NewsRoom Review

The best way to start this little review is with a confession. I am a newsaholic. I consume a ridiculous number of websites of various subjects each and every day. When I am on the computer, my aggregator of choice for the last few years is Netvibes. Ever since I got my first “superphone” (i.e. one that could do more than just make phone calls) a couple of years back, I have been on the hunt for a mobile version of the goodies that I get from Netvibes (fyi, Netvibes does have a mobile version, but I have never been a huge fan for one reason or another). For most of that time, I have been unsuccessful.

My requirements are not that hard. I want the ability to quickly and efficiently read the top news stories of the day on various subjects. Ideally I would like to be able to read these stories without having to load up the various sites that come up. I have tried several different news apps (AP, New York Times, etc.) and I have found them all to be lacking in key areas. So, up till recently, I have been getting my news from Google News. It works pretty well, but if I want to read more than just the title, I have to load up the full site.

Enter NewsRoom from Trileet ($4.99 on the App Catalog).

Saying that NewsRoom is simply a feed reader/aggregator app for webOS is like calling the Grand Canyon a hole in the ground.  I unabashedly love this little app. It is good looking, easy to use, and does everything you want your feed reader to do (and then some).

You start off with all of the sites you want to keep track of. You can add as many as you want and it will show you how many unread stories are available for you for each one. Click on a site and the little icon will bounce while everything is loading (nice touch there).

Once the stories are loaded you get a nice graphic and blurb about each one. You slide left to right to move through the story blurbs. If you want to read more about a story, just flick up and the UI shifts to full story mode (this will make more sense if you watch the video). In this mode you can tap a little button to go to the source’s website, or you can also email the story to a friend.

It isn’t that NewsRoom does anything new. It gets you the news. What sets it far apart from every other news app I have used is simply elegance. There are little touches (such as the bouncing icon) that give it a polish rarely seen on the Pre (in all honesty the only app I have seen that had this much spit-shine is BabyBump). Moving around the different stories is intuitive and effortless, and even more important, the UI gets out of the way of what I really want to see, the stories themselves.

News room is highly customizable as well, including when things are marked as read, how often it checks for updates, etc. The only thing I wish it had was a larger and more organized featured site list. It would be great to see a list of featured sites based on different categories (i.e. tech, current events, finance). This isn’t a big deal because if you know the site you are looking for, then it is easy to search and find it (or enter the RSS url manually), but I love discovering new things so an expanded feature list would be handy.

Pros

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