Byline Google Reader on the iPhone
Up until last week, my iPhone RSS Reader of choice had been Byline, developed by Phantom Fish, and available in the iTunes Application Shop for only £2.99. Google Reader is my preferred desktop RSS reader and for the past four of five months Byline, which acts as a superb interface to Google Reader, has been the number one most used application on my iPhone by far.
The cool thing about Byline is the ability to browse offline, allowing you access to web pages without a connection, so perfect for the London Underground journeys or flights in Airplane mode. Byline archives web pages linked to by feeds you have starred, allowing you to save any item you want to read or website you want to browse offline.
I LOVE BYLINE!!! That is, I did love it until it died on me on Saturday!
After much cussing and swearing, when I realised that my favourite iPhone application was not going to start working after a simple re-boot, I decided to do a little research online as to what I might do to get it working again and almost immediately I came across news that Google had released their own native web application for Google Reader on the iPhone. As I was at home with a wifi connection, I decided to give it a try!
Google Reader on the iPhone
Getting Google Reader on your iPhone is simply a case of pointing your Safaris browser to the iPhone Version of Google Reader (http://www.google.com/reader/i/).
Once logged in to your Google Reader account you arrive to an iPhone friendly home screen, displaying all the folders of your news feeds. Okay, it does not look as sexy as Byline, but boy does it work!
It is fast, way faster than Byline. You are able to skip through your news feeds and read those that are most relevant to you and ultimately work far more productively.
I only had Google’s Google Reader loaded on my iPhone for a matter of minutes, before forgetting that I was trying to fix Byline. Nor have I bothered to look since.
All the time that I am able to get online for my feeds then, the Google Reader is definitely my new RSS reader of choice. I added the cool icon to my front page screen and haven’t looked back!!! In my opinion, this is a must have app.
That is not to say I have totally given up on Byline. The next time I am going on a trip and know that I need Byline offline browsing capability, I will make an effort to get it working again. Until then, I am more than happy with my new favourite app!
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