Despite the hype around Google’s Reader RSS client, I’ve been sticking with my original choice of NewsGator. Now, when we finally get the iPhone in the UK, I know that I’ll be able to monitor my feeds on the move, since they’ve introduced an iPhone-friendly interface. MY iTablet took a look to see how well the desktop experience translates to the smaller screen.
If you’re looking for all of the online client’s features, you’ll be disappointed. Right now, the (free) iPhone client is very much a basic interface for reading those feeds you’re already subscribed to. There’s no way to add new content, and the drag & drop folder organisation you get in the full version is also missing.
Still, all the pertinent information from your feeds is shown, including number of unread posts, time/date and author, photos are nicely resized to suit the iPhone’s screen, and you can easily click over to the relevant site if you want more information (or if it’s a partial-feed). The text size is similarly readable, and you can mark individual posts as read or the full page (or save them to your online clippings folder). Anything you do on the iPhone client is synchronised with the rest of the NewsGator suite, so you won’t have to re-mark stories when you’re back on a normal computer.
For a first – free – effort it looks pretty good. I’d like to see an easy ‘email this story’ button, as on the full online reader, but the synchronisation NewsGator offers (between online versions and the many software clients they have) is still a unique selling point and makes it one to keep watching.
Incidentally, you don’t need an iPhone to use the interface: it’ll work as a compact mobile client with any device.
[more information at the NewsGator blog]
I still prefer http://www.google.com/reader — even though it’s not made specifically for the iPhone, it works beautifully. The main reason I prefer google rss reades is because or portability. I have access to ALL my rss feeds anywhere anytime as long as I’m on a device connected to the Internet.
Well, that’s what Newsgator started as, and still is: a centralized RSS aggregator with a web-based reader. The software they produce is just a desktop-based route into that system.
The biggest thing about this, IMHO, it that they finally adopted a real URL for the thing. There was always a mobile-formatted reader but you had to use ridiculously formatted URLs with all sorts of id #s crammed into it that were impossible to remember or type.