Times - The Next-Gen RSS?
Aug 4th, 08About a year ago, magazine and newspaper style layouts swept the blogging world off it’s feet. If you’re a news nut and sick of Google’s bland Reader interface, now you can view your feeds in a very pretty magazine style RSS reader. Times by Acrylic Apps provides an innovative way to stay abreast of the things that interest you most.
Working similar to the way a website would, you can set up pages to organize your subscriptions by topic, then drag and drop your selections into each page (which has three sections) using whatever type of arrangement suits you. Times will pull in the feeds, complete with images, and display them for you as excerpts, giving you a nice overview of all the feeds you’re tracking.
Pages in Times works like website navigation. Reorder, rename, add/delete to suit your tastes.
To view an entire article, just click it and the page will curl down and flip over just as a real newspaper would. This reader is not ideal for someone who regularly follows (i.e. scans) a great number of feeds. If you subscribe to less but read more, however, Times is for you.
The spacebar toggles the Shelf if you want to set aside articles to read later.
Probably the smartest feature is the shelf. Simply put, it’s a place to store manually selected articles for later reference. Very cool idea, especially since articles fade from Times quicker than other readers I’ve demoed. Makes sense, since they’re displayed as excerpts and take up more room.
Times does have some annoying bugs at this time (v 1.0.5). For example, sometimes the scrollbar doesn’t want to work, and when you try to rearrange your feeds, they won’t stick. It seems you’re stuck with the order you first dropped them in to each page. If you want to move one feed in front of another, you’ll have to take them both out then add them back, in the order you want. The curl animation, while really cool, has a display issue where a chunk of the page looks like it’s missing. If you try to delete a feed while it’s being displayed on one of the pages, Times will crash (at least it did for me). So you have to remove a subscription from a page before you can delete it from the reader. :/
If this app were $15 I might pick it up, but I don’t feel it’s worth $30 - not yet. Especially when you can get NetNewsWire free, and it’s a very nice utility. That said, I think Times is really onto something in terms of being a next-generation feed reader. By that I mean it probably won’t be long before others take note and begin developing Windows or platform independent apps to match the sophistication of Times.
Hey, This really very great and the magazine style theme is beautiful to look and i think good to use also.
Aug 27, 08 | 12:11 amI have seen several of these designs so far, and the functionality is growing more and more on me. I guess I just like the whole simple look they give off.
Aug 28, 08 | 1:20 amHmm…I’m going to give this a try. I have actually steered away from RSS readers in the past. Basically because I tried Google Reader and that Blog feel just wasn’t there for me. Hopefully this will.
Sep 9, 08 | 11:29 amI have seen several of these designs so far, and the functionality is growing more and more on me. I guess I just like the whole simple look they give off.
Sep 17, 08 | 2:15 amNot only does these themes look professional but also are makes reading easier than ever. Well done times!!!Three Cheers.
Sep 19, 08 | 3:54 amThis does seem like a really good idea to do if you are trying to organize your content in a way that people are use to. If you target older people who are use to reading the newspaper then this would be a good layout.
Oct 1, 08 | 3:26 pmI have seen several of these designs so far, and the functionality is growing more and more on me. I guess I just like the whole simple look they give off.
Oct 2, 08 | 10:38 pmYes this is really cool. I love the simplicity of it and am looking forward to future updates to it!
Oct 8, 08 | 6:31 amLayout design could make all the difference when trying to attract potential readers. Great post!
Oct 13, 08 | 3:53 amI have seen several of these designs so far, and the functionality is growing more and more on me. I guess I just like the whole simple look they give off.
Oct 14, 08 | 2:43 amI have not looked at RSS readers in awhile, and this looks so much better than the ones I saw last. I do subscribe to so many feeds so this could be very useful for me.
Oct 16, 08 | 6:39 pmI use both FeedReader and Sharpreader. The two satisfy my need for reading an organized list of headlines. I also use Bloglines if I want to dig more stories I want to know. A magazine-style feed reader is best for those who are very particular with aesthetics.
Oct 20, 08 | 6:15 amThe only feed reader I usually use is FeedDemon but when I bumped into this very cool thing, I made a decision to switch to this one. The user interface is just so amazing. So far, this is the best feed reader I am using and actually, I am totally enjoying every single feature of it. I just hope beyond time, more innovations will be implemented on the feed reader as to serve more efficiently to the subscribers like me. :D
Nov 6, 08 | 10:31 am