iPad Month: Pulse on an App Store Roller Coaster

Home / Mobile Computers / iPad Month: Pulse on an App Store Roller Coaster

iPad Month: Pulse on an App Store Roller Coaster

Posted by Zealot on Jun 08, 2010

This post was published 1 year 11 months 16 days ago which may make its actuality or expire date not be valid anymore. This site is not responsible for any misunderstanding.

Apple giveth…Apple taketh away, at least temporarily. Consider the strange day that creators of Pulse, a great media reading app on the iPad had yesterday.

First, Steve Jobs mentioned Pulse, developed as a class project by Stanford students Akshay Kothari and Ankit Gupta as one of the rising stars of the iPad…which it is. Pulse, to be reviewed here officially next week, takes RSS feeds and whips them through a magazine format blender, making them much easier to work with and read. It is just the sort of app that makes use of the iPad’s greatest strengths, namely constant connectivity and the big touchscreen.

However, a few hours after Steve praised the pair from Moscone, they got a letter from Apple’s lawyers explaining they were taking Pulse off the App store…or else the New York Times will sue.

Why exactly the Times (and the Boston Globe, also named in the suit) would get their subscriptions in a twist over this is beyond me, at least when considered at face value. Pulse allows you to access publically available RSS feeds and present them as either the RSS stub, or the webpage that they link to. The content itself is stuff several billion other RSS readers use for free every day from the Times and the Globe, what is their problem with Pulse?

The main things that seem to upset the Times are that you can send a tweet or facebook update about the content that detours around the sharing tools in place on the Times site (and which may then cut into their traffic or income) and that Pulse is a PAID app, so that as far as the lawyers are concerned these two Stanford guys are profiting from the Times content.

The cold hard fact that someone at the Times noticed is that if you have Pulse, the free New York Times apps in the App store are sort of useless, and the Times makes ad money off those. Now don’t get me wrong, I have always loved and used the New York Times apps for the iPhone and iPad, but they are about as creatively presented as a laundry list. They just aren’t as much fun to use as Pulse is.

So what happens to Pulse, which has been bouncing up and down the Paid Apps Top Ten list since release? Kothari (who I have exchanged emails with and seems to be a great guy) told All Things D that they would be removing all Times material and speaking to Apple again. Hopefully they will be back in the App Store soon then, with another paper, likely one without it’s own popular app, reaping the eyeballs on Pulse that the Times used to. Chicago Tribune perhaps?

Expect to see a full Pulse review next week as planned…hopefully this whole mess will be resolved by then…and if not, heck I am reviewing it ANYWAY. Take THAT, New York Times. Nyah nyah.

Tagged with iPad Month, New York Times, Pulse

Zealot (839 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

By day a department manager and writer for a major network device vendor...by night Zealot stalks the mean magnetic streets, striking fear into the hearts of bandwidth abusers and theme park mascots. Zealot has been involved with mobile devices for more than a decade now, starting off with dumb phones, moving to PDAs and then to smartphones, notebooks and netbooks with the odd PMP thrown in. Most of his mobile time currently is spent on a Treo Pro, Zune HD, Thinkpad T61, HP Mini 311, iPod Touch 3G, iPad 16G or a Hackintoshed Compaq Mini 704. He proudly groks the Geek community and considers himself a Neo Maxi Zune Dweebie (thanks Wil Wheaton!).

SHARE THIS POST:

RELATED POSTS:

Review: Pulse for the iPad

Apple iPad in Verizon Wireless stores starting today!

The i.Tech Virtual Keyboard Review at Gear Diary

June is iPad Month at Mobilitysite!

What’s Coming Up at Mobilitysite?

ADVERTISEMENT

http://twitter.com/mobilitysite/status/15700440053 mobilitysite

Posted: iPad Month: Pulse on an App Store Roller Coaster http://bit.ly/9LeCZs
HermDogg1234

It's not that THAT cool of an app, I was excited about RSS too when I was 23, 7 years ago! I don't get all the hype about “apps” lately, they've been around for awhile they're called websites! I understand the need for widget based apps or games, but c'mon do we really need text based apps that can be created the old way, on the web. Besides the web is not only viewable from an iPad but any device!! Please see my prototype as I began working today only to prove to myself that I still have it. I saw all this hype around this new app but don't see what the big deal is. The design is cool, but the technology is nothing new…

My “APP” -> http://www.dailyrss.com/ipad
HermDogg1234

It's not that THAT cool of an app, I was excited about RSS too when I was 23, 7 years ago! I don't get all the hype about “apps” lately, they've been around for awhile they're called websites! I understand the need for widget based apps or games, but c'mon do we really need text based apps that can be created the old way, on the web. Besides the web is not only viewable from an iPad but any device!! Please see my prototype as I began working today only to prove to myself that I still have it. I saw all this hype around this new app but don't see what the big deal is. The design is cool, but the technology is nothing new…

My “APP” -> http://www.dailyrss.com/ipad
http://www.svpocketpc.com Pony99CA

If the New York Times puts out a public RSS feed, why isn't anybody free to reformat it — as long as they keep all the content intact (including any ads)? The newspaper doesn't know what RSS reader is being used (and what ads it may be displaying), so I'm not sure that I get the legal issue. (I do understand their concern about losing ad money, but don't they lose that in the RSS feed, too?)

Steve
http://www.svpocketpc.com Pony99CA

Apps can reformat the Web content to make it easier to read or to take advantage of unique features on the device. If you don't find an app worthwhile, don't use it and use the Web site. If you do find the app worthwhile, use it.

It doesn't seem like a big deal to me.

Steve

P.S. That Web app is pretty decent, too.
HermDogg1234

Reformat the web content to make it easier to read? Don't need an app for that, its called a stylesheet. It may not seem like a big deal but I don't think its the right direction overall. Thanks for the shoutout on my app, tried to demonstrate that one doesnt need to code for ONE device, this app will work on most browsers/devices.
http://www.svpocketpc.com Pony99CA

While I've been a longtime proponent of mobile stylesheets, too, they have a problem — the handset profile is kind of one-size-fits-all. You'd need a lot more BOM and JavaScript programming to work ideally with differently sized screens, I think.

Also, you ignored the second part of my reasoning — taking advantage of unique features on the devices. Things like GPS, motion sensors, etc. may not work in most browsers (although I've heard that HTML 5 will support some kind of hardware access).

If you don't need specialized hardware support and can get good presentation using just style sheets, then I agree that building a browser-based version is probably better than a dedicated app — if only because it's usable by more people.

Oh, and another possible reason for dedicated apps — it's harder to charge for a Web site. People are willing to pay for apps, but most people think the Web should be free.

Steve
http://www.mobilitysite.com/2010/06/review-pulse-for-the-ipad/ Review: Pulse for the iPad | Mobility Site

[...] and organize information which Pulse takes full advantage of. As most of you know from the recent media attention, Pulse is a best selling iPad App created by two Stanford students, Akshay Kothari and Ankit Gupta [...]

iPad Month: Pulse on an App Store Roller Coaster

Subscription

Comments

In the Forums

Tags

Links

Blogroll

Polls

About Mobilitysite

Links