Hasta La Gadget!

Pinch to open a stack of feeds in Reeder

For a device so perfectly suited to reading, whether news, magazines of the web, its surprising that the iPad hasn’t yet gotten a really first-class RSS newsreader. Reeder, a quirky RSS reader for the iPhone, was recently updated for the iPad and might be the best reader yet, although you’ll have to re-learn a few things and be prepared for some quirks, and maybe a few crashes.

E-books, magazines and even PDFs can be browsed elegantly on the iPad. RSS fans have a wide choice but nothing that stands out. NetNewsWire, cousin of the venerable Mac app, is fast (at least for the first week before it mysteriously turns to molasses) but feature-light: you cannot subscribe to feeds from within, for example. NewsRack is fully-featured, but can also grow sluggish and takes an age to refresh your feeds.

Reeder strikes a balance, and adds a unique UI to the mix. Here’s how I would use it when I start work in the morning.

I launch Reeder and hit the refresh button. Reeder is a Google Reader client, so it stays in sync with your web and desktop clients. A refresh takes mere seconds: 13 in a quick test. By contrast, NetNewsWire on my desktop took 35 seconds to do the same thing, and doesn’t even pull in your social feeds. Reeder is, compared to anything else, almost unbelievably fast.

Next, things get confusing for the beginner. Instead of the familiar mail-like list on the left side with articles on the right, you have little thumbnails representing each folder of feeds. Touch one and it opens up to show a list of everything in the folder, which isn’t ideal. If you pinch-out instead, the stack expands to show you more thumbnails of the sites in the list, just like pinching photo albums in the Photos app.

Once these have expanded, you’ll see the number of articles on an icon for each feed. You can either repeat the pinch-out to see a preview of the headlines, or just tap to get a more familiar list. It’s a little odd to begin with, but soon it becomes clear that this is a much better way to navigate lots of data than incessant scrolling. Two other nice touches: if you pull an article up or down on the page, the next (or previous) one slides into view. And you can slide an article sideways to reveal the list beneath.

There are further confusions, though. The navigation bar on the left has three parts, and these all change depending on context. Some of these icons are self-evident (the back-arrow, for instance), but other take a while to figure out. You can sort within the stacks-view or list view, showing unread, starred or all items using the top section.

Depending on which of those you pick, you can then sub-sort by time, or by feed, unless you are in a single feed in which case these disappear. It is hugely confusing to begin with but with some practice is very elegant and streamlined. The designers have clearly put a lot of thought into making an app specifically for the iPad, and have thrown out many familiar desktop metaphors to do do it.

You cannot yet subscribe to more feeds from within Reeder, a pain for a power user, but one that can be overcome by opening the site in Safari and subscribing in Google Reader. When it comes to getting info out, though, there’s an embarrassment of options. You can send a story to Instapaper, Read It Later, Delicious (remember that?) Pinboard, Google Reader’s notes, Twitter, Safari and even choose one of two mobilizing options to make the pages friendlier for the small(ish) screen.

There is one big downside. Reeder is crashy, for me at least. It may go for days without a problem but every once in a while it just quits on me, often a few times in an hour. Sure, loading back up is fast, and as the feeds are cached, you don’t even need to even spend the 13 seconds to refresh your feeds, but its a pain. It may, to be very clear, be a rare problem. The App Store reviews are almost unanimously positive, and crashes are a lot easier to fix than bad UI and feature design, two things that Reeder has dead right.

You might have to put in a little work to learn its quirks, but once you have, you’ll find that Reeder is not just a great Google Reader client, it’s one of the most iPad-like third-party apps we’ve seen of any kind. $5.

Reeder [iTunes]

See Also:

• Google Reader Play: iPad-Friendly News Reader
• Newsstand: Probably the Best iPhone News Reader

The Toyota Highlander Hybrid is a standout SUV with much better fuel economy than the gas-engine Highlander, good performance, a comfortable cockpit, and a reasonably roomy third seating row without being as big as the Suburban/Yukon class. But the $6,550 hybrid premium means it will be a long time, around 20 years, before the original owner makes back the difference. A nicely equipped Hybrid Highlander runs close to $50,000.

If you have a Motorola Droid, a Motorola BackFlip, or an LG Ally, and you love to play video games on your phone, you’ll want to get your hands on the Game Gripper. It’s an attachment for the keyboard of your phone that turns it into a full gamepad, complete with directional pad and discrete buttons for different actions. The buttons on the Game Gripper match up with individual buttons on your phone’s keyboard, so you can map them to functions in your favorite game and then attach the game gripper to play.

Each button has a discrete switch under it so you’re not pressing two buttons on your keyboard with one press on the Game Gripper.  The Game Gripper fits snugly over your phone’s keyboard, and is designed for people who want to load up an emulator on their phone and play some old NES and SNES games.

Right now the Droid, BackFlip, and Ally are the only supported phones, but the creators are working on models for the Devour and N900, and welcome requests for additional phones. The Game Gripper comes in a number of colors and styles, and retails for $14.99. You can buy additional buttons for $3.99.  

No doubt feeling some heat from added competition in the e-book reader market thanks to new devices like the Apple iPad, Barnes & Noble announced today a lower-priced version of its Nook. The new Nook Wi-Fi dumps its predecessor’s 3G capabilities in favor of a lower price: $149.

The Nook Wi-Fi looks nearly identical to its predecessor, save for the color of its back, which has been changed from gray to white. The device is also slightly lighter, down to 11.6 ounces, from 12.1 ounces. The price of the Nook 3G has also been dropped, down from $259 to $199.

Barnes & Noble said it will offer a $10 refund to customers who purchased a Nook in the last 14 days – the difference between the new Nook price and a recent promotional price. B&N has recently been offering $50 gift cards with every Nook purchase, which could be used toward the price of the e-reader.

Barnes & Noble has also rolled out the latest version of the Nook software. The update enhances the device’s Wi-Fi connections.

UPDATE: Hours after the Nook announcement, Amazon also dropped the price of its Kindle e-reader from $259 to $189.

Dell’s back-to-school Inspiron R line of laptops starts cheap and has optional Intel Wireless Display, plus a slightly tweaked design. And, they’re at CNET’s offices.