Monday, May 31, 2010

Apple iPad's New Newsreader App: Pulse



Many people ask if the iPad is the best newsreader currently out. We aren't saying that it is, but we aren't saying that it isn't either, but we do like the appearance of this newly-released news app called Pulse. Created by two Stanford grads, Akshay Kothari and Ankit Gupta, Pulse was developed in just a few weeks as part of the Launch Pad class at the University's Institute of Design. You can see that Pulse is a $3.99 app that is a graphically-rich RSS-based news aggregator. The homescreen is very involved and visually stunning as it shows stories from multiple sources on a dynamic screen. You can swipe up and down to see headlines from various sources and move from right to left to check more specific stories from the sources. When you tap on the story, it takes you to a text view of the article and also has various sharing elements and more. Did we forget to mention, it also integrates feeds from Google Reader. Co-founder Ankit Gupta says, “A lot of people we talked to were really confused about RSS and Atom and the whole vocabulary around news aggregators. We have thrown all those terms away, and made it as easy as Google search. You enter some keywords, Pulse gives you top results and you can pick the source you want to follow”. Check out a video demonstrating the apps features below:

 

All the good news doesn't mean that is has no bad news. Hopefully the team addresses the issue quickly, but as of right now you can only add 20 RSS feeds to the reader. Perhaps something similar to the screen to screen architecture of the iPhone Home Screen can be worked out for the app. If you haven given the app a go, tell us what you think in the comments below.

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