ubuntu-touch-coreapps team mailing list archive

[darkdragon <darkdragon-001@xxxxxx>]

With the recent development of Google shutting down it's RSS reader
(probably in favor of their social network Google+) and all the growth in
social networks and more and websites implementing more social plugins than
RSS feeds, it first seemed a bit strange to launch a new RSS reader -
especially in the core apps.

So what are the differences, advantages or disadvantages of RSS? How should
the *perfect *newsreader look like?

*It appeared to me that I would like the following features:*
*categories/lists: *It should be easy to create groups (like tech news,
economy news, political news, global news, local news, ...). This one could
be implemented in a similar way to tweetdeck or the mobile Google+ client
(swipe left/right to change between the lists).
*read information:* In some areas, I like to no miss any news. So an
indicator, if I already read a news item would be nice. Further, some sort
of notification for real-time news would be also nice. But this is only
true for some small lists (or circles or feeds or whatever you want to call
this). For other lists, I would like to turn those features off. Perhaps
some rules like: No longer mark as new when older than 2 weeks would also
be desirable.
*synchronization:* sync all this information between multiple mobile /
tablet / desktop devices. (only if the user whats - otherwise use a local
db)

Then, all the discussions for the messaging apps: We want *one place* for
all our messages - regardless of whether they come from SMS, WhatsApp,
Facebook, GoogleTalk, ...

This let me think about why not doing the same for the newsreader apps?!
We should create one newsreader app which can easily implement new
"newssources" (perhaps implemented by default: rss, twitter, reddit,
facebook, google+) just like the messenger can easily add new messaging
connectors (or whatever they are called).

Then you could implement the following features additionally to the current
rss newsreader roadmap:
*comments:* Perhaps, there should be some sort of commenting functionality,
which is just disabled for RSS.
*share:* There should be some sort of share button for all items, where you
can then select over which service you want to share (email, twitter,
facebook, sms, ...)


What do you think about it?
Is it a good idea to unify the news reading experience like the messaging
experience?