Michal Ždanský There are more and more information sources around us, and going to individual pages for information is tiring. The problem is partially solved by RSS readers, which collect all messages from individual servers, but even those with many sources start to become quite confusing. The real solution is personal magazines, which not only aggregate content, but display it clearly in the form of newspaper columns and sometimes even eliminate duplicate articles. You can customize each such magazine to your liking - based on sources or topics, and the application will do the rest for you.
Among the most famous personal magazines on the iPad are Flipboard, Zite, Press, but Currents from Google. Each of these apps works a little differently, offers different features, and displays and retrieves content differently. So we looked at each of them and compared them according to four criteria – user interface, content customizability, content sorting and readability. For each criterion, the application can receive up to five points, i.e. a total of twenty.
The user interface
In this category, we evaluate the clarity of the application, graphic processing and interesting functions of the application.
Flipboard - 4,5 points
Flipboard is the electronic equivalent of a print magazine with everything. The user moves between pages by dragging a finger, which "turns" the page, both in the overview of articles and on individual pages. The entire Flipboard environment is very minimalistic and doesn't get in the way of the content, quite the opposite. I would only read the way the text is wrapped, which is aligned to a block and sometimes there are ugly gaps between words and letters.
Flipboard will offer a fairly decent number of sharing services, including Google+ and LinkedIn, and can further aggregate content from other accounts such as YouTube or Tumblr. Perhaps the most interesting feature, however, is creating a personal stream of articles that other Flipboard users can subscribe to and you can subscribe to theirs. If you know someone who reads interesting things, this is definitely a useful feature. In addition, Flipboard promotes well-known personalities directly in the section By Our Readers.
Zite - 5 points
Zite is also very minimalistic with a strong focus on content. The articles are divided in the form of cards, and the whole overview looks quite polished. I especially praise the way the lines are wrapped, because Zite can divide words in the title with a dash, and when aligning to a block, there are no different spaces between words.
Sections sometimes appear between the articles Headline News a Popular on Zite, which are often not always related to the topics you choose, Zite rather promotes sponsored content, which can act as a form of advertising, but mostly it is of general interest and has nothing to do with advertising content, moreover, it can be turned off in the settings. The application will offer completely standard sharing services including Google+ and LinkedIn and sending the article to be read later (readability is missing here). The integrated article evaluation is interesting, according to which Zite adjusts the algorithm according to which it finds articles for you.
The last major update also added the ability to view the history of read, rated and shared articles.
Pulse - 3,5 points
Pulse is the only one of the four applications that offers a dark environment, which can be practical, for example, when reading at night, but on the other hand, not everyone is comfortable with this visual style. Articles in Pulse are unusually arranged in strips below each other, divided by category or source, which can be confusing for many people.
The application will offer basic services for sharing and sending articles, unfortunately Google+ and LinkedIn are missing. If you do not want to save articles to other services, Pulse offers the option of saving directly in the application, which you will not find in the previous two personal magazines.
Currents – 4 points
Currents is Google's answer to competing personal magazines, with a strikingly similar design to Zite. The articles are similarly laid out in cards, however, for other articles you need to scroll down, move to the side to switch between categories. The environment is quite clear, subscriptions and other settings are hidden in the menu on the left in the style of Facebook.
The application supports most services for sharing and saving articles, but LinkedIn and Readibility are missing. On the contrary, she was surprised by the presence of Pinboard. Like Pulse, it will offer its own repository of starred articles as well as search across sources and editions. Among other things, Currents are full of nice animations, for example when loading more articles or opening sharing services. In addition, it is the only one of the applications in Czech.
Customization of content
Here we evaluate the possibilities of adding content, in terms of catalog size, clarity, customization, but also the search for Czech servers.
Flipboard - 4,5 points
Flipboard's content offering is huge. You can choose from the offered categories of topic groups (such as Apple News) or individual servers. You can further expand your feed by connecting to Twitter, where individual tweets and links within them are classified in a magazine style, as well as other social networks such as Tumblr, Facebook or YouTube. There is also support for Google Reader, where Flipboard displays all Feeds in one category.
Flipboard primarily displays English sources, but using search or RSS sources, you can easily add Czech servers to your account, for example iDNES or Hospodářské noviny. However, do not expect a thematic classification of Czech servers. Although Flipboard offers a content guide for countries other than English, the Czech Republic is not among them yet.
Zite - 3 points
Zite has its own specific way of creating content. You do not add direct sources to it, but only reference sources. Right from the start, the application offers you a selection of topics, from iOS applications to animal photos (you can also search for topics), plus the option of connecting to Twitter or Google Reader. Based on the data obtained, it then generates the content itself. The content of Google Reader or links from Twitter only completes your area of interest.
This method has one big advantage - you don't have to worry about all the sources you are interested in, Zite will select them from its huge database by itself, moreover, the algorithm often eliminates duplicate messages (although it doesn't always succeed). On the other hand, you cannot force the app to display messages from a specific server. Thanks to this, you can forget about Czech articles.
Pulse - 3,5 points
The offer of resources in Pulse is rather nicely processed, it is clearly divided into categories and, in addition to individual servers, it also offers themed units. It is then possible to select "Best of" from each category or set. However, this is almost the only way to get more resources into one "belt". Additionally, the list of sources is nowhere near as rich as Flipboard or Zite. For example, you will find only 14 servers here among the Apple websites.
I was pleasantly surprised by the offer of social feeds, where Pulse draws from your Feed in Tumblr, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube or Readability and composes separate strips from them. Individual servers from Google Reader can also be inserted, but they cannot be merged into one strip. In Pulse, there is also a category of content around your location, but unfortunately it cannot find any Czech server. The only way to add a Czech server is through search. The application can also search through Google and immediately offers you an RSS feed of found items to add to sources. Pulse had no problem finding even Jablíčkář.cz.
Currents – 3,5 points
Right after launch, Currents will offer you "Current articles", in Czech, where you will find most of the most famous Czech dailies among the sources. Google probably draws from its localized Google News service, where it is possible to come across Czech content. Google also offers resources from its catalog sorted by category, but it is rather confusing due to the absence of subcategories, but it sometimes misses a Czech server. Unfortunately, you cannot add topic areas to Currents, only individual servers.
At least the search function can make it easier to add resources, where, for example, typing in the password "Apple" will display a list of relevant sites (of which there are between 50-100). You can also search for the names of individual servers, including Czech ones, and finding Jablíčkář was also not a problem. Currents does not support any social networks for content generation, it is only possible to add sources from Google Reader to the application, again only as individual items.
Gallery
In this category, the possibilities of sorting added resources and displaying them on the page are evaluated.
Flipboard - 4,5 points
Flipboard organizes articles into groups based on the categories you added when you created your magazine. Thematic groups have their own square, Twitter has its own square, Google Rader has its own square, etc. Unfortunately, there is no option to create your own groups where sources could be combined. The only option is the Cover Stories category, where Flipboard tries to select the most important articles from all sources. The squares can be rearranged individually.
The articles themselves are arranged relatively clearly on each page. The layout varies according to the size of the article's main image, sometimes there are six articles on one page, sometimes three. In addition, Flipboard skillfully combines photos with text in such a way that the editing looks like a real magazine.
Zite - 5 points
The arrangement of articles on the main screen is very similar to Flipboard, although not as diverse. Zite will offer 3-4 articles on one page, with the windows usually adapted to the main images in the article. Unfortunately, it sometimes happens that Zite does not recognize which of the images to select and sometimes they are not related to the text at all.
As the main screen, Zite will always offer the Top Stories category, which contains selected articles (around 70 with each update) from all the other categorical topics that you have determined when composing your content. It is of course possible to select any specific topic from the Quicklist, which will display articles in that category.
Pulse - 2 points
As already mentioned, Pulse arranges articles in strips arranged under each other according to category or source. Strips cannot be combined with each other in any way and there is no possibility to display a selection of articles from all strips. The bands can also be divided into sections in the hidden menu on the left, whereby only twelve bands fit into one section.
In the strips, individual articles are displayed in the form of squares with a photo and a title. If a photo is missing from an article, it is replaced by a perex. The strip display in combination with sections is quite confusing for the average reader. You can set the order of the individual strips, but the classic newspaper view is still better for a personal magazine on the iPad.
Currents – 1,5 points
Like Zite and Flipboard, the layout of articles in Currents is in the spirit of a printed newspaper, with articles arranged neatly next to each other in squares and rectangles of various sizes. The application divides article sources into thematic categories, i.e. at least those from the catalog. It places all the sites you added from Google Reader or RSS searches into the Sources category.
However, items from individual categories cannot be displayed at once, you need to browse each article source separately. Fortunately, these can easily be toggled by swiping left or right. There is also no option to display top news from all categories. In general, the level of customization is minimal.
Gallery
ReadingAmong the individual articles on the device, the emphasis is mainly on parsing the content.
Flipboard - 3,5 points
The application cleverly divides the text into multiple columns for more comfortable reading, just like in physical magazines. It is interesting that the title and text are always formatted a little differently on partner servers in the style of the given resource. After all, there is a fairly fundamental difference between the supported resources and all the others.
While the entire article is always displayed on partner servers, elsewhere, for example RSS sources, only the content of the feed is loaded, which is often only a few paragraphs, elsewhere Flipboard opens the integrated browser straight away. It seems as if the app doesn't use some global parser that only pulls text and multimedia content from pages. This degrades the reading experience quite a bit, because the entire server page will always be loaded for your own resources.
Zite - 4,5 points
Unlike Flipboard, articles are displayed in the same way as in Instapaper or Pocket services, i.e. in one column on one page. Zite contains a parser that extracts text and images or videos from the article and provides them to the reader in this form. The parser does not always work, there are articles that can only be read in the integrated browser, but you will rarely come across them. If you come across a case where the parser has mishandled the content, you can always switch to a full page.
Pulse - 3,5 points
Like Zite, Pulse displays articles in one continuous column, i.e. in the manner of Pocket or Instapaper, but unlike Zite, it does not allow changing the font size. The font is easy to read, but the given size may not be suitable for users with poor eyesight. Like Flipboard, Pulse suffers from the absence of a global parser that would display only text and images from articles, even for content from non-partner sites. From the articles, it will only display the content from the RSS feed, and for the rest you need to open the integrated browser.
Currents – 2 points
Google Currents behave a bit strangely when it comes to displaying articles, because they generate them in three ways. For partner sites, which Google has fewer of than the other three apps, it displays all text with images in the way we'd expect. For other feeds added via RSS, it will only display the content of the feed, and you need to open the integrated browser to read the rest. On the other hand, for Czech "Current articles" from all sections, it will only display the title, a piece of perex and offer the entire full page for loading.
Otherwise, it always displays articles from partner websites in two columns, possibly divided into several slides. Unfortunately, the font size cannot be changed. Unlike the other three, Currents flattens the text into a block, unfortunately it cannot divide words, which is why sometimes unusually large gaps arise between words. The application has one more nice feature – it displays images of read articles in black and white, so you can easily distinguish them from unread ones in the overview.
Gallery
Evaluation
1. Live – 2. Flipboard – 17 points
Flipboard finished second by just half a point. Unlike Zite, however, it is more adaptable to the reader's specific requirements for content, it can also "pick up" it from social networks and allows you to read Czech pages as well. However, it mainly lacks global page parsing for perfection.
[app url=”https://itunes.apple.com/cz/app/flipboard-your-social-news/id358801284?mt=8″]
3. Pulse – 12,5 points
The third Pulse failed mainly due to the lack of clarity and the parsing of pages is noticeably lacking here. Since it doesn't offer more than Flipboard, which is a step up in most respects, Pulse can only be recommended to those who are comfortable with the application's specific user interface.
[app url=”https://itunes.apple.com/cz/app/pulse-your-news-blog-magazine/id377594176?mt=8″]
4. Currents – 11 points
Although Currents looks and feels very nice at first glance, the lack of essential features makes it just an average RSS reader, which is ironic considering that Google killed Google Reader. Currents can really only be recommended to orthodox Google fans.
[app url=”https://itunes.apple.com/cz/app/google-currents/id459182288?mt=8″]
Personally, what bothers me most about Flipboard is the late/no update of some feeds and the somewhat confusing sorting of individual feeds, where the newest feeds are often not the first.
Personally, I've been using Currents for a while now, I like the typesetting of the text and working with photos, as well as the variability of the display of posts. There were several things that bothered me about Flipboard, from the font to the limited number of pages that can be saved (I think there were maybe 2 on the iPhone). On purpose, I tried the new version of Flipboard now and only a few small things have been added.
With Currents, it is great to slide from source to source and then you can find your way around it - but it is not ideal, see the impossibility of viewing the entire category at once. I'm still waiting for the perfect solution. :)