onfocus

A couple months ago I posted that I wanted an Image Reader for the iPad. I've found the next best thing that meets almost everything on my wish list: Reeder for iPad. It is the best $5 I've spent on the iPad so far. Here's a look:



As you can see: minimal interface with a few buttons along the side and top. You tap those arrows to go forward/back, and there's seamless integration with Google Reader for favoriting and sharing. I also use the iPhone version of Reeder and the iPad version is even better. There's less reporting on what Reeder is doing in the background, so I think more about what I'm reading and less about what I'm using to read.

I'd still like a way to strip away even text and interact with the images on their own at full screen, but this is so close to perfect that I won't complain.

I want an image/feed reader for the iPad. I love seeing a picture every day in the Guardian Eyewitness application which looks like this:



Simple, minimalist interface with a few buttons to favorite, share, and browse thumbnails in the upper-right. You swipe to go forward/back, and you tap to show and hide the caption. The high quality pictures look fantastic on the screen.

Obviously I'd like to see this for The Big Picture, but instead of hundreds of disconnected picture-viewing applications distributed by content producers, I want to be able to subscribe to any feed with images and browse them this way. I'd like to mix these pictures with Flickr feeds, Tumblr feeds, and anything else with images.

I've wanted this feature for Google Reader forever, and Google Reader Play comes close, but I can't control what shows up there. I have a folder at Google Reader called Gallery (probably nsfw) filled with image-centric blogs like Shorpy, A Journey Round My Skull, today and tomorrow and I'd love to browse them exactly this way. And while I'm dreaming, I'd like this app to integrate seamlessly with Google Reader to share, star, and mark posts as read.

Don't make me learn Objective C, Lazyweb.