Times for the iPad Thoughts

I received an email yesterday from Sam Duncan about a little app for the iPad called, simply, Times. Times for the iPad is another feed display app, so that it takes my favorite feeds from the web, and presents them in one easy to use, reference, and read spot. As a matter of fact, here's how The Dean Files looks in it:



Good heavens, doesn't that look great? It reminds me of Google Reader with a little extra showiness built into it. As a matter of fact, that brings me to my first point about this app: There is no Google Reader importing capability.

For the past four years or so, I have consistently put my favorite sites' feeds in Google Reader so I was notified when a new post/article was up. So, as you can imagine, this is like the nexus of my web reading. So, I was frustrated last night when I discovered one cannot simply import (or use) one's Google Reader feed. So, I spent about half an hour while Jen read this book last night:

Rooms of Light, by Dan Flavin

Loading all of my feeds into Times. It's a one time hurdle to jump, but still annoying.

My next point is that I wish feed generation was more consistent - by which I mean some images and text display properly, while others do not. I know some people limit the information in their news feeds to drive traffic to their website, but I wish feeds always displayed all of the content in a post every time. Otherwise, the feed (RSS) is not at all helpful, I think. Oh! I also wish there was a little icon to tell me how many unread items there are in each category.

So, what do I like about the app? I love how it looks, and its user interface - but that should be obvious, as that would be a primary motivation for anyone shelling out the eight bucks to buy it. I also love having a good single spot to access my favorite feeds, rather than the somewhat convoluted process of logging into Google Reader each time (for which I never remember my password!) So, if you are a heavy "feed reader" I would recommend this to you, if you don't mind the initial work in getting your feeds to it.

Have you tried it? Do you have a better feed aggregator solution? I'd like to know in the comments!