Informal Brain

One of my favorite iPhone applications called Byline by Phantom Fish has just been updated to version 2.0.

What an impressive update!

Here are some of the highlights:

1. Folders: You can now see each of your Google Reader folders.

2. Clean, fast new interface: The interface has been cleaned up. Gone are the flat blues and now we have a cool wood grained view which is easy on the eyes. And did I mention faster! The entire application is much faster to load new items.

3. Notes: You can now write notes while sharing items just like in the web based google reader application.

4. Built in Web Browser: No more sudden swaps to Safari. Now you can browse inside the application without switching. This is a favorite feature because I would frequently hit a link by mistake and swap to Safari. No more.

UPDATE: Version 2.0 is now out. Read my review here.

Since the last time I posted about my favorite iPhone RSS reader, Phatom Fish has made a couple of updates. The introduction of working share, star and “mark all as read” features have made ByLine by far my favorite RSS reader for the iPhone.

Beyond the features of the iPhone application, the killer feature is ByLine’s tight integration with Google Readers auto prioritization feature. Google Reader already surfaces articles to me based on my past reading preference in the “all items stream”. ByLine leverages this stream im the client to provide the most interesting items to me when I have a few momemtns to read RSS content.

UPDATE: Version 2.0 is now out. Read my review here.

Phantom Fish just released version 1.0.1 of their offline Google Reader iPhone application called Byline.

There is lots to like about this new version. Google Reader does a nice job of feeding you relevant news from your collection of feeds using its automatic ordering algorithms. This continuous river of news works great for the iPhone where you don’t have lots of time to drill into each feed. I hear tag based filtering is coming. Not a big feature for me because I trust googles ordering algorithm seems to keep the fresh, relevant items near the top of the list.

The first big change you see when you scroll to the bottom of the new items like you get a handy “Mark All Items As Read” link. This was probably my biggest complaint about the first release. You can also now, swipe any item to mark it as read. I nice quick action to push it off the list.

Once you tap an item you get an enhanced menu at the top. The first thing you see is a new “share” button. Let’s hope in a future release they will add the ability to tag a small note just like in Google Reader to the item.

All in all, if you are looking for a great RSS reader for the iPhone and you are a Google Reader fan, I can now recommend ByLine as a great purchase.

A new Google Reader AIR application emerged today:

This application provides the traditional river of news approach to RSS reading in a very cool desktop package.

However, in a world of short timeframes and quick news consumptions would you not rather have this kind of view into your RSS news feeds:

Here you see a number of RSS feeds overlaid into a single pane of information. The graphics added by the bloggers give the stories texture and allow you eye to float over the entire subject space. You can quickly pick out articles which interest you, save them (if desired) and quickly move on to other topic spaces. In my mind the river of news style is obsoleted.

I challenged myself a few weeks back to completely switch my RSS reading habits over to the Acrylic Times RSS reader.  I have noted in a couple of my previous posts here and here that I had found some some immediate benefits to the amount of time I was spending with RSS feeds.

I am happy to announce that weeks later I continue to find benefit in this new style of reading.  For example, I spend less time leafing through feeds in google reader.  I noticed a number of other people who have tried Times felt that they were suddenly unburdened by unread count syndrome.  Like most people who needs another email like reminder that we are falling behind.  I also switched my reading style on my iPhone to subscribe to a few safari based RSS feeds.  The list is very small and only includes those sites with immediate to the point news, with a small number of daily articles.

So what is the next step?  Well, I would suggest that the Acrylic folks think about building a version of Times for the iphone as a native application.  It would be very interesting to see the same style of RSS overview on the iPhone.  Perhaps some kind of zoom into and out of article with a double tap to show the details like the current Times page curl effect.

One week later we have seen two major updates to the new Times RSS browser from Acrylic software.  I was reading through the comments on Acrylic’s post about having a number of issues during the initial launch.  Lots of folks commenting on crashes and lost data. 

I am happy to report that as of version 1.0.3 (509) that the software is now very stable.  My copy has been running for days without any kind of crash.

I still love the UI.  It is a major productivity saver.  I still see people commenting that they want to have better notification of what is new, or what they have read vs. what they have not read.  Those people should head back to their traditional “river of news” readers.  To use Times you have to embrace the “glance” at news model and trust that news you need will be on the page when you open the software.  Finding the right feed mix on each page is key.  I have been focusing on sites that do a good job of summarizing a topic rather then focusing on a very narrow niche area.  Makes for better coverage… like a news paper!

I have been sticking with my practice of only using Times and a couple of RSS feeds on my iPhone.  Still seeing much less time surfing Google Reader and I feel liberated.

Ok, so the title is perhaps a bit dramatic, but I must admit it is partially true. So how many of you use a “river of news” RSS reader? I have been trying a bit of an experiment where I have feed links from Safari on my iPhone for my most frequently visited RSS locations. These might be things where I want to be on top of the news like MacRumors or Google News. But for the rest of my feeds I have subscribed only the most important summary feeds from people and web sites into Times.

This has had two key benefits. First, I don’t spend hours of spare time slowly scrolling through a page of news in the mobile version of Google Reader. I just jump to the Safari feed links and see the top stories. Since I have limited my feeds to only key items this limited my mobile browsing. Lots of time back here. Second, at home when I get in front of the computer I glance through my Times pages dragging key articles to the shelf. Then I go back and work through the shelf blogging or emailing the ones which I find interesting. Not having to surf through pages of articles using “J” or “Space” in Google Reader saves LOTS of time. Amazing amounts of time in fact, and I don’t feel any less connected to the discussion.

Give Times from Acrylic a try. The latest update which came out tonight has stabilized things for me. So far it has been working great, and the team has been super responsive to bug and crash reports from the early adopter user group.