App Review: Pulse News Reader

App: Pulse News Reader

Device: iPad

Price: $1.99

Review:

Most of my news comes via various RSS Feeds that I follow, and I had been searching for a new RSS Reader for a little while – ever since I purchased my iPad.  My previous Reader of choice was NetNewsWire, as I loved their integration with Google Reader and its syncing capabilities between their desktop and mobile apps.  But as the iPad was released, NetNewsWire was asking for $10 for their iPad version – I wasn’t a big enough fan to spend that much on a news app, so I began looking for other alternatives.

And here’s where I stumbled across the Pulse News Reader.

I was immediately intrigued with the layout of this Reader.  It features beautiful horizontal scrolling and visual representations of each article, along with the title.

Unread articles are shown with bold lettering for the titles, rather than an unread number count.

No more obligation to clear out the red number badge before leaving my RSS Feeds.

Pulse News Reader allows you to have up to 5 pages of feeds and, at 12 RSS sources per page, plenty of room for any and all desired news sources.  You can add feeds from your Google Reader account, a standard web search, or from their suggestions.

And managing the feeds is straight-forward as well, with their column layout view.

Simply tap on an article, and you’re presented with a large preview on screen.

And, as you would expect, you’ll see the standard sharing options.

As a bonus feature, however, Pulse News Reader has teamed up with Posterous to offer another unique sharing option called, “My Pulse.”  Basically, you sign up for a free account to create your “Pulse” and with the click of a button, the article you share is added to your own mini-blog.

You can then share your favorite stories with anyone you wish!  Check out My Pulse to get a taste for it.

There are only two things that I feel are missing to give Pulse News Reader a hands-down two thumbs up:

• There’s no date or timestamp on the articles in the main view
• Most embedded videos won’t play in the main article – need to open them in Safari to view

Even so, after using Pulse News Reader for about two months, I can say without a doubt that I have found an RSS reader that has all that I need:

• A beautiful, easy-to-use interface
• One-stop-shop for different news items and sharing opportunities

If you’re looking for something elegant to gobble up your RSS Feeds, it’s hard to go wrong with Pulse News Reader.

(The creators of Pulse News Reader also have an iPhone app, “Pulse News Mini,” for $.99 that offers many of the same features as the iPad version)

Disclaimer: No goods or services were exchanged for this review.  The above opinions and statements are that of Brian Nagel alone and do not represent any companies or other persons.