iStreamer App Is Slick And A Nice Conversation Piece

A new app has joined the ever growing iPad news app category. iStreamer, by All Of Me Ltd. offers RSS news feeds with a twist. Instead of providing rehashed news stories in a format similar to a newspaper or website, the app is using a 3D timeline to give you current news in a slick and aesthetically pleasing format. Once you download the $3.99 app, iStreamer asks you to enter your Facebook or Twitter account information. If you don't have a social networking account, you don't need to add one. While a social networking account is not required, by not adding one, an annoying popup message will show up periodically asking for that information. Hopefully this will be eliminated in a future app update. I understand that social networking is very popular, but it doesn't necessarily need to encompass our entire online life! When I did add my Twitter account (nittanygeeks), almost instantly each tweet showed up on the timeline, as expected. The real strength of the app becomes apparent when you start selecting RSS news feeds from a predetermined list. Broken down into six categories, each feed is set to "off" initially, which can be changed to "on" as you see fit. The categories are News, Business, Sports, Technology, Entertainment, Lifestyle and Miscellaneous. Each category has between 1 and 13 RSS news feeds. For example, under News you'll see feeds for CNN and USA Today. You can also add customized feeds using an easy to use search feature. You just type in the name of the feed you wish to add, and the app does the rest. Once your RSS feeds are selected, the app automatically begins populating the timeline with recent articles. Each is positioned according to when the article was published. You can review articles either by using your finger to swipe across the timeline, or have it move automatically using a play/pause button. If I am in the mood to actually read articles, I like to use the finger to swipe option to find an article that interests me. Upon clicking on an article, you're shown a popup box with the article in either RSS or web site format. The play/pause button works fine, though I found this annoying at first. The speed with which the articles move across the timeline is too fast to actually scan each of the articles. Then I realized that this was the best part of the entire app! The timeline itself makes a perfect "screen saver" for your iPad, and quickly becomes an amazing conversation piece, especially for those in an office environment. Since the app continuously updates your news feeds, new articles are added to the timeline as the day goes by. In the end, I found this brilliant, and the most important reason to purchase the app! Imagine that instead of a constantly updated stock ticker, you have a news reader that does the same thing! Hopefully, future app updates will allow additional customization. I'd like to be able to change the colors within the app, plus add a local weather feature. And yes, I'd like to see the social networking of the app toned down a little bit too. Still, in its 1.0 version, iStreamer is a nice app and worth its price. Download the app today in the App Store!

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