In-app feed management? Check. Excellent user interface? Check. Per-feed configurable dashboard notifications? Check. NewsRoom ($4.99 in the App Catalog) is a serious contender in the ever crowded RSS reader space. Serious enough, in fact, that you may soon find yourself replacing your current RSS reader with this one.
Features and Use
The UI is decidedly iPhone-esque. Inpidual feeds are displayed as icons in a grid, and notifications of unread articles are displayed in a small circle to the top right of each icon. This isn’t gimmicky: it’s actually a nice departure from the standard list view that’s prevalent in many of the RSS readers currently available on webOS. Tapping an icon causes it to perform a little dance before putting you into the desired feed, and holding the orange (or “alt” key as it’s now called) and tapping on a feed will bring up a prompt asking if you want to delete or refresh the feed. Tapping and holding on a feed allows you to rearrange its position on the main screen and even create new pages, similar to how moving icons around on the webOS launcher works.
One big thing setting News Room apart from its contemporaries in the Catalog is the ability to configure RSS feeds from the app itself. Most of the readers available are ultimately extensions of Google Reader, which means that if you want to manage your feeds, you have to log into your reader account via the browser on your phone or on the desktop. While this isn’t a huge headache since the mobile reader site is actually quite pleasant to use, it’s really nice to be able to do everything from the phone.
Once in a feed, articles are first displayed as thumbnails which can be navigated between using familiar side swipe gesture. From this screen, you can also easily star articles for viewing in the “Starred” section, and tapping or performing the up swipe gesture on an article moves the full article into view. You can also easily change between feeds by utilizing a UI element at the bottom of the screen.
Feed management is done though the “site manager” menu. From this screen, you can delete feeds and choose which feeds will send notifications to the dashboard when updated, a feature that I’d like to see in every RSS reader. Additional configuration options allow you to set tap behavior (tapping opens only unread articles, double tap opens all articles), read behavior (articles are marked read only as you view them), and toggle background updates.
NewsRoom excels in the ease of use department. The eye candy is a real treat, and the way that the feeds are displayed as icons is a nice touch. There are also some great UI flourishes here: from the main screen, the up swipe gesture brings you right into your unread articles, and the down swipe gesture allows you to clear all unread articles. Adding feeds is also quite easy, and the lack of Google Reader integration really isn’t an issue here. You can add feeds right from the main screen by hitting the “+” button, bringing to you a menu that shows featured feeds (including PreCentral, CNN and the BBC), a search option, and a place to enter a specific URL.
Overall performance is excellent; I found that the speed of updating, adding and managing feeds, and navigating the program was easily on par with with the RSS reader I use on a daily basis, Scoop ($0.99 in the App Catalog), which says a lot.
Summary
Color me impressed. Sure, News Room is on the steeper side of the price spectrum, but it's easily one of the most polished apps in the App Catalog. The excellent user interface, superior configurability, ability to manage feeds right from the app without having to fuss with my Google Reader account all go towards making this one of top RSS readers available to webOS.
Comments
Love this app.
If it had a way to mark what is read and what isn't on my google reader (what I use on my desktop/laptop) I would buy it in a second. But I really don't want to be doubling reading things.
I do like how it looks though. I am a sucker for eye-candy.
+1... I wish Feeds would be updated with the ability to have per-feed notifications.. :/
+1 That's the only thing keeping me from logging in and paying the $4.99 right now. The only reason scoops is still my main reader because of the google reader integration.
Darn you guys.... Now I have to buy it.
How does this app get a high rating and it's $5? It has not web based integration (yahoo, google reader, etc). I've tried apps without an desktop based RSS reader and it's just redundant. No dice for me. If any developers are reading, here's an ideal RSS reader:
1. Clean Interface
2. Offline mode (with pictures backed up as well)
3. Full google reader or other rss reader integration (for syncing purposes
4. Ability to share articles with facebook, twitter and other social sites
You can charge $20 if you want. If all these functions work, I will pay.
I think offline mode should be seamless. If there's no network connection, it displays the data it has since the last update (once you have a network connection, it updates any starred/read items). Have a separate/manual mode for it is clunky.
This may be what you mean, but I just wanted to clarify that I hate and don't use Feeds's offline mode for this reason.
I just want to make sure I got this right. This will have the whole article to be read or is just like an in program browser that it opens in. I had a few rss readers that had the entire article and not just the first few lines then a link to the actual article on my wm phone. So can anyone tell me for sure?
Someone should correct me if I'm wrong...
Some rss feeds only give the first few lines in order to make users visit their website, so that may be the behavior you've seen and would have nothing to do with the app.
I have played rss readers that only display the first few lines no matter what the feed has, which is crappy IMO.
I played with this app when it was on preware as a demo and it had the whole articles then.
"Some rss feeds only give the first few lines in order to make users visit their website..."
Yes, like this site.
NewsRoom is far and away my most-used paid app...easily worth the $5 asking price.
Being able to read complete articles offline (and not crappy one sentence RSS feeds) on my Sprint-challenged underground train ride is great. I'm a sucker for eye-candy too, and appreciate this app looking very professional and not like some aesthetically-impaired amateur cobbled it together in his freetime.
"+1... I wish Feeds would be updated with the ability to have per-feed notifications.. :/"
It already does, to to the top left menu, click Site Manager, then click on the feed you want notification enabled for. you'll see the toggle
This is a great app. Worth the money spent. I use this all the time and love the notifications for sites I want. (Its how I saw this review came up :)) Now I can finally remove my google reader bookmark from the launcher.
its worth it I must say, I used to use feeds that cost me 7.99. This goes right to the article, and saves you time having to log onto the website. Very good app worth the money.
I agree with mullrat.
"3. Full google reader or other rss reader integration (for syncing purposes"
If it gets this I will buy it.
Also add a one button function (it may have it I don't know) so I can just read all feeds by today/other dates.
I really just want to be able to open the app and read all of todays feeds for today but one feed at a time. In other words I want to see all of todays engadgets, then all of tech crunches feeds etc... Kind of like a daily newspaper.
Most RSS readers just list all the feeds by date all mixed up in last posted order. Maybe it is just me. :)
I have a bunch of feeds on yahoo I'd rather not add one by one to another reader. Anyone know a way to transfer them?
You know, I like this app quite a bit too, but I just ran into a fairly significant problem: 36 feeds is the limit. Why?!? I'd be willing to bet it's a completely arbitrary limit, nothing technical, and that annoys me. Devs, if you're reading this, PLEASE remove this limitation. You've got a great app otherwise.
I never read news feeds before (never used Google Reader, so don't care about syncing with that), but NewsRoom has changed that. Picked it up after reading all the positive reviews, and it deserves every one. The UI is the best part and absolutely brilliant IMHO ... it's use of swipes and scrolling is probably the best I've seen in a WebOS app.
You hit the nail on the head! This is one of my top three apps.
Other apps should aspire to reach this level of quality and functionality.
Best 5 bucks I've spent in a long time!
"...and the lack of Google Reader integration really isn’t an issue here"
It is for anyone who uses Google Reader and would like to keep their unread counts synced between their phone and their desktop, rather than have to resort to reading their feeds specifically from the phone or having a false unread count when they get to Google Reader on their PC. I have over 20 feeds, I don't feel like inputing them one by one on a mobile app.
And what are you talking about when you say you have to log in from the browser or your desktop? You can just log on IN APP on both Feeds and Scoop, no mobile Google Reader site required.
Agreed. I use google reader way to much. Have an insane amount of subscribed feeds and I love the magic sort. There is no way I will even entertain a reader that doesn't integrate with it and no way I could switch to reading the feeds just on my phone. The app lacking this basic feature imho makes me question the whole thing.
I got a msg that says this app limited to 36 sites at one time!!! What that means? I no longer can add feeds anymore ... Anybody noticed that?
As soon as I got word of this app in a previous post, tried it, deleted Delicious Morse's unstable "Feeds", been loving it ever since. It has to be the most stable app currently on the Pre.
I need a button to send a "download this app" notification to my pre. Yes, I'm THAT lazy.
Now thats a great idea. For any app recommendations, they should provide a link for download so we can download straight from the browser, no need to search the store. Here is the Newsroom link so you can download.
http://developer.palm.com/webChannel/index.php?packageid=com.trileet.new...
I was a skeptical heavy Google Reader user and downloaded this just based on the incredible glowing reviews. I must admit I was wrong and this is worth every penny of the price and then some. It is the single most impressive app I've seen and has changed the way I receive and read my news.
I have not gone to Google reader or my desktop ONCE since I've been using Newsroom...it's so much better of a news reading experience and just a lot of fun as well. Why be locked to my desktop and looking at plain vanilla lists of unread headlines which require you to click through to websites to get to the text of the story? The app even has the ability to notify you when any feeds you've set up have updated stories, right along with your email, text, voice mail, Facebook alerts. Very cool.
I use Newsroom as my primary news source now while laying in bed, lounging on the couch, sitting at my desk...pretty much anywhere. I work at home, but for someone who commutes on a train or bus I can't imagine how great this would be. Full articles almost all of the time without added clicks and offline reading all formatted perfectly for the Pre/Pixi.
To address previous comments:
GOOGLE READER SYNC: Non issue for me anymore since I ditched using it once I started with Newsroom. I'd actually rather read the news on my Pre now and I AM synced since I have my phone with me everywhere :-)
OFFLINE USE: It seems to grab the entire story as an option 90% of the time on the feeds I use and they ARE available offline.
WANT TO READ ALL UNREAD FEEDS TOGETHER LIKE A NEWSPAPER: The app already does this. If you swipe up from the main screen it shows you ALL your unread stories one by one by feed. The beauty of this app really is that the experience is like using your hands as you would in reading a newspaper, and not clicking on one line headlines like you would on other RSS readers (or Google). You can swipe through the stories and stop when you see an interesting headline or photo, drill up and read the whole article, go straight to a specific page (if you've grouped by subject) like you do a newspaper section, or go to one specific feed.
WORTH COST WITH OTHER APP CATALOG RSS READERS LESS? Absolutely. I previously tried NewsFeed, FeedReader and Scoop and they did fine for what they were, but now look so outdated and from the stone ages to me. I'm babbling now, but NewsRoom really seems revolutionary compared to the rest. It is the kind of app that WebOs was built for.
Yeah ... what he said 8^). It's really become one of my favorite apps. Really easy to take a few free moments and browse through my selected feeds.
how do you get facebook alerts? the facebook app definitely doens't do that, right?
I get Facebook alerts from the FriendsFlow Facebook app.
Can you zoom in on images within the app (rather than linking to a browser)? One of the things that's much better about Feeds over Scoop is that Feeds can zoom in on an image. Scoop is pretty much unusable with a comics feed because each image/article scales to the screen and there's no way to zoom in.
sorry. no pinch & zoom. or landscape.
Still the best mobile Newsreader I've ever used, though.
what exactly does it mean by notifications? do they just show a badge with the number of unread items on the icons, or does it send you a push-style notification like a text message, even with the app closed?
Just like a text or email notifications, with the name of the feed/feeds that have new content listed in the notification area. It does not list the number of new stories in each feed, just that the feed has new content.
Tapping on the notification launches NewsRoom, showing the feed icons, w/the little red "bubble" showing the number of new stories in each feed.
Sends you a push style notification like a text message in the notifications view. The notification says which of your preset feeds have new articles and pushing it opens NewsRoom.
eh, I have to say the lack of desktop syncing with my google feed is a killer. In fact, I use google's share feature quite a bit, so I'd have to use that.
The Pre's screen is too small for me to enjoy reading a lot, I much prefer launching several tabs of what I want to see, then go to them. For reference, I'd say the Nexus One is what I'd want if I were reading a lot. Or an iPad.
The offline stuff is cool tho, but not worth $5 for me and time to sync with google reader.
Damn I just bought the 4.99 Feeds app two days ago. I wish I would have waited. This fits my needs much better. Keeping my feeds mobile helps save me a lot of time so I really need a good app for it.
what do the icons do on the screen where you opened an article? are there options to share, save etc?
alright, i bought the app. ARE YOU HAPPY NOW??!! anyway, it's a really convenient news reader, really nice... the mark all as read when you enter a feed is a nice function, so i don't have to swipe through every single post of every feed to get rid of the unread badge, which is good for those feeds that have a ton of updates, like gizmodo.
i do have one gripe - aside from the not syncing with google reader thing - why on earth do you have to click a 'read more' link to see the whole article for - of all sites - precentral?! is there a way to fix this so you can see the whole article without going into the browser?
hahahaha...I also found that to be ironic or at least bad luck that today 99% of my feed article snippets opened up to full articles and the ONLY one I followed all day that didn't and had a "read more" link to open on the browser was THIS review of their own product on PreCentral of all places :)
This review lead me to purchase this app for both myself and my wife's phone. We love it, well worth the money. And it's the only second paid app I have bought. This is a great app. I almost wish there was a desktop version. I'm personally not a fan of google reader, to complicated and not very attractive IMO.
Only two cons that I can think of right now, no landscape mode, and no pinch zoom.
Ok, this got me to buy this and I must say I can already tell I will love it and I have never been a big rss guy at all. I have tried Google Reader, but rarely visited it until I just stopped all together. I had Newsfeed for this last week but never got into using it more then a couple times. I bought this almost two hours ago and have been non-stop putting in feeds and reading as I go. I have been so busy I haven't been keeping up with certain websites (like the Houston Dynamo) and just now caught up on stuff. With notifications this thing will be getting a ton of use. Although now I need to take out some of my bookmarks in the browser because I won't need them. :)
This is my second paid app, first one being Sims 3. You guys (PreCentral and the posters here) did a great job bringing this to my attention and describing it. This is the kind of app I will pay for and I don't even blink at the price now that I have experienced it. I am sure I will get a smart ass comment from my wife though.
it is a really good reader, and I use it more than almost any app on my pre...but...
with no way to export or backup feeds, if you dr your phone or replace it, you have to renter every feed by hand...I have 30 of them so it gets old.
please give us a backup option.
I bought this about 4 months ago when I chose to leave my laptop behind on a trip (shocker, for me!!). I've been happy with it since. Searching for precentral.net's feed was straightforward, it introduced me to Gizmodo (!), and the overall feel of the application is just plain wonderful. The app doesn't crash or become otherwise sluggish.
An area it could improve: would be nice if the app stopped forgetting rss feeds from time to time (they simply disappear).
Overall $5 is a very justifiable price for NewsRoom. It still has enough wiggle room to improve as new releases come out. Afterall, wouldn't you get bored with an application that had *everything* when it was released and never got updated?
I like the glossiness and ease of use for this app. But all of my feeds have disappeared twice in one week. That pretty much kills this app for me. If you go to their web site, others report the same issue. The developers need to fix this, and soon.
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