Filed under: App Store
Byline: Google Reader for your pocket
As someone who manages whole metric scads of information in Google Reader, I was excited to see Byline, from Phantom Fish software, in the App Store.
Byline, as you might expect, fetches all your subscriptions from Google Reader and displays them for you to read. It also keeps track of the items you've read and starred.
The greatest thing, though, especially for iPod touch owners and subway riders is this: Starring or Noting an item saves it on your iPhone or iPod for offline reading. If you star an item either using your desktop browser, Mobile Safari, or Byline itself, it saves it for later. Noting an item is even better, because you can save pages that aren't even in your RSS subscriptions for offline reading with Byline. They mention you can do this very easily with a bookmarklet.
Now -- I can hear you screaming: NetNewsWire does all this, and it's free! Without boring you with detail, it's worth ten bucks to me to keep my Google Reader workflow the way it is, rather than spending time changing the way I work. Agreed: it's probably too steep for people who aren't heavily invested in Google Reader already.
Additionally on the downside, Byline doesn't allow you to browse by tag, instead opting to lump everything together in one list by date. Phantom Fish says this is for performance reasons, as people with many feeds would experience sluggish behavior. They're looking into it, though, and I personally hope they figure it out.
Byline is $9.99, awesome, and available through the App Store.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Bobnease said 4:26PM on 7-16-2008
Still waiting for google to drop their own Google Reader app in the store.
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Gadget Chick said 12:46AM on 7-17-2008
seriously they should have had their whole suite of apps ready for the app store by now not just that stupid search app.
Dan Blanchard said 4:31PM on 7-16-2008
Umm... why don't you just use the Google Reader website? Google made it iPhone friendly and awesome months ago.
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Bobnease said 4:42PM on 7-16-2008
An actual app would hopefully give ease of use & offline access allowing for faster loading of articles. It's more convenience than anything. The only thing it would have to load are the stories, no graphics etc.
Keane said 7:12PM on 7-16-2008
Because the new iPhone Google Reader is a fucking disaster. It's slow, it's buggy, and it's completely unfriendly to EDGE iPhones.
CaptSaltyJack said 4:58PM on 7-16-2008
You're on drugs, Keane. Works perfectly fine on my EDGE iPhone.
BOK said 5:05PM on 7-16-2008
I really hate it when people write "Ummm." It looks so stupid.
Keane said 9:35PM on 7-16-2008
SaltyJack, the lack of GWT in the new iPhone client makes it almost impossible for me to click-through to blogs that require a click-through, it takes forever to pre-load 15 items, and it often fails to mark items as read once I've finished with them. I think it's horrible and while I'm not paying for Byline either, I can't understand why Google wouldn't even allow us to use the /m Reader for a little while longer. Terribly planned.
I'm not the only one disappointed by the awful new Reader, either: take a look at the Google Reader Google group.
Tom said 4:35PM on 7-16-2008
I had some app on my jailbroken phone that synced with google reader, but god was it slow to get my list of feeds. IT WAS VERY SLOW.
So I might wait on this one until the iPhone is jailbroken again and see if it's worth the $10. I wish there was a demo.
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Jimbo said 4:37PM on 7-16-2008
I'm tempted because I do use Reader almost hourly, but that is quite a jump for me. If it was half the price I'd jump on it.
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MatthewRex said 4:52PM on 7-16-2008
Ditto. I'm much more prone to drop $4.99 on these than $9.99. It just seems a bit much charging $10 for an RSS app that sources a free web-based reader.
Jeff said 4:58PM on 7-16-2008
Ahem.
"The greatest thing, though, especially for iPod touch owners and subway riders is this: Starring or Noting an item saves it on your iPhone or iPod for offline reading. If you star an item either using your desktop browser, Mobile Safari, or Byline itself, it saves it for later."
I spend half my commute in a subway tunnel, so this makes it really worth it for me.
It also needs a "Mark All Items As Read" button.
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CaptSaltyJack said 4:59PM on 7-16-2008
At $9.99: fail. Too damn pricey. I'll continue using Google Reader on my iPhone via the web.
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NutMac said 5:18PM on 7-16-2008
Ditto. Although many will find native RSS reader such as this indispensable, considering the free alternatives (e.g., NetNewsWire, Google Reader iPhone web application) and prospect of Google releasing a client of their own, make Byline overpriced.
jackson.myers said 5:03PM on 7-16-2008
I was going to say the same thing: If it was $5 I'd buy it now just to test it out but for $10 I think I'm going to stick with the free NetNewsWire reader, even though it isn't perfect. THe only thing I'd like to see that NetNewsWire doesn't have is maybe a list of all articles by date rather than having to click into each individual feed, and maybe a way to mark all articles unread without going into each individual feed.
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Mike Morrow said 5:15PM on 7-16-2008
I've not had any problems over EDGE with the Google site; however, I would be interested in giving this a try for the offline capabilities.
Problem is, it looks as if Byline only syncs starred items, but doesn't have a "Share This" option? Am I missing something?
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Muzo said 5:18PM on 7-16-2008
no tags, no cash.
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Rick said 6:04PM on 7-16-2008
I emailed the author yesterday requesting the view-by-tag feature. Here's his reply:
"I've had a lot of requests for this feature, so it is very high on my list of priorities. I hope to add it within the next month or to, so do check back — I'll post release notes for updates on the website."
Muzo said 5:20PM on 7-16-2008
oh, and no search?
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Big John said 6:18PM on 7-16-2008
I'm not signal-starved enough, ever, that I need to use offline reading. Even if I was, it's not worth $10 to download items from a free service.
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