Interesting For iPhone Will Cure Your Boredom Woes
Interesting for iPhone ($1.99) by Mike Rundle is a simple app with one goal in mind: providing you with interesting content from all over the Internet. If you’ve ever been bored and in need of entertainment, then this could be a cure.
Interesting for iPhone has been out for quite some time, but it just got a big 2.0 update yesterday, so I thought it would be a good time to check it out for you guys.
I’m a bit of a news junkie, though it can be quite a daunting task to find articles that interest me since there are sources from all over the Web. However, if there’s an app that can curate this stuff for me, then I’m all over it. And that’s exactly what Interesting for iPhone does — it gathers the hottest posts from around the Internet in several categories that you are sure to find something in: Design & Technology, News & Politics, Entertainment & TV, Sports, and the newly added Dribbble and Reddit sections.
Interesting for iPhone also features a gorgeous, fluid design that just looks natural on iOS 7. Each section is color coded in eye-catching colors, and the iOS status bar will change to match it, which is a nice touch. On the first launch, the list of posts will load up with a “bouncy” effect going on that I really love. Think of the elastic scrolling thing that you see all the time in iOS — this is just like that. Plus, when you add in the readability of the font used (it looks like Avenir to me), the app is just a pleasure to use to find interesting stuff. The content can be refreshed at any time with the pull-to-refresh gesture.
By default, Interesting will open up to the Design & Technology section. You get a list of articles that you can read, with the site’s favicon showcased off to the left. Even though Reddit has its own section within the app, you can easily see Reddit posts in the list for any category because of the favicon and the number of comments in the speech bubble icon.
To switch categories, just swipe from the left edge of the screen, or tap on the button in the top left corner. There is a subtle animation that shows the categories list fade in from the top, which is nice to see. You can tap on any of the six categories to change the list.
When you view the four original categories, you get a list of articles that you can read in full from the web version with one tap. You can also save the links to Pocket to read later, or share via Facebook and Twitter, or copy, email, or open it in Safari. I’m a bit letdown that while there is Pocket support, there isn’t any for Instapaper or even Readability. At least include all of the services for reading later, as it’s not fair to just include one, and I still enjoy using Instapaper.
If you view the Dribbble section, you get a thumbnail list for what’s popular on the site right now. This visual emphasis is beautiful, and it’s great to have all of this so easily accessible. Tapping on a thumbnail will take you to the Dribbble page.
For Reddit, by default you will be looking at the Reddit Frontpage, where all the hottest threads are. You can see how many points a post has, which subreddit it’s from, and how many comments are currently posted on it. With a single tap on a link, you will be able to view the image or link. Tapping on the comments bubble will take you to the conversation among Redditors.
However, the Reddit integration doesn’t stop there. If you’re a Redditor, you can log in with your account by tapping on the smiley face button in the top right. You can also quickly enter in a subreddit, or jump back to the frontpage.
Of course, I found it a bit strange that while you can collapse and expand comment threads, I wasn’t able to find a way to add a comment or subscribe to a subreddit from within the app. For this, you’ll need a standalone Reddit app, such as Alien Blue. So even though you can log in to your Reddit account from Interesting, it doesn’t seem to do much.
Regardless, I’ve been enjoying Interesting for quite some time now. It’s a fantastic app for finding interesting content, and this is definitely a good thing if you are constantly getting bored throughout the day and want something to do or see. The app itself is alluring with plenty of fine touches, like subtle animations, that make it an absolute joy to use. I just wish that it did more with your Reddit account, but hopefully this can come in the future, just for basic things like commenting and quick access to your subscribed subreddits.
I highly recommend checking this app out if you want an all-in-one source of Internet-curated content to keep you busy. You can get Interesting for iPhone in the App Store for $1.99.