One of the best parts of owning a smart phone has been Google maps. That really is a magical app that’s super useful.
In second place, for me, has been Pulse. It lays out a grid of stories from sources you are following. So if I’m following the Verge, they’ll have their last few stories with associated main image from the story as part of my grid of stories that I’m looking at. It’s completely brilliant, and an even better way of surfing the net than on a desktop,
Unfortunately I got the message this morning in Pulse that they are shutting it down on Dec 31.
The only other app I’ve tried that tries something like this is Google Newstand, and it’s pretty bad in comparison. You have a grid of websites you follow, you need to click on each one to see their stories, and then it lays their headlines out like a blog. There’s no overview grid that lets you see stories from multiple sources at a glance like in Pulse.
There are a million apps that do that. The most well-known is probably Flipboard, but also Apple News, Pocket does that now, digg, and of course the “real” RSS apps for power users like Feedly, Reeder, Mr. Reader, gReader, Pulse, etc.
Feedly is by far the best RSS reader out there. Excellent apps for iOS and Android, API which enables awesome apps on Windows like Next Gen Reader, great web reader, and more.
Also, it’s supported by Pro subscribers really well which means it’s sustainable and should be around for a very long time.
Flipboard - worse than Google Newstand. You can only look at one thing at a time, no overall view with lots of stories like Pulse.
Apple News - I couldn’t find this on Google’s Play store, it’s probably iOS only. The only Apple News app I found was an app that gathers news about Apple.
Pocket - Didn’t like it.
Smart News - Again, worse than Google Newstand.
Feedly - This has some potential. Unfortunately, it also doesn’t have a big grid-like way of seeing multiple news headlines from multiple sources at the same time. But I like the way the app is arranged, and the interface I think works better than Google Newstand. So I think this is the best contender so far.
Sigh. It’s starting to look like nothing will really replace Pulse. Why are they shutting it down, I wonder?
I don’t think Pulse really fits into LinkedIn’s business model of spamming people. Yeah, there are a ton of alternative news apps. I’ve tried about 80.
Do you remember if any of them presented lots of headlines on the screen at the same time like Pulse? Or are all of them like Flipboard/Pocket/Smart News/Feedly/Newstand?
Pulse was my favorite reader and one of my favorite apps. I was looking for an alternative app but nothing compares to Pulse. Until now. Try to use and Android app called Palabre.
I just downloaded it and tried it. Very nice. It’s not as good as Pulse’s grid of stories, but the “magazine” view that’s the default still provides way more news at a glance than the other readers recommended here. As to whether this is a good way to catch up with stories, this mishmash of smaller and larger windows spread all over the page, we’ll have to see. I’ll try it out during the next week or two and report back. Thanks!
