Flipboard and its disadvantages! [Apps for iPad]

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

The other day we had a review of an RSS reader, and another news provider is knocking on the screens of our iPads and his name is Twitter in the person of Flipboard. Many resources already have their own twitter channels, which inform readers about news or supplement the main feed with useful links and messages, we also have one at @macradar. Subscribe and find out a lot more:)

As the developers assure, Flipboard is a social magazine that draws in a friend feed from Facebook and Twitter. At first glance, it strongly resembles Pulse News Reader, but this is only superficial similarity. Content absorption in Flipboard is different, because the source is fundamentally different from the RSS feed.

Viewing the magazine begins with the cover. Messages with an image in their content are randomly displayed on it. All this is accompanied by the effects of shift and enlargement, which makes the picture lively. At the bottom there is a "Recent contributors" strip for navigating through the news feed. In fact, the cover here is not casual, while the user admires all these beauties, most of the news will have time to be loaded. Turn the page and get to the navigation menu.

Below is a screenshot of the freshly installed program, from which it becomes clear that Flipboard has two specialized cells, one for your Twitter, the other for your FaceBook account. The remaining seven cells are left to the mercy of the user, he can fill them to his taste by deleting the standard channels using the Edit button. So, the accounts are connected and you can start using the social magazine.

Flipboard Inc uses a script to process content on its servers and transfer it to the client program. Indeed, it all looks like a glossy magazine. Nice style of layout, pictures everywhere and incomparable pearls of your friends. Add to this the ability to write reviews, add news to Twitter Favorites or send a link by email. Yes, no magazine stood next to such fun!

Still, Flipboard has its limitations. First of all, it is not a means of communication. You can add your opinion about the recording, share your impressions, but you will not be able to get an answer. Social journal will not replace or complement your Twitter client. In addition, Twitter features such as viewing someone else's profile information and following a new person (Follow on Twitter) are displayed from the browser window - this is at least yesterday.

Okay, so be it. Like a social magazine, Flipboard is not focused on communication in some places. It can be forgiven, it can even be fixed. But the visual side is also lame. All of these images posted on Twitter are often not large enough and look terrible on the iPad screen, and not always the correct scaling of images is added to this.

Going further, Flipboard filters the text from it links are thrown. For example, in this review there are five links to additional materials, but you will not see them, this information will be lost to you forever. Complementing all this is tag and metadata truncation, which may not be noticeable to most readers, but will come as an unpleasant surprise for some. This culminates in some encoding issues here and there.

The ability to access hidden information by processing the content of the resource using your own aggregation script will please someone, but not the content owners. This state of affairs is more likely to lead to lawsuits against Flipboard Inc. than to the conclusion of lucrative contracts. Reflections on the legality of Flipboard can be found here (Russian) and here (English)

Flipboard is an interesting idea embodied in code. The application has great potential, a new look at social media, the ability to attract even more people to social networks and make your pastime easier and more understandable. At the same time, Flipboard is not able to replace a browser with an open page on Facebook or a full-fledged Twitter client, this is its main drawback.

Application page in AppStore (free)