time and money hunting for a good RSS reader. These applications
allow you to keep on top of news and updates across the web -- with
obvious use beyond the tech community. I had pledged loyalty to
Google Reader for years, but with no way to save links to Delicious
for later use, the Google Reader mobile app just was not cutting
it. Mobile Safari's quirks could make switching between Reader and
the website frustrating.
NetNewsWire loaded new posts far too slow and too ugly.
Newsstand's design did not make any sense for the way I used RSS
aggregator and it took forever to load. At the time, neither could
save to Delicious. With no offering satisfying my requirements, I
was stuck with Google Reader.
That was until Reeder came out. It's truly changing the way I
use RSS online, connecting to Google Reader so everything stays in
sync. I can save posts to Delicious, Instapaper, and Twitter. And
it's fast: from starting up to downloads, it's the fastest and most
stable application out there. I can have 1500 unread posts with
little to no slowdown.
The other amazing feature of Reeder is its "swipe-to-mark"
feature. Swipe a headline to the left and it will be starred. Swipe
to the right and it will be marked as read (or unread).
As an SEO and content manager, I am constantly digging through
piles of information looking for interesting bits of news for our
clients or new ideas in our industry. To give you an idea of the
amount of data I sort through on a daily basis, I subscribe to 50
blogs and add about 600 new posts a day.
Reeder lets me sort through the data with ease -- all while on
my morning commute.
It's not totally perfect. The designers of Reeder chose not to
use the "standard" iPhone interface tools. This is not necessarily
a bad thing; but after three years of using Apps built using the
Interface Builder, Reeder's interface can be a little
disorientating. Reeder uses a number of icons whose uses are
initially unclear. I lost 300 unread posts the first day because it
hit the "mark all as read" button.
But the key to Reeder's greatness is all of the services it
works with. You can send links to Twitter (you can use your own
custom link shortener if you have a bit.ly pro account). You
can send articles to Read It
Later and Pinboard.
Most importantly, Reeder can send articles to Instapaper, a super-simple
application that lets you save articles for later reading. Look
back on the blog in the coming weeks for an in-depth look
Instapaper.
Do you follow several websites with an RSS feed? Would you
recommend any other applications?
Mike Lewis is the SEO Manager at Switchfast
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