So I started using Flipboard last year when I just got my iPad, it actually was one of the reasons why I bought an iPad. Flipboard worked great, it showed you information from different sources in a nice magazine styled look. The usability design was even better, it was really easy to use because it was so simple and normal to swipe to a next page for example. It was love on first sight, but there where a few things that didn’t worked so well, and that’s when I stopped using it.
The problem with Flipboard back then was that you could only use it in combination with Twitter, nothing else. So I tried adding al the Twitter accounts of my favorite websites so I could still use this fantastic program, but I didn’t got the same content I would normally see in my RSS reader. Besides that, everything was so darn short unless there was a link in the tweet where you could use the built-in browser to read on.
But al that has changed in the past year. Now you can add a Google Reader acount to Flipboard and read full articles on your iPad. Even when websites do use excerpts in their RSS feeds, you can still read on using the improved browser that seems to work much better. They also changed a few things concerning the reading of articles, you can simply swipe down to open up the referring page so you can see the full article, another plus concerning usability design here.
So, this App is perfect now? Not really I’m afraid. I use my RSS reader to see some design inspiration from many different resources, but I also use Zootool to collect pictures, video’s and even full websites so I can easily find them back later. I can still favorite the good articles, but when I find a post with many pictures, and only one does the inspiration trick on me, I don’t want to favorite the whole article because it’s hard to find that specific picture between al the other favorites. Now I must be realistic, it is quite hard to code that in the application and there are probably not a lot of users that want to use Zootool in combination with Flipboard, but it still is hard to organise your favorite posts this way. When you favorite a article out of your Google Reader acount, than it is starred in Google Reader as well. But if you favorite a tweet, than you can only find that back on Twitter. You see my point? I also can’t find a option to show all the favorites in Flipboard, maybe it’s tugged away somewhere, but still I like it when I can view my favorite posts on my iPad and my computer.
Don’t get me wrong, I really do like Flipboard this way. It’s a application that changes your whole web-reading experience. You can take your iPad, sit on your couch, turn on some music and read your social media messages and RSS feeds like a newspaper. I do think I will be using this application more now, although I am a bit unhappy that I can’t organise my stuff in Flipboard.
Do check out this application if you haven’t done so already. It’s free anyways!
