Getting Internet and Tech News with Net News Wire for the iPhone

The iPhone gives us the option to have an “all encompassing” mobile device that not only gives us every application we could want, but a million others that we never asked for. This means that you will end up seeing weather applications on people’s phones that they have never used, the New York Times open when people don’t care about the news, and streaming radio for music types that are universally reviled. It seems standard that most iPhone 3G users will download a free application quick, even if it is of no use to them. This goes even quicker for links to services that provide content such as news or other media. The Net News Wire is another one of these.

The Net News Wire is a news service, but is curtailed toward tech and internet news as opposed to the more general approach of other news applications. Its interface is much simpler than the rest. When the program is opened you then get a list of new and unread feeds from certain information websites like ranchero.com. From here you can read the article, choose to open the specific page in your Safari browser, or send the clip to someone else.

This is not a bad program and will give you a huge number of articles. If you are a professional in the industry, or have more than a passing interest in these matters then you may find the program worth checking out.

Unfortunately, the problems with this program far outweigh the benefits. Often times few if any feeds will actually come into the program, keeping the information centralized to just a few websites if having any information at all. Usually having the articles opened in Safari is needed, yet takes an unreasonable amount of time. The application itself requires a login and password, which slows it down even further and is entirely unnecessary. Even when logged into the application it runs slower than average. This can make navigating it to read an interesting article content a chore. More than this, the articles are seldom interesting to even the most die hard junky of tech news.

If you really want to read these feeds you can likely find a website that will give you a much quicker and better list of information. This is a free application, and works better at different times, so you may want to check it out anyway. If you are almost full, or have enough applications to create several pages on your iDesktop, then you may want to pass on by it. Five out of ten stars.