Google Reader On The iPhone With Byline

Google Reader On The iPhone With Byline

For a while now I’ve been in search for an RSS reader for the iPhone that completely, and seamlessly, synced with Google Reader. Byline is the best I’ve found.

More in iPhone Apps | July 15th, 2009

Byline is a dedicated Google Reader alternative. The first thing it will ask you for is your Reader information to sync it. Once you enter your information all of your feeds are two-way synced, something that RSS Reader Pro seems to have a real issue with.

Pros:

Seamless two-way sync. Byline has been in the game for a while now, the latest version of their software since this article was written is 2.5.2. They’ve had plenty of time to fix bugs and listen to their users. Two-way sync works perfectly.

Sharing and starring. This is something that other RSS and Google Reader alternatives seem to be missing or not work well. In Byline you can not only share and star articles, you can also share with notes. Another nice feature, you can open links in Safari or email links to the page with one touch.

Real website toggle. You can also easily toggle with the touch of a button between the RSS version of the article and the actual website article.

Cons:

Subcategories. Byline pulls the folders you’ve set up in Google Reader perfectly, but the one thing it fails with is the subcategories. Choosing a category will show you all the articles. So for example, if you have a “Media” category with 15 feeds, you’ll see every feed in one page. You can toggle between one long list and separating them like a contacts list, but you still have to deal with a really long list of articles.

The app is currently up for $4.99. I think that’s a little steep, but it is the best reader out there. Make your choice.

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