aNewDomain.net — Ever since Google killed Google Reader, I’ve been looking for a decent news reader for a while. My Google Nexus 7 recommended Taptu for Android through Google Play’s recommendation system. So I gave it a whirl. Here’s my review of Taptu for Android.
Taptu, available on Google Play for Android 2.1 tablets and smartphones, lets you choose media from a number of sources. These are available as so-called Streams, and you get them from the StreamStore. Streams include such news sites like USA Today and CNN plus curated feeds.
There’s also the option to incorporate your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts. The RSS reader is supposedly tailored to those systems, too.
I found reading Tweets to be decent. As promised, Taptu filtered out a lot of the extra stuff left unfiltered by other readers I’ve tried.
Taptu’s treatment of Facebook was lacking, though. The boxes it displays are all the same size. As I result, the reading experience was poor. And the images coming off my Facebook feed were blurry.
I also had trouble with LinkedIn and Taptu. I successfully added Taptu to my LinkedIn account, but it never displayed anything.
I found myself comparing Taptu to Google Currents or to single-source news apps like USA Today. While Taptu for Android does have its strong points — it is lean, agile and has a robust RSS reader, it isn’t especially compelling, in my assessment.
Sure, Taptu for Android is free and fast. And it’s stable — but you don’t get points for basic requirements like stability. So, while it never crashed, Taptu feels like it’s missing something. It feels generic. There’s nothing standout about it.
Looking through the reviews on Google Play, I see that Taptu for Android has a high rating. At 4.6, people seem to really like this app. Not me. Give it a whirl — it’s free, after all. You can always uninstall Taptu for Android.
I already have.
For aNewDomain.net, I’m Jeremy Lesniak.
Based in Vermont, Jeremy Lesniak is managing editor at aNewDomain.net and founder of Vermont Computing and whistlekick.com. Follow him @jlesniak and email him at jeremy@anewdomain.net.
It’s not stable. I use it for its ability to combine feeds and display them in widgets on my screen. Increasingly it loses posts even ones that it has shown for a while but aren’t ready yet. Sometimes month old posts will appear or even completely unrelated posts not from my feeds.
I run a second RSS reader app to see how much I’m missing. If the UI was better on the other app I’d just switch.
I’ve tried discussing it with Taptu support several times but each time they stop replying to emails after one message. No idea why.
“aren’t read yet”