RSS Beacon

There are tons of different RSS reader apps out on the market that let you search, find, and broadcast feeds from various sites of your choosing so why on earth would you care about trying out another one?  Well, RSS Beacon, created by Get In Spring Ltd., brings a unique wrinkle to the traditional RSS reader app.  With this app not only do you get a full RSS reader with complete manageability from your iPhone, but you also get the ability to create “beacons” that allow you to share information based on common interests.  Creating a beacon is really easy, you just choose an RSS feed that you’d like to share to a particular person or group, then you add people to the beacon from your contacts list.  Anyone added to your beacon will receive updates via email as they’re posted.

RSS Beacon is loaded with RSS reading and management features.  Adding your favorite feeds and plugging them into your Twitter account couldn’t be easier.  You can locate your favorite feeds just by entering the URL, but if you’re looking for new feeds and aren’t sure where to look you can use keywords and RSS Beacon will run a Google search and find you what you’re looking for.  For each feed you can choose how many articles/posts you want to view at one time.  You can view up to 100 posts in a single view if you want.  From there all you’ve got to do is provide your Twitter account info and blam you’re auto tweeting!  Yes I realize everyone in the Twittersphere should know how to do this by now, but believe me, I still see tons of people that are doing the ole copy and paste method so I had to mention it.

Let’s see, what other cool RSS stuff can you do with this app.  Oh, you can add up to 30 feeds, can customize the look and feel of the app; change background color, beacon color, change views, etc.  The in app menus are hidden to maximize the viewing area, but are easily invoked when you want them.  You choose the color of your beacon, can create a custom description that can be broadcasted to your followers each time you update it, and can even drag and drop articles to share them with friends.  There’s also a whole slew of other things you can do.  It’s worth checking out the RSS Beacon App Store page for the full list of features.

If you use an RSS reader app now, or haven’t downloaded one yet, it’s worth checking out RSS Beacon.  At a minimum it’ll have every feature that some of the other upper echelon RSS Reader apps have, but also provides you with some convenient customization options and the ability to create beacons.

Pros:

• Great all-in-one RSS readers/broadcasting app
• Beacons provide a more personalized RSS feed/information sharing experience
• Ability to customize interface and views is a plus

Cons:

• The app doesn’t support landscape view
• When adding contacts to a beacon the number of contacts shown is too small, you should be able to hide the top menu to get a full screen view of the contacts list

Version Reviewed: 1.0.0

Requirements: iPhone or iPod Touch (2nd gen); iPhone OS 3.0 or later

Posted by Ryan Johnson
on Feb 26, 2010
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