

Show HN: iPad RSS Reader App I spent 7 months on - mmackh
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/read/id448477454?ls=1&mt=8
This was my first attempt of making something truly appealing and useful. I've learned a lot and I'm pretty happy with the result. What do you think?
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alpb
I am personally using Reeder on my Mac. <http://reederapp.com/> and planning
to buy its iPad app when I get my iPad. It is because it integrates with
Google Reader very well.

The reason I use it is, Google is doing RSS aggregation really well. It is
robust, fast and gets the pubsubhubbub pushes really quick so that I can see
new stuff in seconds.

I think this app can be great with Google Reader integration, because it has a
better UI than Reeder for iPad. But I think many people don't trust adding
hundreds of RSS feeds to a mobile device instead of a cloud-hosted service
(Google Reader).

Good app, you're doing good.

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mmackh
I really like Reeder for iPad - it's certainly one of the best solutions is
you want to follow your suscriptions from Google Reader. But Read is something
that is more relaxed - more casual. There's no unread counter, you just pick
it up and find interesting content. And there's the fact that their API is
still unofficial. I did consider it for a long time, but in the end, I decided
against it.

~~~
Gring
Please reconsider. Being able to sync my feeds with other apps is very
valuable to me.

~~~
zarprey
I agree. Your app looks like a much better rss reader than the ones currently
out there but if I can't sync it to google reader I won't use it.

~~~
mmackh
I'll have to wait and see; Google is currently redesigning Reader's interface
and they haven't really responded to my questions about the future of the API

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thom
This looks good, congrats on getting it out there!

Does it autodiscover feeds on sites you visit? Can you subscribe in-app? Those
are the things that I've yet to find in an iOS feed reader - I seem to have a
very old-fashioned "if someone's interesting subscribe to them" workflow,
instead of this new-fangled "if something's interesting, send it to
instalaterous" thing that is everywhere now.

~~~
mmackh
There was a beta test over the past month - I should have included you. They
are both very interesting features and I'm going to take a crack on trying to
implement them in the next releases.

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stevenp
I highly recommend that you consider having a designer (or a different
designer) take a stab at your icon. It's the first thing people notice when
looking at your app, and right now it's pretty unappealing. The app itself and
your website look a lot better -- bring the icon up to that level and I think
you'll do much better.

~~~
mmackh
I would love to, but I'm all out. If the app is successful, I'll certainly
change a few things and amongst those, is the icon top priority.

~~~
Zev
My thought on the icon: Get rid of the paragraph symbol and keep the rest,
maybe add two more lines of text to the page behind the paragraph symbol, to
make the top/bottom border slightly thinner. At least, for now, until you get
a designer to make you a new icon.

Other than that, the app looks nice, and its on my list of apps to play around
with over the weekend!

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mmackh
I just wanted to thank everyone for the compliments. In case anyone is unable
to buy or is really curious about the app, send me a tweet @mmackh and I'll
provide you with a promo code - as long as I have any left

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brackin
Nice icon and name but not a fan of the typography. Where do the articles come
from? I don't know where this fits in my life.

I love Reeder, it's a great app. I also enjoy Zite and Flipboard for taking
the news posted on twitter.

~~~
mmackh
Thank you - I've gone through seven revisions until I finally came up with
this one. The standard user interface font is TimesNewRomanPSMT, but you can
change the reading font to: Baskerville, Palatino, Optima or GillSans.

The articles come from standard RSS feeds. Clear Read is a term I coined for
downloading and de-cluttering the full article - it's very similar to
Readability in Reeder.

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thomasfl
The iPad is all about user experience. I like the design,typ and details like
the dingbats in the title field. Keep up the good work.

~~~
mmackh
Thank you!

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terhechte
Looks promising. How did you get the name? I'd expect after millions of apps,
a name like 'Read' would already be taken.

~~~
mmackh
Pure luck - I registered it back in July, and somehow I managed to send it off
in time.

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terhechte
Haha ok, congrats :)

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dougaitken
The icon looks practically idential to PlainText, the text editor for iPad but
with a thin black bar top & bottom.

~~~
mmackh
I had no idea - I use that Pilcrow sign everywhere. I plan to update the icon
in future revisions though

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Swizec
I was working on something like this last year. Took ages and eventually
didn't work out.

How did you do the scraping?

Congratz on launching!

~~~
mmackh
Thanks! When you tap Clear Read, the article's link is sent off to a server,
which then returns the article's body in XML + formatting and images.

~~~
Terretta
So you have to see the gunk page first, and then the clean version after?

I'm looking for an RSS reader that defaults to the "Reader" or "Readability"
type view without the extra click.

Currently, I use Reeder.

~~~
mmackh
You see the text from the RSS feed first, albeit without any HTML, then tap on
Clear Read to enable the full-content view.

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robmcm
Can't seem to get it in the UK store...

~~~
mmackh
It just passed through Apple's review. It should be going through the App
Store today, but there's always a delay...

~~~
robmcm
I personally use byline, but like to try other.

~~~
mmackh
I haven't used Byline myself, but judging from its features, it is much more
of a power user tool than Read.

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foobarbazetc
Dude, why rip off Instapaper for?

