23 mobile things: thing 4

I skipped over thing 4 at first, because my initial experience was not entirely useful. I downloaded Flipboard to my iPod touch, and found that it did not function as I expected. The welcome screen contained nothing but the login for existing accounts, and a prompt to create an account. I was not able to flip past the welcome screen, which online tutorials said should be possible. It simply wouldn't flip. I can only assume that on an older device running iOS 5, you have to create an account to use flipboard. I choose not to do this, because I read their privacy policy and I don't care for it.

So flipboard is out. Zite is also out, because it requires iOS 7. So I did some research of my own to find another RSS app that will work on my device, and decided on a combination of products: I set up Feedly on my computer at home, and installed Newsify on my iPod to sync with it.

So far I am happy with my choice. Feedly allows me to search for content by specific url or by subject. It provides a list of common subjects of interest, but when I entered one that was not on their list (science) it provided a list of appropriate websites just as it does with the more common ones. Content can be organized on the page in several different ways (list, magazine, cards, etc). I currently have it set to magazine. When I add a new source, it prompts me to give it a label, and then groups all feeds with the same label into folders.

Newsify syncs with feedly whenever I open it while connected to the internet. I can choose to display my feeds in the app either as a list or magazine. The home page displays my folders, as well as All Items, Unread Items, and Starred Items (I haven't starred anything yet), with numbers by each one giving the total unread items. Once I go into a folder, there is a settings button that allows me to mark all as read if I want.

On the whole, I think that this setup is equivalent to the app choices given on the 23mobilethings website. I hope this counts as a completed thing. I think it is a challenge to do these things on an older device. I'm doing more of my own research to choose which app to use, even on the things where I've used one of the suggested apps, which makes it an even greater learning experience. In any case, I'm very happy with feedly/newsify.