You can read my Podcaster iPhone app review here.

Podcaster app just got a nice update in version 3.9. This update brings support for AirPlay for iOS 4.3 and new gestures on playing screen.

It is now easy to swipe left to ski[ back and swipe right to skip forward and swipe up to see enhanced podcasts chapter menu. Here is the complete list of new features and enhancements in this app update.

New Features in 3.9

• AirPlay for iOS 4.3
• Chapter support for enhanced podcasts
• German translation
• New gestures on now playing screen. Swipe left over image to skip backwards, swipe right to skip forward, double tap to play/pause, swipe up on enhanced podcasts to see chapter menu.

Enhancements

• Podcaster now supports podcaster://, pcast:// and itpc:// urls
• Setting to turn on variable speed skip buttons
• Setting to turn off episodes from starting automatically when you select them
• Video now zooms in/out smoother and double tapping the video will change the aspect ratio
• Non-resumable downloads will now start from beginning and delete any previously downloaded data
• Better show notes
• Screen will stay awake if phone is charging while app is open
• Added an option show both video and audio in a playlist
• Cleanup function is back but will not remove the most recent episode even if it's played.

For $0.99, Podcaster (formerly RSS Player) gives you a complete solution to download, listen and manage your favorite podcasts right in your iPhone without having to be tied to your desktop iTunes.

Availability:

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Price: $0.99

Reviewed at version: 3.9

Developed by: Alex Sokirynsky

Podcaster iPhone App Updates to 3.9 - Originally published in Top iPhone Resource on 2011/09/27 (RSS)

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Wired has just made their May edition of their iPad magazine a free download.

To download, download the Wired iPad app and then inside the app, download the May edition. Each edition usually costs $3.99.

Download Wired App

May Edition Of Wired IPad Magazine Is FREE - Originally published in Top iPhone Resource on 2011/04/16 (RSS)

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It is beautiful, intuitive, fast and elegant.

Reeder for iPad recently received a very useful update in version 1.3.

If you are a big Safari user, you might be familiar with Readability. It is the extension that stripped out extraneous stuff from a webpage and made it very easy to read the article in its entirety.

Reeder for iPad now has initial support for Readability. This will basically featch full articles from any website without the images and ads cluttering the page.

Readability will try to fetch the full content of an article. This is faster than loading the web page and doesn’t require to open the in-app browser.

To view an article with Readability, tap the “R” button in the toolbar or use the pinch-open gesture on the article view.

If you haven’t tried, now is your chance to try Reeder for iPhone, ($2.99) Reeder for iPad ($4.99) and even Reeder for Mac (beta – free).

Reeder for iPad Gets Readability Support - Originally published in Top iPhone Resource on 2010/12/28 (RSS)

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But, the iPhone app brings a lot of cool features and makes reading news a pleasure. And how can you not get it when it is free.

That’s right. CNN for iPhone app is right now FREE in App Store. It usually sells for $1.99. And this is the first time the app has been made free since it’s release in September 2009.

Let’s take a look at some of the features this app brings

• Breaking news, top stories in all kinds of categories
• Snack-sized highlights or full stories
• Local news, weather and traffic
• Social sharing with email, SMS, Twitter and Facebook
• Breaking news alerts through push notifications
• Live breaking news videos
• Top videos from all categories
• Location based news headlines
• CNN iReport – contribute your own news, photos and videos

CNN for iPhone is an ad-supported app and is optimized for iOS 4. The international versions of this app might vary a bit and do let us know in the comments.

Get this premium news app for FREE while it lasts.

Rating: none

Availablibity: App Store

Price: $1.99

Reviewed at version: 1.1.1

Developed by: CNN

CNN for iPhone App Goes FREE Today - Originally published in Top iPhone Resource on 2010/12/14 (RSS)

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The iPad is an amazing news consumption device and there are no shortage of apps that have come out that are visually stunning and offer very visually interesting ways to read news.

With a news paper like layout with different font sizes and pictures embedded in  the content, reading and quickly scanning the news is easier than ever with the Times Reader.

If you have used Times for Mac you are already familiar with the concept of this reader. Instead of reading news like email in a list, Times offers it in your own personal newspaper format.

Times for iPad brings the same layout and elegance to the iPad and the touch controls just make it even better than the desktop counterpart.

You can completely customize the layouts, styles and rules. You can save interesting articles to the shelf and read them later. The app has an integrated web browser so you can read the articles in their full glory. The app comes with built-insupporfor sharing news in Facebook and Twitter.

Adding news is by typing just the name of the site. You can categorize your news feeds into different sections. You can even customize each feed’s style and appearance creating your own personal news paper layout.

Times for iPad will set you back $7.99 and it is priced on par with other such news readers in the market. Few other choices to compare are Pulse, Newsrack, etc.

I would really liked to have been able to import my Google Reader feeds and set it up like Feedly for desktop. Another feature that should be brought in with an update is the ability to sync with Times on Mac. I guess if they added Google Reader sync to both iPad and Mac apps, that will take care of the sync issue.

Times is still such an elegant and beautiful app designed just to be an amazing way to consume news. It is definitely worth a look.

Screenshots

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Availability: App Store

Price: $7.99

Reviewed at version: 1.0

Times – A Beautiful RSS News Reader for iPad - Originally published in Top iPhone Resource on 2010/08/17 (RSS)

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Byline is a featured packed RSS reader app with Google Reader integration. But, there were a few thorns in feature set and a few bugs.

The developer, Milo Bird, has listened to you have provided a slew of bug fixes and improvements over the previous version.

Here is a brief list of what’s new

- Moves “Mark All as Read” to the top left of the screen in edit mode.
- Allows one-touch “Mark All as Read” by swiping across the list name.
- Reverts swiping items in list view to immediately mark as read/unread.
- Inserts selected text when composing new tweets and notes.
- Shows a hint describing the new swipe gesture the first time an item is viewed.
- Marks items read when reading them in the “Starred Items” folder.
- Fixes a bug which prevented the “Starred Items” list from updating properly.
- Fixes a bug which resulted in incorrect unread counts after syncing.
- Fixes a bug which prevented the creation of notes linking to a web page.
- Fixes a syncing error when the title of the “Main Folder” contains a space or an unusual character.
- Fixes a bug which caused the visible item to change when rotating between portrait and landscape.
- Fixes a bug which prevented tapping the status bar from scrolling to the top in some situations.
- Fixes a bug which caused strange behaviour in edit mode during syncing or after removing stars.
- Fixes a bug which prevented the next or previous item from preloading in certain situations.
- Fixes an issue with rotating between portrait and landscape while viewing a full-screen video.
- Fixes an issue which prevented links copied in Byline from pasting in certain applications.
- Improves the display of titles in list view, especially for Japanese feeds.

I really like the improvements with Mark all as Read by swiping across the feed list. Another biggie for me, it inserts the selected text when sending tweets or notes.

So, what improvements matter to you? Did this update fix some of the bugs that were annoying you?

Byline iPhone App Updates to 3.1 - Originally published in Top iPhone Resource on 2010/05/27 (RSS)

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As many of the leading newspapers, Financial Times is one of those papers that created a beautiful iPad app that employs the larger screen to give you a physical paper feel in your iPad.

So far, you were able to read 3 articles for FREE before you are required to have a subscription to read further.

Financial Times is now running a special where you can sign up for an account and read Financial Times for FREE for 3 months. No payments or credit cards needed.

This offer expires 31st July 2010.

Also, if you have a .ac.uk student email address, you can enjoy 1 year of free subscription.

Financial Times is also available as an iPhone app.

[via Get 3 Months of Free Financial Times on iPad - Originally published in Top iPhone Resource on 2010/05/25 (RSS)

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If you are already a podcast listener, you might agree with me when I say this. Podcasts are very engaging as you get to hear people talking about the stuff you are interested in. It is way better than reading plus you can multitask while listening to a podcast. I listen to music and podcasts while working throughout the day.

Apple (or AT&T) has put a crutch in this whole podcast listening experience where you can’t download a podcast over 10MB (just like apps) over 3G. So, I tried organizing my podcasts through my desktop iTunes and then sync every morning. This was not feasible as I usually don’t find the time to sync my iPhone before I leave home.

So, I’d end up getting podcasts I like one-off from iPhone iTunes app over WiFi. But, as the number of podcasts I started to listen grew to more than a dozen, this was getting to be ridiculous.

I wanted a good podcast manager app. And I found one.

RSSPlayer iPhone App

RSS Player podcast client is an iPhone app from the creators of the previously popular app – Podcaster.

Some of it’s best feature that made me a big fan are

• Download any size podcast over 3G, EDGE or WiFi
• Push notification alerts for new episodes of podcasts
• Easily search and subscribe to a ton of podcasts or import via url
• A nice list of favorite podcasts with thumbnail and new episode tags
• Playlists automatically show unplayed downloads, audio/video tabs and oldest/newest sorting – plus it plays all the unplayed continously just like iPod
• Remembers where you left on if you are interrupted in the middle of a podcast or quit the app
• Podcast discovery – this is a powerful option which helps a new podcast listener with some of the best content out there.
  You could find podcasts by Most Popular, Providers, Sets, Top Rated, Suggested, Recently Added, Search by Title, Import by URL.
• Export/Import your podcast list right from the app as OPML files
• Any feed available in iTunes is playable in RSS Player
• You can share podcasts and episodes by email
• Supports password protected feeds

RSS Player has totally let me manage my entire podcast experience within my iPhone and I absolutely love it.

I recently shared a list of my favorite photography podcasts and I was able to expand and enjoy this hobby thanks to my favorite RSS Player iPhone app.

There are a few bugs like an episode crashing while playing or some episodes taking insane amount to load but these issues crop up so infrequently I can’t recommend this app to anyone looking for a good podcast app.

For an incredibly full featured app like RSS Player, how much would you pay for it? It is on sale since Jan 7 for a mere $0.99!

Verdict: RSS Player is a must have iPhone app!

Screenshots

Rating: [starreview tpl=16]

Availability: App Store [iTunes link]

Price: $0.99

Best iPhone Podcast Client – RSS Player - Originally published in Top iPhone Resource on 2010/01/28 (RSS)

© karthik for Top iPhone Resource, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Find us on Twitter - @TopiPhone and on Follow TiR in Facebook.