I’ve been using Pulse by Alphonso Labs for a while after I stumbled on it when bored and looking for newsreader applications and I haven’t looked back since.

What I hate about most newsreaders is that you can only read one news source at a time and each one has its own application. They clutter up your phone’s screen, and they’re somewhat annoying to use. If you feel the same way about newsreader applications, then the “Pulse” application will be a breath of fresh air.

Developed by a pair of programmers from Stanford University, the application allows you to put all of your news sources under the same umbrella app, making it easy to switch from one news source to another.

The layout is simple and easy to understand: each news source has a row that is updated through that website’s RSS feed. From left to right, the articles are displayed in reverse chronological order with photos. When you choose an article, you’ll be given the beginning of the RSS feed in plain text. If you want to continue reading, you can click the title and be sent to the article’s page.

To go back, there is a “back” button in the top left corner, so you can easily continue to scan for interesting articles. Read articles will be displayed with less brightness so that you can easily spot when a new article is available but you can always revisit older articles.

There is a “Featured” section, which will show you all the major news channels, but you’re also able to search and customize the interface to have whichever news feeds you read in any order you like (why not put The Cellular Guru at the top of the list? ) and in categories of interest, in which you can rename the categories to anything you like.

I recommend this application because it’s something I use daily. The only problem I have with the application is the following: If you want to save an article to read later, there is no option within the application to do so – you must link it with an “Instapaper” account (or some other online bookmarking tool). You could always open the article with Safari and save it as a bookmark, but that will prove too tedious when you’re reading hundreds of articles. I think “Instapaper” integration is a great idea, but I will review it later on the site and give the reason why it bothers me.

“Pulse” is available for iOS devices (I particularly like the iPad’s version) as well as Android devices for free! Don’t wait to check this out! We’ve even included the links to download below.

Links

Pulse by Alphonso Labs’ home page here

Download Pulse for iPhone from iTunes here

Download Pulse for Android from the Android Market here

Download Pulse for iPad from iTunes here