Blogshelf for the iPad is an RSS reader that displays your feeds as magazines on a shelf. Imagine iBooks filled with blogs - that's Blogshelf. This reader is visually appealing and works great.
When you open Blogshelf, you are presented with 3 shelves filled with your favorite blogs designed to look like magazines. In addition to the blog's name, the "front cover" displays the title and main photo of the most recent story for that blog.
When selecting a blog, the stories are displayed in a nice list view with a photo to left of each story. Again, if that story doesn't have a picture, one of Blogshelf's photos are displayed instead. If you have selected any stories as a favorite, you can tap the heart on the menu bar to see list of your favorite entries. This menu bar can be hidden by swiping down or tapping once anywhere on the screen.
Most blogs will allow viewing of entire articles, but there are a few (like Apple Insider) that do not. I found this to be extremely rare, though. When viewing a reading a story, there are links at the top to view in Safari or to view the original article in the app itself. The stories are displayed very nicely with just photos, videos and text. YouTube videos can be watched in the articles or expanded to full screen.
To subscribe to a blog, tap on "subscribe" from the Blogshelf. The shelf then spins around and brings you to something similar to the iBookstore. Blogshelf has many blogs available to quickly subscribe to by searching for featured blogs or by category. Unfortunately, TiPb (your favorite blog) isn't listed under any of the categories, but, you can do a quick search to find all of our feeds.
Blogshelf is an excellent RSS reader for the iPad. However, if you are a Google Reader user, Blogshelf does not have a way to import your feeds. So if that is really important to you, Blogshelf isn't for you. But for everyone else, if you looks and style are important to you, I recommend picking this one up!
Pros
- Nice interface
- Very Apple-like
- Offline viewing
- Search blogs by feature and category
- Adjust font and brightness
Cons
- Cannot import from Google Reader
- Thumbnails don't always load correctly
- TiPb isn't included in the technology or Apple categories!
[$4.99 - iTunes link]
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