After weeks of putting it off, I finally purchased Alphonso Labs’ Pulse News Mini. I had read lots of reviews about it and even played with it a bit on an old iPhone 2G and decided to just go ahead and purchase it as I really needed a good RSS news reader. Pulse News Mini is an RSS news reader that is unlike a lot of the other bland, text-based news readers out there. Where other news readers are filled with nothing but text and headlines, Pulse News Mini takes the graphical approach and uses a series of image tiles and headlines to present you the most up-to-date posts from all your favorite blogs all on one screen. I’m a busy person in real life who has to juggle time between my family, work and my hobbies so sometimes its difficult for me to just sit in front of a computer and view all my favorite blogs. That’s where Pulse News Mini comes into play.
Pulse News Reader gives you all your sites at a glance, all at once. By inputting all the sites you visit on a daily basis, Pulse News Mini imports all the RSS information for you whenever you refresh the app. This lets you view all those sites at one time instead of visiting each site separately. This is a huge time saver for me as it is quite possible for me to visit a whole bunch of sites within a minute. Pulse News Mini displays both the header image and the title which makes it easy to browse for posts that you actually want to read. I’m the type who doesn’t read every post on a blog and usually only read what I find interesting. This makes it really easy to do that.
What makes Pulse News Reader a must have too is how fast it is. The app can update feeds in the background while you are reading other feeds. When on 3G or WiFi, it only takes a few seconds to update all your feeds. I’m currently viewing 15 feeds at once and it has no problems updating each one quickly. when you click on a post you want to read, it brings up the main article for you to read but also includes all the feeds at the bottom for that specific blog. It makes it easy to jump between articles once you are done reading the current one.
I was never a big RSS reader due to the fact that they were always all text based when browsing all the headlines. Sure you could view all the headlines quickly but I rarely ever clicked on any of the articles as it always seemed quite boring to me. I hated having to swim through all the posts. Now with Pulse New Mini though, I’m actually reading all my favorite sites when I’m away from a computer and I’m enjoying it. I also like the fact that I can link my Facebook and Twitter accounts and share articles with my friends easily and all through the Pulse News Mini app.
Final Thoughts
Pulse News Mini is a very excellent RSS news reader for your iPhone or iPod Touch. Unlike other readers that are all text based, Pulse presents articles to you in picture form so you can always quickly browse what might be interesting to read. The app is very fast on my iPhone 4 and scrolling is very smooth. I like the fact that I can browse articles and if I like the article or want to share the article, I can directly post them to either my Twitter or Facebook with a click of a button. Pulse also grabs articles fairly quickly over 3G too as I had no problems updating all the recent articles from 15 different RSS feeds in less than 30- seconds. What’s great is I can view multiple updates from different sources at once very quickly instead of me visiting each site individually. It is a huge time saver as I can browse everything within a matter of minutes. I highly recommend Pulse News Mini for anyone looking for a solid RSS news reader.
You can get Pulse News Mini now in the App Store for 99 cents.
Rating: 5/5
