Misty thoughts » byline http://blog.kfirbreger.com Tue, 13 Jul 2010 07:44:30 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 Byline review http://blog.kfirbreger.com/2009/08/29/byline-review/ http://blog.kfirbreger.com/2009/08/29/byline-review/#comments Sat, 29 Aug 2009 07:18:43 +0000 Kfir http://blog.kfirbreger.com/?p=181 Byline iconFor a while now I have been using Google Reader as my rss reader. Managing feeds was simple, though not ideal and it was accessible from just about any computer. Better yet, I did not need to find way to sync between all my different rss readers, which was starting to get tiresome. On the iPhone the situation was a bit different. Even though Google Reader on the iPhone is reasonable, it felt slugish and not very natural. Running in mobile safari, that was of course, to be expected.

I decided it was time to look for a dedicated rss reader for the iPhone. I was looking for an application that offered syncing with Google Reader, and that was about it.  I decided to try Byline from Phantom Fish. I have been using Byline for a month now and am very happy with it. So much so I decided to write my first app review about it. Let me give you a closer look at it.

  • The icon: Clear and unique enough to not be confused with other apps. The icon is definitely beautiful, though in my opinion it could have been a bit more abstract.
  • Setting up: Setting up is as simple as logging into your google account. Works well.
  • Usage: The app is responsive and slick. It feels fast and the UI is very natural. I cant imagine going back to Google Reader.
  • Sync: Syncing works really well. I can't remember having any kind of trouble with it.

As I mentioned before, Byline also caches the feeds so that you can read while offline. Traveling around europe regularly, it is possible for me to use my rss reader without the need to pay ridiculous amounts of money for roaming data (1 voor 100kb).

All in all I am very happy with Byline. It does everything I wanted it to do, and it does it well. What I am missing is the ability to view entries per feed instead of per group. However this is a minor complain seeing the overall experience.
In fact I liked the use of Byline so much, I switched back to an rss reader app on my computers as well. Readers that sync with Google Reader that is. Look at Phantom Fishs Byline page for screenshots and video demo. Or use the link bellow to go directly to the app store.

Get Byline on the app store

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