Smiley's Life

UPDATE @ 8PM Central Time (2AM GMT): …and that’s it! The giveaway’s closed. Apparently, only Lisa entered so she’s getting the free copy. Congrats, Lisa! :-)

UPDATE @ 6PM Central Time (12AM GMT): Bah, I forgot to close the giveaway. Well, you’ve got one last chance thanks to that. I’ll close the giveaway in TWO HOURS. That’s 8PM Central Time, 6PM Pacific Time or 2AM Greenwich Mean Time.

Today, I’m starting a new section of my blog where I review applications for Windows and iPhone OS. This odd combination of systems was chosen because I use an iPod touch and Windows PC. And to hit it off with a bang, I’m also having a little giveaway! Its details will be available after the review. (For the subscribers out there it will be placed after the link to the full article.)

Byline, developed and sold by Phantom Fish, is a Google Reader application for iPhone and iPod touch, mostly known for its key function: syncing articles for offline browsing.

Upon opening the app (or tapping the refresh button), the application starts syncing itself with your Google Reader stream. By default, the app caches all of your starred items, and up to 200 of your unread items. It also syncs the first linked page of every unread and starred item, (AKA the “real” article linked from its title in RSS readers) which is very helpful. However, the process takes too much time in my opinion, and as I don’t have a Wi-Fi connection very often or even for a long time, I disabled it. You can also have Byline save read items, so it would function similar to Google Reader when you select “all items” in reading mode instead of “x new items”. Caching also usually saves the images in the article, which helps with a lot of feeds. Especially the Sims 3 story blogs. With web page saving disabled, caching is pretty fast.

On the main screen (shown to the right) you can find out exactly how many new items are there in your stream, view your starred items, notes, and even read items by folder. However, if you keep your feeds unsorted like me, you won’t see them there. Sadly, Byline only shows folders and not lonesome feeds. Hopefully Phantom Fish will add that option in future versions.

In any screen (unread items, starred items, folders, etc.) you can sort items by feed or by date. I prefer sorting them by feeds so I could leave the good stuff for last. When looking through items, you can star and share them, with or without a note, in one single tap. Links inside the feed open in the application, and no matter the page size I have yet to run into a “out of memory” crash you could get with applications which embed Safari. (You can open the post in Safari, however, if you need to.) Sadly, posts showing videos from sources other than YouTube (like Failblog, which started using Viddler recently) appear video-less in both online and offline mode. The app feels smooth, fast and easy-to-use, with barely even one freeze ever since I started using it a little less than a month ago, and the interface looks pretty great as well, both giving the app a polished feel - performance-wiseand appearance-wise.

However, Byline’s key feature is offline browsing. After your items have been cached, Byline can show you them when you have no internet connection. (For iPhone users, when you’re on the subway or in Airplane Mode, or for us iPod touch users, most of the time.) Items load very quickly from the app’s cache, without a single issue. (Except for YouTube videos, but hey, did you expect the app to cache a 20MB+ video?) The feature is great for iPod touch users, as we don’t have a constant internet connection. It’s also great for iPhone users without an unlimited (or high-bandwidth) cellular internet package, as Byline has an option to cache only when connected to the web via Wi-Fi.

In conclusion, Byline is a great RSS client for iPhone, and possibly the best Google Reader client for iPhone, which doesn’t just import feeds like most other “Google Reader-compatible” clients. iPhone users will find it a great Google Reader client to replace Reader’s web interface thanks to its great performance, look and feel, while iPod touch users will love it for its offline browsing capabilities. As of such, I give Byline a 4 out of 5.

Byline requires an iPhone or iPod touch running iPhone OS 2.2.1 or newer. The application is only available in the iTunes App Store, which can be found here.

And now, to the giveaway!

To hit it off, I’m giving away a free copy of Byline (which is currently priced at $4.99) at random to any person who comments on this post and follows the rules below:

• You must be under 18, aged exactly 18 or over 18. :-P
• You must have a U.S. iTunes Store account. The promotion code will not work in any other store. :-(
• Your comment must be made between today, Thursday, July 30th 2009 and next Monday, August 3rd 2009. Sorry for the short period of time, but it’s only because of the following issue:
• The code can only be used once and will expire either on that use or on August 7th, whichever comes first. (Sorry, but codes are valid only for one month, and I only got it around the middle of July.)
• One comment per IP. If you post more than one comment from the same IP, your submission will still only count once.However, submitting more than 5 comments in a spammy manner may get you disqualified.
• Should you win, you will be contacted by email. Make sure your email address is correct before submitting and make sure you are able to reply to the email message by next Tuesday, August 4th 2009. (To verify you have received the code.) Should you not respond, it will be randomly given to another commenter. Should you make a mistake, post another comment saying the address in that one is the correct address.
• Needless to say you need a Google account to use the app. It can not function as a standalone RSS reader or connect to any other platforms.

Good luck! :-)