feedmonkey for iPhone & iPod touch review

These days, we’re all busy. Between email and work and social networking, who has time to keep up with blogs and articles? Heiko Dreyer can, with the creation of the app, feedmonkey–and now, so can you. An efficient RSS reader for your iPhone or iPod Touch (there’s also a version for the iPad), all you have to do is input a website address…then sit back and let the blogposts come to you.

There are two main screens: Feeds and Tags, which you can toggle between at the top. Adding a site or a tag requires a tap of the + button at the top left; adding a tag also allows you to customize it with an icon. Upon launch, the app will automatically refresh to grab all the newest articles and posts; the number of new items to read in a blog will show up in the corner of the feed. Tapping on a feed will show you all the articles that have been pulled. The unread ones are easy to spot, as they are dog-eared on the same corner. From this view, you can also assign a tag to the feed by tapping the paint brush icon on the bottom.

Tap an article to skim through the text, and if you find it interesting, go straight to the article with the built-in browser by tapping the arrow button at the bottom. The internal browser is very similar to Mobile Safari and displays all of same things. If you want to share the article, just tap the compose icon (last on the bottom) to copy the article link or mail it. You can also open the link in Mobile Safari if you wish to bookmark. Your list of feeds can be imported and exported through OPML Files and iTunes sharing.

I found feedmonkey supremely easy to use–all I really had to do was type in a URL. Then I could scroll and catch up with all my news and blogs in one go, or just all my feeds tagged “Fun,” for instance. The only major quibble I had with it was that there was no landscape orientation, which makes it hard for me to both type and read; implementing this function would ramp this app up an extra star, because I want as much comfort as possible when I’m reading on a tiny screen. Sometimes, while adding or deleting a feed, the app would crash. But I love the customization tag icons, and even the unconventional color scheme quickly grew on me! If you’ve many feeds to keep up with, feedmonkey would be perfect for you.

AppSafari Rating: 4/5

AppSafari review of feedmonkey for iPhone & iPod touch was written by Julie Guan on November 5th, 2010 and categorized under App Store, Featured, Feeds. Page viewed 6994 times, 3 so far today. Need help on using these apps? Please read the Help Page.