Think Critical

I’m a Tweetbot user. From the style to the sound effects, Tweetbot is for me. For quite some time I’ve wanted a Mac version. Not too long ago, I got my wish in the form of a public beta version of Tweetbot for Mac.

I didn’t write about it at the time, and I’m refraining from writing much about it now. What I will say is that with the newest update, Tweetbot for Mac is making some great moves. And, since the beta is available for free to the public, anyone can watch the app evolve toward release. With the official Twitter for Mac in some strange state of limbo, there’s no better time than now to try out Tweetbot.

Welcome back old friend, and I do mean old. The last time I subjected myself to what the Digg front page had become, it was on a brand new, super-fast iPhone 3GS. What’s worse is that even then it was only curiosity. In earlier years, Digg seemed like the thing that would make the Internet readable. If it could just get enough users or the right users, the stories that should interest me would filter right to the top.

Well, it’s 2012 now, and we’re almost three iPhone generations from that curiosity check. Between a highly evolved RSS list, Twitter, Instapaper, and plenty of other sources, I have lots to read. Most of it is formatted cleanly with good typography. The old Digg did not fit in. But now, under new ownership, comes the well-named Digg v1.

First of all, Digg v1 looks like a 2012 citizen; that alone is a great start. No matter how many features were piled onto the old Digg, it still looked like an old site with new features. Not anymore.

Statistics on the number of Diggs or Likes are easily accessible but not overbearing. The color scheme is much more subdued, making the site look less like an early 2000’s animated banner-ad haven and more like an online newspaper.

Signup is easy if you’re not philosophically opposed to ubiquitous Facebook sign in. I’m not as long as I can tell the site not to post on my behalf, which with Digg v1 is the case. Bonus points for prominent placement of the “Delete Account” button in the settings menu.

Story links go straight to the source, no truncated preview page to click through, no banner following you around to the article’s website. Unlike many digital newspaper type sites, Digg v1 helps drive traffic to the original source, rather than taking it away. Not even Instapaper, a service that tries to keep the audience on the content owner’s site whenever possible, can boast as direct a connection to the original source.

Speaking of Instapaper (AppStore Link), Digg is yet another site that now saves articles for later. In this specific case, it’s called “Save to iPhone.” If you have the Digg iPhone app, which also benefits from the visual upgrade to Digg v1—probably even more so than the website—you can go back to your saved articles and read them. Novel, I know.

On the iPhone, Digg presents a cleanly formatted text and image only version of the article first (which makes sense on a mobile device). At the end of each article there is a “Read this on … ” button that I wish was at the top of the article. It’s a nice looking app and sports the optional Paperboy feature of updating based on your location.

I did run into some problems with the new Digg, mostly in the form of the 504 Gateway Timeout page. Really it’s two strikes against a product trying to prove that it’s better than its predecessor. For some, Facebook sign in and timeouts will be enough to keep Digg right where it was a week ago, not on anyone’s radar. For others, the redesign might be just enough to bring them back to an old friend.

I’ve bookmarked the site again, but deleted the app. I already have a read later service, but crowd-sourced news? I’m willing to try it again.

A couple of months ago, I went into the Apple store with a question about my iPhone screen. The genius helping me asked if I would demonstrate the problem I was having, so I did using an app that gets more screen time than just about any other on either my iPhone or iPad. The app was Instapaper.

Now I thought that just about everybody with an iOS device knew about this app and the network service which goes along with it. I was wrong. The guy looked at me, eyebrows furrowed, head tilted slightly.

“Instapaper. What’s that? I’ve never heard of it.”

Rightly or wrongly, I gave up on him being able to fix my problem (he didn’t fix it). It was unbelievable to me that an Apple store genius working with iPhones would have never seen Instapaper before. For better or worse (or unrelated) he hadn’t.

Fast-forward to today and Instapaper is still one of my most used apps, and if you could somehow log the amount of time an app spends onscreen, Instapaper would most certainly win. Why? Let’s assume, like that wayward Apple genius, you’ve never heard of it before.

Instapaper is a service which allows you to save articles for reading later. In the app, all the clutter, flashing ads, comment streams, suggested stories, they’re gone. It’s just you and the article on the device of your choice (even Android now). For many, this is a problem that you don’t even know needs to be solved until you try it. Once you start saving, and reading, articles, suddenly the quality of content on the Internet seems to rise.

Often, Instapaper is called a modern magazine. You decide which articles are in the magazine (content related images included), and you decide when to read them (even when you don’t have an Internet connection). If you don’t like the default font, there are several excellent print-quality font choices to make the text more readable or appropriate for the type of articles you like to save.

I’m going to keep this short, because there are so many clever features in this app that I’m still discovering them even after using it consistently for two years. The fifth app to be returned to my home screen after the purge is Instapaper.

Get the universal app for your iPhone and iPad on the AppStore for $3.99, it’s worth every penny.