Pulse App Creator Discusses App, Graduation And Future
June 12, 2010
Newsreaders and RSS feeds have been around since before mobile devices such as the iPhone and iPad were even released for public use. However, despite slight modifications over the years, the basic look and feel of such readers have remained pretty much the same, until now.
Pulse for iPad delivers news in a way that no other iPad app has attempted, so much so that Steve Jobs has publicly praised it while one highly named news organization has recently attempted to close the app down for good. Certainly, these type of attention-grabbing headlines have only made the app more popular and no doubt, the envy of other iPad app developers. However, the creative team behind Pulse aren't your regular everyday app developers. Rather, Akshay Kothari and Anki Gupta (who make up Alphonso Labs) are just two Stanford graduate students (they each receive their degrees tomorrow in a ceremony in Palo Alto, California) that saw a technology that wasn't yet available on the market and decided to do something about it. According to Kothari, Pulse isn't a reader at all, but rather an app that displays your news in small bites that visually tell you a story. The electrical engineer explains that he and Gupta found,"personal frustration with the current news reading experience on mobile devices.” And while “I was opening multiple tabs in Safari, Ankit was looking at his RSS feed inbox - we both decided that there was a better way to consume news."After recognizing that other readers felt the same way, Pulse was born. Soon after being released in the Apps store, Jobs recognized the uniqueness of it and liked to talk about. During his June 7th keynote at WWDC to announce the iPhone 4, the Apple head sampled Pulse on his iPad for all the world to see, offering praise and recognizing what was possible on Apple’s popular, but young device. However, a day later, Apple received a letter from the New York Times Company, arguing that Pulse was selling a device that violated the Terms of Use from Apple, since its free newsfeed was being placed on the paid app as a default option. The Company stated that:
The Pulse News Reader app, makes commercial use of the NYTimes.com and Boston.com RSS feeds, in violation of their Terms of Use. Thus, the use of our content is unlicensed. The app also frames the NYTimes.com and Boston.com websites in violation of their respective Terms of Use. Within hours and without warning the top selling iPad was quickly pulled from the App store. However, just as the app disappeared, it returned to the store again within days.Kothari would not comment on the the New York Times letter, nor would he address any steps that were taken to get his app back in the store. However, when Pulse did return, it did so with a new update that excluded the New York Times feed from being a “default” feed. However, a user can quickly add the feed manually, with no problems. So why shouldn't we consider Pulse just another reader? It’s certainly all about the presentation. Unlike other "RSS apps", Kothari explains,
Pulse does not tell you about “the 873 articles you haven't read, it does not force you to learn about RSS/Atom crap or set up a Google reader and finally, it does not look like your inbox giving you an endless sea of text."While many graduates (especially in this economy) are unsure of their plans, Kothari and Gupta are confident were they are going and that they’ve created something special in Pulse. The app will continue to be updated and improved based on reader comments and requests. On this, the co-creator would only say that we should expect almost weekly updates since both co-creators believe that continuous improvements are required to maintain the popularity and support of Pulse. One concrete detail is for certain, however: an iPhone version of the app is coming and is something both creators are thrilled about as they continue to work on it's first release. Kothari indicated that,
"We could not be more psyched about this. If you liked the iPad app, wait till you see this one."And on owning one of the most popular iPad apps even before his college graduation, Kothari concluded with this:
“For two stanford graduate students, who will walk in the commencement ceremony this Sunday, this is a very special moment. And probably an ideal way to graduate - knowing what's next in our lives.”
About each of the co-creators, taken directly from the Alphonso Labs website:
Akshay Kothari, Co-founder Akshay is a 2nd year graduate student in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. He calls himself a “fake EE”, since he spent most of his time taking computer science and design courses. He is mad about mobile interaction design, developing voice interfaces for Indian farmers during the day and coding nifty iPad apps in the night. He likes good vegetarian food, down-tempo music, spontaneous drives to the beach and cashmere sweaters. He semi-maintains a portfolio at www.sunshyness.com. You can reach him at ak@alphonsolabs.com or@akothari. Ankit Gupta, Co-founder Ankit is a 2nd year graduate Student in Computer Science at Stanford University. He studied Artificial Intelligence during his Masters and loves writing recommendation algorithms. A true code junkie, he once woke up at 5 in the morning to compete in a TopCoder competition; on a vacation. Ankit likes taking long walks, listening to Alternative Folk, watching Quentin Tarantino movies and wearing free tshirts. When not coding, Ankit can be found thinking of new business models for the Music Industry and avoiding cookies. You can reach him atag@alphonsolabs.com or @gankit [Photo by Slashgear]
