Guzzle Review

Guzzle is an unorthodox way of reading the news, to say the least. Normally, you subscribe to a news source (say, the Washington Post) and you'll receive each and every one of their articles, whether or not you have an interest in the subject. (Case in point: the Washington Post's extensive article about Kagan's...legs? Fantastic.) With Guzzle, however, you chose what you want to read about. Pick a few keywords, and bam!—Guzzle will only deliver news that interests you. Because Guzzle reads "hundreds of feeds every second," it can presumably filter thousands of articles to find the ones that match your keywords.

From an interface standpoint, the Guzzle app is pretty basic—a good thing, in this case! Each of your keywords appears on the main screen. Tapping one brings up the list of articles matched to the keyword. Tapping an article brings up the article in the in-app reader. From there you can also chose to view the article in Safari, or email or copy the link. If you already have an account at the website (Guzzle.it), log in and the app will import all of your keywords. If not, creating one from within the app is simple and quick.

A few features are missing from the iPhone app. Image view is gone, replaced by a universal display where a thumbnail is displayed alongside each article. Also, one of the main features of the Guzzle.it website is being able to organize the categories graphically; the Guzzle app is much more bare-bones and even the list of keywords isn't in the same order as what you've specified on the website.

Be sure to check out that website, too, to find out if Guzzle's feed-creation can serve up news that you're interested in. It has a few problems: a tendency to collect multiple articles on the same topic, for example, and sometimes the articles are off-topic entirely.

Still, if you're a Guzzle fan, it's worth checking out the app. Personally I prefer my own broader browsing habits and old-fashioned RSS, but if you need or want a narrowly focused feed on a particular topic, Guzzle could be useful. Just check out the Guzzle.it website for a test-drive before purchasing the app.