(Cross-posted to another forum.)
I recently bought a Nexus 7. Since the main thing I use it for is reading, I decided to choose a particular content aggregator and get it nicely set up. I've experimented with different content aggregation services before, but I've never been able to choose one and just stick with it.
My three favourite aggregation services are Currents, Flipboard and Pulse. (There are others - Taptu, Zite, Feedly, etc. - which I disqualified for various reasons, but which you may prefer.) They are all available for both iOS and Android, but I will be specifically commenting on the Android versions. Note that in the case of Flipboard especially, there are significant differences between the iPad version and the Android version.
A couple of random thoughts on their UIs:
* Flipboard's UI on Android is not well suited to tablets. It needs a tablet version.
* On a related note, Flipboard does a bad job of handling large collections of sources. It only displays six on a page, which is really inefficient.
* Currents does the best of job of handling lots of sources.
* Flipboard and Pulse do not use the standard Android "share" interface. I find this mildly irritating.
* Flipboard does a nice job of integrating social media, eg. it shows whether any of your Twitter contacts has discussed an article you're looking at.
* Pulse has a really nice reading interface.
* Currents doesn't give you the option to use a serif font, which is weird.
* I like the pagination on Currents.
* Flipboard has a weird system of using different font sizes for different sources, which can be incredibly annoying.
* Flipboard is probably the prettiest, although they're all quite attractive apps.
Okay, UI is all very well, but the most important thing is content. Unfortunately, there's a problem here, which is that no single service carries all the publications I want. Which brings me to the bulk of my research. I have created a long list of publications I'm potentially interested in, showing which apps support them and which apps do not.
Note, when I say "support", I don't just mean that they appear in the search results. I refer specifically to sources that 1) display in the app's native view, rather than a web view, and 2) allow you read through the entire length of an article. The whole reason I'm using an app like this is because I don't want to mess around with mobile web browsers; so I think it's fair to disqualify any source that tries to kick me into a browser in order to read past the first few paragraphs.
Incidentally, one nice thing about Currents is that every source in it catalogue is displayed in native view and has full articles. As long as you don't add RSS feeds manually, all your sources will be good. By contrast, a lot of sources in Flipboard's catalogue will display in web view rather than native view, and there's no way to tell which one it will display until you've added. Pulse displays everything in native view, but some sources have truncated articles and others have full articles. Again, there's no way to find out ahead of time which way it will be.
Anyway, here are the results:
It's interesting to see that there are some publications that clearly like content aggregators, and try to be on as many of them as possible (The Verge, Al Jazeera, The Atlantic). There are others that cut a deal with one particular aggregator and give their content to them exclusively. And there are many that don't like aggregators and try to avoid all of them (Foreign Policy, The New Yorker, the WSJ).
As for which one is better, obviously that's subjective. Just from looking at the table, it looks Currents has the advantage, and Pulse is the worst. But of course the publications you're interested in will differ from the ones I'm interested in. From my perspective, each of these apps has exclusive access to at least sources that I really want. Eg.:
Currents: Slate, Foreign Affairs
Flipboard: The Economist
Pulse: Cracked.com (it's addictive!)
Overall, I'm inclined to give the win to Currents.
I recently bought a Nexus 7. Since the main thing I use it for is reading, I decided to choose a particular content aggregator and get it nicely set up. I've experimented with different content aggregation services before, but I've never been able to choose one and just stick with it.
My three favourite aggregation services are Currents, Flipboard and Pulse. (There are others - Taptu, Zite, Feedly, etc. - which I disqualified for various reasons, but which you may prefer.) They are all available for both iOS and Android, but I will be specifically commenting on the Android versions. Note that in the case of Flipboard especially, there are significant differences between the iPad version and the Android version.
A couple of random thoughts on their UIs:
* Flipboard's UI on Android is not well suited to tablets. It needs a tablet version.
* On a related note, Flipboard does a bad job of handling large collections of sources. It only displays six on a page, which is really inefficient.
* Currents does the best of job of handling lots of sources.
* Flipboard and Pulse do not use the standard Android "share" interface. I find this mildly irritating.
* Flipboard does a nice job of integrating social media, eg. it shows whether any of your Twitter contacts has discussed an article you're looking at.
* Pulse has a really nice reading interface.
* Currents doesn't give you the option to use a serif font, which is weird.
* I like the pagination on Currents.
* Flipboard has a weird system of using different font sizes for different sources, which can be incredibly annoying.
* Flipboard is probably the prettiest, although they're all quite attractive apps.
Okay, UI is all very well, but the most important thing is content. Unfortunately, there's a problem here, which is that no single service carries all the publications I want. Which brings me to the bulk of my research. I have created a long list of publications I'm potentially interested in, showing which apps support them and which apps do not.
Note, when I say "support", I don't just mean that they appear in the search results. I refer specifically to sources that 1) display in the app's native view, rather than a web view, and 2) allow you read through the entire length of an article. The whole reason I'm using an app like this is because I don't want to mess around with mobile web browsers; so I think it's fair to disqualify any source that tries to kick me into a browser in order to read past the first few paragraphs.
Incidentally, one nice thing about Currents is that every source in it catalogue is displayed in native view and has full articles. As long as you don't add RSS feeds manually, all your sources will be good. By contrast, a lot of sources in Flipboard's catalogue will display in web view rather than native view, and there's no way to tell which one it will display until you've added. Pulse displays everything in native view, but some sources have truncated articles and others have full articles. Again, there's no way to find out ahead of time which way it will be.
Anyway, here are the results:
It's interesting to see that there are some publications that clearly like content aggregators, and try to be on as many of them as possible (The Verge, Al Jazeera, The Atlantic). There are others that cut a deal with one particular aggregator and give their content to them exclusively. And there are many that don't like aggregators and try to avoid all of them (Foreign Policy, The New Yorker, the WSJ).
As for which one is better, obviously that's subjective. Just from looking at the table, it looks Currents has the advantage, and Pulse is the worst. But of course the publications you're interested in will differ from the ones I'm interested in. From my perspective, each of these apps has exclusive access to at least sources that I really want. Eg.:
Currents: Slate, Foreign Affairs
Flipboard: The Economist
Pulse: Cracked.com (it's addictive!)
Overall, I'm inclined to give the win to Currents.
