Review: Feeds

If you are a tech saavy person, then it is probably safe to say that you know and consume RSS feeds from time to time. So the question is, what do you use on your phone to read your favorite sites? Feeds by Delicious Morsel ($2.99 in the App Catalog) is definitely my favorite app, and is one that I use multiple times throughout the day.

For the non-techies out there [Ed: we actually get a lot of those] here is some quick info on what RSS is: RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It allows various sites (like webOSRoundup) to publish their articles to your RSS Reader, thus having one or multiple sites loaded to one easy to reach place, thus enabling you to look at various sites on one app or website. For more information on RSS, visit Wikipedia’s page on it.

Now back to the app. The main use of Feeds is that it syncs with your Google reader account. Upon opening the app for the first time, it prompts you to log-in to your Google account, (email/password) and once you’ve logged in it automatically syncs your folders, feeds and articles.

After logging in, you see All Items, Starred Items, then your folders/feeds. From here it also shows you how many unread items you have in each folder/feed and under all items. When you go into a specific feed or all items you see your articles. Here you can view all or view unread only at the top right of the screen, which makes finding random, unread articles very easy!

In the preferences screen, you can set the Light or Dark Theme (dark just seems easier to read with which is the setting I have), Font size, # of Articles to Fetch at a time, Landscape Settings- Landscape Mode, Scroll Gestures – Notification Settings, and Offline Storage Settings.

Offline Storage Settings is a wonderful tool to use when you fly on planes often, or take subways (since cell phone signals currently do not penetrate underground). In order to turn it on you need Auto-Fetch with Notifications turned on, and you can choose to Fetch Unread Only. In Landscape Mode having Scroll Gestures on allows you to scroll page-lengths with your gesture area, turning it off does the normal swipe-to-go-back gesture.

While reading your Articles you can do a swipe across the screen to change the page (similar to an eReader without the pretty animations). I have found this to be clumsy at times since you have to swipe across the entire screen. Fortunately there are arrows to turn pages at the bottom of the screen.

You also have the option of starring, sharing, and going to the actual website as buttons within the app. Hitting the icon that looks like mail gives you the option to Email, IM/SMS (I find myself using this often to share interesting articles). Hitting the star icon make the article a favorite so you can find it later. Finally, the “I” icon takes you to the articles website.

My main problem with the app is that you cannot search/add new feeds through it, even though you can swipe-to-delete feeds. My other problem is that you cannot tweet or share on Facebook, which I’ve emailed Delicious Morsel about but haven’t had a response.

Overall, the app is incredibly clean, easy on the eyes when reading for long periods of time, and is a breeze to use. Just make sure you use Google Reader before you buy the app, and it’s well worth the $2.99 for both avid readers and the heavily dedicated like me.

Interested? Go here to download to your device on appRoundup.