BZine iPad app

Our role: DesignDevelopment & Technology

Timeframe: released in January 2011

A simple testcase

BZine is a simple iPad application that gives you the ability to read your favourite blogs and feeds in a simple magazine/newspaper layout. The idea was to have a tool to read your Blogs at Breakfast or Bedtime like your holding a magazine.

BZine was conceived as an inhouse technical testcase in iPad development by Foreach developers, but we decided to wrap it up into a package and upload it to the appstore in january 2011. The app can be downloaded and used completely free of charge.

Group feeds for on- and offline reading
Within BZine you can create multiple profiles. Each profile can have an unlimited number of feeds configured. When refreshing a profile, the app will assemble a magazine layout, distributing the latest version of each feed over the different pages using a ranking system based on recency and the content available (like photos and full body text). Once generated, the BZine profile is available for offline browsing and reading.

For the offline experience, the app needs feeds that feature full body content. RSS 1, 2 and ATOM feeds are all supported. Feed items can be shared on Facebook, Twitter or through email. Some feeds also allow you to view comments on an item from within the app. To view the original webpage linked to every feed item, BZine also features an in-app browser.

The interface is fast, simple and easy to use with typical iOS gestures. The reader can also tag items as favourite to keep for reading later and avoid them getting removed when updating a profile.

Because this was a technical test project, there are some obvious limitations like lack of support for landscape mode and only manual input of feed urls. Support for the app is limited and it is also unlikely there will be updates in the future.

Project Size: small

Release Year: 2010

Category: Touch & Tablets

Technologies: C/C++/Objective C iOS SDK