Press Release: Byline brings Google Reader and offline browsing to iPhone
by Eric March on July 14, 2008 at 7:04 pm
Now here’s an interesting twist on the RSS reader: One that can prefetch pages so you can read them offline. This finally brings the realm of RSS reading to a practical level to iPod Touch users. Sure, it ain’t live, but if you’re heading off on a trip, or even your daily transit commute, you can grab the interesting stories, store them offline, and read them later without ever needing a network connection. Not a bad piece of work, that.
London, United Kingdom – Phantom Fish today announced the release of Byline, an RSS news reader and offline browser for iPhone and iPod Touch. Byline presents the latest news items from feeds subscribed to in Google Reader. Even when no internet connection is available, Byline offers instant offline access to complete web pages.
“Byline puts the latest news from your favorite sites and blogs at your fingertips,” said Milo Bird, the developer of Byline. “For the first time, you can easily save web pages and read them offline on your iPhone. The beauty is that you can do this with absolutely any web page, not just items from your news feeds. It’s perfect for flights, subway journeys, and – if you’re an iPod Touch owner – for those long dry spells between WiFi zones.”
With Byline, users can view headlines along with summaries of unread items from their free Google Reader account. Tapping on a headline will display the item’s content, which will be the complete web page for items that have been archived for offline browsing. With a tap of a button, the item can be starred for later reading within Byline, or from Google Reader itself. A bookmarklet provided by Google can be used to create a note from any website you visit on your Mac, PC, or mobile device. Byline automatically archives starred items and notes for offline browsing.
Pricing and Availability:
Byline is available now from the App Store for $9.99 USD. Equivalent pricing is available in other currencies accepted by the App Store.Byline
Byline in the App Store
Screencast
Screenshots
IconPhantom Fish is an independent software development company focused on creating software for iPhone and iPod Touch. Copyright 2008 Phantom Fish. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone and iPod are registered trademarks of Apple Computer in the U.S. and/or other countries.
Based on the shots and screencast, it looks like the app has a pretty standard design — which is to say clean and uncluttered. You can read in either portrait or landscape mode, and the reader itself will render images and full pages like a champ. You can even add any page (RSS or not) to your subscribed Google Reader feeds and read it in Byline just like an RSS feed, online or off. I have to admit, I’m pretty impressed, especially with Phantom Fish for making this app highly relevant on the iPod Touch. You could certainly do worse things with a sawbuck.
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Posted in Uncategorized
July 15th, 2008 at 12:40 am
Gotta say the price of some of these apps is ridiculous. For offline reading, I’m just emailing myself stuff and reading it on my Gmail account. Once it’s downloaded, the iPod doesn’t lose it it would seem. Of course you’re stuffed if you want to check your email again…
Missing ebooks and pockettouch right now.
July 15th, 2008 at 9:22 am
For a straight up RSS reader I’d be inclined to agree that it’s a bit much. It’s the offline component that really sells this one though, since it’s all self-contained and will batch download any number of feed pages (or even regular web pages added to your Google Reader feeds) for your later viewing. The integrated browser renders quite well (I have to assume it’s using Safari’s renderer) which is a bonus for not having to exit out of Byline and into Safari to view anything more complicated than basic feeds.
As I said, you can do worse for $10 — heck, there are worse currently on the App Store.