The Appcast #6: February 15, 2009 – RSS Readers

This week’s core topic: Here Is the News – A look at RSS Reader Apps.

You can find the full show notes below the cut. Episodes can be downloaded by clicking the Episodes tab above.

Intro Music: Borderline D.U. Mix  from Mixter Two – I Don’t Know What I’m Doing by Brad Sucks.

Show Outline:

1. Introductions
2. Another discussion on piracy and jailbreak news.
3. New Apps for the Week
4. Core Topic: RSS Reader Apps

New Apps discussed for the week ending on February 15th, 2009:

1. SpaceX – $0.99 – A wonderfully fun top-down shmup that includes ship upgrades, tons of bullets to dodge, and randomly-generated levels. Fast-paced arcade action with a very addictive quality. Though originally free during it’s first few days of release, this game is still a worthwhile purchase at just one dollar.
2. WhatTheFont - Free – If you’ve ever wondered what font they used for any movie poster, document, book, or magazine, you can now just snap a pic with What the Font. From that picture, What the Font tries to determine exactly what font was being used and let you know of it’s name and the alternatives that look similar to it. A bit difficult to use sometimes due to the fuzziness of taking close-ups with the iPhone camera, though a certain add-on could alleviate that issue.
3. Evil Overlord – Free – A wonderful guide to helping you develop yourself as a top-notch evil overlord. Though a bit silly, pretty full-featured app with a lot of great humor and charm. Fun for a quick laugh and certainly diabolical when you do use it to message your minions/friends about your grand world-destroying schemes.
4. WalletZero – Free – Keep all your membership cards handy in your phone by storing your membership numbers and valid UPCs in one app. Works for newer scanners but likely to have issues with older ones. Had no problems using it at Safeway’s self checkout machine, though it could be painful to tell a cashier to scan your phone and not have it read properly.
5. Circuit Defenders Lite – Free Lite Version or $2.99 Premium Version – A limited 2-map version of the premium version. This tower defense game is themed similar to Tron and has the player defending their CPU. Has a neat feature where the creeps actually shoot back at your towers so you will be wondering whether to use your money to repair your towers instead of building new ones.
6. ReflowPDF – Free – A free PDF reader that converts to standard text. Has a built-in browser that lets you pick out your PDF and then just display them easily. Easy to just get on PlanetBook, pick out a classic, and go straight to reading. No need to really pick up those paid apps for the same Shakespeare play or 60s science-fiction novel.

Picks of the Week:

Groups (Bob) – $1.99 - A group contacts app that allows for quick group mailing, group sorting, and even quick fixes to specific contacts that don’t have specific information entered yet. Great UI and support make this app feel like it’s a possible contender against ABContacts. If it had the ability to create new contacts and rules like ABContacts, then Groups could be a big winner given it’s much better aesthetics. .

Comixology Lite (Kevin) – $3.99 for Premium Version or Free for Lite Version – The free version was released this week and it really shows off a lot of the power that Comixology can bring to a hardcore comic book fan. The usual Wednesday new release list as well as the ability to check out information on each book and see all the covers is amazingly smooth and incredibly useful for any comic book fan that knows Wednesday’s new releases can be truly exciting. If you do wonder about the Premium version, just know you also get sample pages, the ability to do more with your pull lists, and even the ability to send your pull lists to participating stores that will handle it for you as though you dropped it off weeks ago. Very exciting for those of us that love our comic books.

Silly App of the Week:

Analog TV (Bob) – Free – Enjoy the wonders of analog TV after the digital transition. Behold the wonders of snow.

iCoconut (Kevin) – Free – One sound is all you need to travel through the world of Camelot and this app shall provide you the brave Sir Patsy you’ve always deserved.

Core Topic: RSS Readers

Similar to our findings with the Notepad apps from last week, we found that a lot more of the paid RSS Reader applications were of better use for the hardcore RSS Reader user, but we also discovered some disappointment with a good number of the paid apps as well.

Free RSS Reader Apps:

Newzilla – Free – The most basic RSS Reader you can get. Very bare-bones though it does come a built-in browser, but there’s really not much here besides the ability to import feeds manually.

Free RSS Reader – Free – A pretty nice free RSS Reader, possibly the best free one there is at the moment. Has a good layout and nice aesthetics, but is a limited version of the Pro RSS Reader that only allows three feeds to be imported by Google Reader.

Paid RSS Reader Apps:

Gazette – $1.99 – A bit slow on the Google Reader synch, though the synch is there. Plain presentation with the usual Favorite tagging and Sharing functionality of Google Reader, but not much else.

Manifesto – $1.99 – Kind of the same story as Gazette but with landscape mode and timestamp information for different RSS feeds. Quick synch download from Google Reader, though nothing else out of the ordinary of tagging Favorites and Shared articles.

Pro RSS Reader – $1.99 – Basically the paid version of Free RSS Reader but without limits on feeds. Doesn’t actually synch to Google Reader, just pulls down to the iPhone. Image caching was available, but not working all the time.

SmartRSS2 – $0.99 – Full Google Reader synch as well as a lot of menu options and plenty of available timestamps. Aesthetically very smooth and easy to navigate while also sporting a very nice 3D display when put into landscape mode. Prides itself on using popularity rankings for articles and feeds though I didn’t actually experience much in terms of this feature. Packs a lot of power for the low price.

Feeds – $2.99 – True and complete synch with Google Reader while also supplying a very nice presentation. A bit slow on initial synch if you have several RSS Feeds (more a bottleneck on Google Reader’s side). Remembers the feed you were reading when you decide to exit the app and return which is a nice feature that really shows it’s attention to detail. Also notable for wrapping feed header text rather than cutting off the header like most other RSS Feeds. When leaving your feed to view an embedded YouTube video, the app also remembers to bring you back to the article you were reading when you decided to go check out the video.

Feedreader – $4.99 – Has no Google Reader import or other import options. RSS Feeds need to be entered manually, which is curious for such a high-priced RSS Reader. Image feeds are difficult to view because the images must be opened in an internal browser. Handles rich feeds well, but it still feels a lot like a lower-priced app.

Byline – $4.99 – Very strong and snappy for a Google Reader-based RSS Reader app. Quick synch and nice presentation are pluses, but it doesn’t necessarily work as a two-way Google Reader synch app as expected. Categories must be created via Google Reader and then synched down to the iPhone rather than created on the iPhone and synched up to Google Reader itself. A bit disappointing due to this missing detail, but still strong as a Google Reader synch app.

Newsstand – $4.99 – Has a really cool “news stand” appearance in landscape mode that renders each of your feeds as a magazine cover on a shelf. Pretty good for skimming through entries very quickly. Able to import/export feeds, search for feeds and even add a feed through manual URL submission. Unfortunately, it doesn’t do true synch with Google Reader though it will import from it. An additional plus is the ability to share article URLs via other online services such as Twitter. Also has the ability to wrap article headers and several different viewing options in terms of backgrounds and text size. Overall Bob’s favorite, and the one we felt most justified its $5 price tag.