[tweetmeme]Newspapers across the globe provide daily dose of news bites that help you kickstart the day. If you come to think of it, newspapers are the largest contributors to municipal waste and there is a strong need to move to the digital platform. But it can be a herculean task to sort through the mind boggling amount of news available on the web. This is where Broadersheet steps in.

Broadersheet dubs itself as an intelligent newspaper for iPhone. You can think of Broadersheet as a RSS reader with artificial intelligence built in to deliver personalized content. Sounds great, right? Broadersheet aggregates news articles from select sources across the globe and analyses your taste by using a simple like or dislike system.

Personalize Your Newspaper

Broadersheet presents you with a pool of articles randomly selected from the sources at first launch. The app learns your preferences as you scroll through the list marking the ones you like or dislike. Even reading an article suggests to the app that you might be interested in similar articles in future. Like or dislike are strong indicators of  one’s taste and should be used judiciously. The like/dislike system more often than not leaves you in a dilemma that does not help the cause. But if you get the hang of the app, it really throws interesting content that you are more likely to read than skip.

The app is easy to set up. Select the sources, add your favorite topics and you are ready to go. The like/dislike ideology even applies to the topics and the sources. So if you add a topic and dislike it, no articles from the same would appear in your customized newspaper. The quickstart guide included in the app is the most comprehensive one I have come ever across in an app as it quickly acquaints you with the basic and advanced features to enhance your overall experience with the app.

Interface, Quirks and More…

A lot of thought has been put into the app but there are quite a few quirks that make the experience a bit sour. First and foremost is the inability to add your own sources leaving you with a handful of sources to choose from. Next, the articles load by default in full webpage view rather than the offline text-only view. I mean if the app downloads the offline-view for each article it presents, why not empower the user to decide if he would prefer to switch to the more powerful full webpage view rather than force it on him? Beyond me, really. The ‘newspaper interface’ is good enough to zap through a handful of stories but as the list becomes large, scrolling no longer remains the optimal solution.

Broadersheet sports a slick interface sans any clutter. Articles can be viewed by Date, Source and Topic and can also be marked as favorite; accumulated under the Starred tab for future reference. Now only if the app came with Instapaper integration, it would have been pure awesome. The ‘eye’ in the toolbar is a neat way to switch between the offline and full webpage views. The edit mode lets you mark several stories as interesting or otherwise at one go. The additional coverage button is an excellent way to get different views on the same story from other sources. Hats off to the developer for thinking this one out. Overall a nice job has been done with the interface and the developer can certainly build upon it to include more goodies in the future.

Broadersheet entices RSS Readers

I wouldn’t classify Broadersheet as a RSS reader even if gets the ability to add custom sources. It can be thought of more as a daily newspaper filled with stories that suit your palate. Broadersheet plays an active role in deciding the stories to deliver unlike RSS readers that pull off stories from a bunch of websites. Broadersheet pulls off exciting stuff with such dexterity even from the most monotonous sources that makes you fall in love with the app. Fever is one app that comes straight to mind having somewhat a similar goal. Whether you are a Feedafever lover or not, it’s totally worth giving Broadersheet a shot. Comes at a discounted price of $1.99 price just for January. Go grab it, fast!