I got an email this morning from Zod. No, not the arch-nemesis of Superman, but Michael Kirlew of Toronto-based Zod Studios who want to tell me about their new newspaper-style app for the iPad called QuikView. Now, you folks know that I’m a sucker for news apps. I tried Flipboard straight away. I really liked Zite (but haven’t touched it in a while for some strange reason). Now QuikView offers similar functions as both these apps, but the real twist is in adjusting the layout of the pages you create.
I replied to Michael right away and he graciously gave me a promo code for the app (QuikView is $1.99 in the App Store) so I could try it out.
The first thing you need to do when launching the app is connect with at least one of your own social network services to help tailor your news for you. I connected Twitter and Google Reader, but skipped YouTube (I don’t subscribe to many YouTube Channels). 
Now I admit that trying to set up one of the custom pages (you’re allowed 5 in this version) with my own news left me stumped. There are a few UI things to be worked out. For example to pick which Twitter lists appear in your Twitter section you press and hold the “Twitter” heading. For the “News/RSS” section same thing. First picking which of the preset channels (Business, Sports, Entertainment, Technology, and Design) displays and then you can tweak which feeds go into those channels. One of the things that you also need to know is that your own feeds won’t be in the channel until you explicitly add them. At first you might think that this is wrong. Why don’t you put all the feeds into the mix! Well, if you’re like me you subscribe to a lot of feeds and not all of them are on one topic. So, yeah I have tech news, but I also have stuff on design or collaboration tech or even writing (gasp, I know). So by not adding all of your feeds to the mix, you get to add the right feeds to the right categories.
Well in my case since I subscribe to nearly 1000 feeds (which is a far cry from my previous near-2000), it takes a while to add all the right feeds.
Now the nicest touch comes in customizing your pages. You get three blocks per page that you can pretty much move around how you want. I have a nice News block at the top, and below Twitter and YouTube sharing the bottom half of the page. Very clever and very easy to figure out.
The one flaw that I see with how QuikView works is Twitter. The Twitter box pulls from your lists. While I am a heavy list user, not all of you are (although if you’re a news junkie you probably are a list junkie too), so if you don’t have all the people you follow on Twitter organized into lists, the Twitter box might wind up being a lot more noise than signal.
My lists are pretty focused, but certainly not to the granularity of only a sports news/person list or a tech only list. I don’t need all my lists in my Twitter boxes, but I certainly need most of them to get news.
In my emails with Michael, he admitted that the next version is going to have several UI improvements (it’s his first app) as well and other nice touches. I have to give Michael credit for making a cool app. QuikView is going a bit against the grain by not letting you tune the news, but I like the easy reading and layout views.
For features, it needs Instapaper and Email support. When I’m reading something I often want to send it to myself, Safari, or Instapaper. I think the options for picking feeds should be easier and a little more clear. Twitter, well that’s so user dependent, that it might just be as good as it’s going to be.
In the future, you know I’m going to say it, Google+ (once the API comes out) is going to be key. It’s going to be key for all the apps like this. Google+, RSS, and Twitter will combine to make for a powerful news source.
QuikView is a good app. It isn’t finished, completely polished, or perfect, but I see tremendous potential in it if the UI gets tightened up and a few features added to it.
Originally posted on the Future Shop Tech Blog
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