Pulse Hints

There are quite a few news apps on the iPad already, but the whole experience has been far from optimal. There are visually pleasing magazine apps, which ask you for $5 every month (or every week), and then there are RSS-based news aggregators that look like your second inbox.

Pulse, developed by two Stanford graduate students, hopes to fill this void by providing the flexibility of news aggregators while maintaining solid aesthetics. It incorporates colorful panning story bars and fills them with content from your favorite websites. What it doesn’t do is tell you that you have 397 items left to be read, and that you can only read this edition of the magazine.

While a traditional RSS reader is usually about consuming as much content as possible, Pulse is all about leisurely enjoying your daily news, with a cup of coffee.

The home screen renders stories from multiple sources on a clean movable mosaic. Swipe up and down to browse among sources; right and left to see stories from a particular source. Tapping on a story takes you to a very clean text view of the article; and you can seamlessly toggle over to the web view. Like a particular article? Pulse has made sharing news stories as easy as two taps.

The Pulse team has taken special care in enabling seamless transitions between Portrait and Landscape views. The portrait view allows you to immerse yourself in a particular source, while the landscape view allows you to browse all your sources simultaneously.

Searching for your news source is made really, really simple. Says co-founder Ankit Gupta, “A lot of people we talked to were really confused about RSS and Atom and the whole vocabulary around news aggregators. We have thrown all those terms away, and made it as easy as Google search. You enter some keywords, Pulse gives you top results and you can pick the source you want to follow”. This is a huge improvement over current apps, which continue to ask for RSS feed addresses.

But this is just the beginning. Co-founder Akshay Kothari wants to make Pulse the definitive news reader on-the-go. “iPad is a start. We will expand into other platforms, including iPhone, very soon. We are quick, and we are scrappy. We believe continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection”. Akshay and Ankit designed and developed Pulse in 5 weeks, for an entrepreneurship class at Stanford.

Want more news in Pulse? Here are the steps.

Scroll to the bottom of your feeds on the home screen and tap the +Add Bar

OR tap the settings icon (spoke-wheel in the upper left-hand corner)

Find the +Add Bar at the bottom of your list of feeds for each page. 

Next, you will see our Featured sources section. These sources look fantastic in Pulse.  Tap on a featured source to add it to Pulse. 

Want to browse for feeds by a category like business or fashion? Tap on our Categories tab at the bottom of the pop-up. You will see several categories of feeds to browse through.  Tap on + to add it to Pulse. 

Want to add a specific feed? Switch over to the Search tab at the bottom of the pop-up. Type in your news source in the search box and hit Search. You can search for a source name like "Wall Street Journal", or enter a website URL like "www.nytimes.com", or search for keywords like "technology" or "design". Tap the right feed from the list to add it - the website address is a good indicator for the right link. 

Keep adding and feel free to drop us a note if you run into any troubles! You can add up to 60 news feeds.

Glad to have you on Pulse!

Use Pulse.me to create your personal Pulse profile. You can save stories on Pulse, read your saved stories on any device or on the web at Pulse.me.

Here's how to set up your profile:

Tap the .me in the upper right hand corner of the app. 

Tap Sign Up or connect with Facebook. 

Begin starring stories you like or want to finish reading later and find them again by tapping on .me to see your saved stories again!

If you have Pulse on another device like Android or iPhone, make sure to set your account up on those devices as well. The stories you star in Pulse will also be starred anywhere you're connected with Pulse.me! Head to http://pulse.me to see your saved stories on the web.

Connect Pulse.me with Instapaper, Evernote and Read It Later with Pulse.me!

We’ve made it easy with Pulse.me to integrate with Instapaper, Evernote and Read It Later so that with one tap, you can save a story to Pulse.me and to your favorite bookmarking services. Here’s how you can connect these services:

After you've created your Pulse.me account (look at a previous post on Pulse Hints to learn how to do that), tap .me in the upper right-hand corner. Move over to the Accounts tab at the bottom.

Under the section "Saved stories are also sent here", follow the login flow for the services you want to connect to.

Customize your Pulse to the way you want it to be. Okay, let's get straight into how to do this:

To delete a source:

On the home screen, tap on the settings icon (top left). 

To delete a source, tap and hold the source name. Tap on the x button that appears. 

To reorder a source:

On the home screen, tap on the settings icon (top left). 

To move the order of a source, tap and hold the source name and drag it to where you want it to be. You can move it within the same page or drag it to a different page.

To rename a page:

On the home screen, tap on the settings icon (top left).

Tap on the name of the page you want to rename. 

Edit the name and press "Done" on the keyboard. 

Many of the most interesting Facebook posts and status updates are ones that contain links and photos. We pull up all Facebook posts with a hyperlink and make that a source of news for you. You can now view the links shared by your Facebook friends in Pulse!

Here's How:

 Tap the settings icon (spoke-wheel in the upper left-hand corner).

Find the +Add Bar at the bottom of your list of feeds for each page.

Tap on the Categories tab at the bottom of the pop-up. Tap on the Social category.

Next, tap the + button to add each Facebook feed to Pulse. You will only need to login with your credentials once.

You can now go to your homescreen and enjoy Facebook from Pulse! 

Quick Tip #1: When checking out the web view of a Facebook post for the first time, make sure you check "keep me logged in" to stay logged in!

Quick Tip #2: Want to logout? From the homescreen, tap the info icon at the top right and select the "Logout from Facebook" button

Enjoy!

Found an article that you'd like to share in your social network? Sharing it on facebook, twitter and email is as easy as three taps. Pulse uses the article and populates the message accordingly.

To share an article:

Tap the share icon at the bottom right of the story you want to share.

Tap to share to Facebook, Twitter or email and a pop-up will appear where you can edit your message.

Many of the most interesting tweets are ones that contain links and photos. We pull up all tweets with a hyperlink and make that a source of news for you. You can now view the links and photos shared by the Twitter users you follow in Pulse!

Here's How:

Tap the settings icon (spoke-wheel in the upper left-hand corner) and find the +Add Bar at the bottom of your list of feeds for each page. 

Tap on the Categories tab at the bottom of the pop-up. Tap on the Social category. 

Next, find Twitter and tap on + to add it to Pulse. 

Sign into your Twitter account and your Twitter feed is now one of your sources.

Enjoy!

Google Reader allows you to quickly add your favorite feeds. No need to search, no need to discover - sign in with your account and pull up your favorite feeds. We give you the ability to pull up your feeds from Google Reader and tap the feeds you would like to see on Pulse. Not only that - the articles you read on Pulse are marked "read" on Google, and vice versa. Sign up for a Pulse account and the articles you star in Pulse will also sync to Google Reader. 

Here's how to import your feeds:

On the home screen, click on the Settings icon (top left)

 and tap the +Add Bar icon. 

Switch over to the Google Reader tab (see bottom of the pop-up). 

Login with your Google Reader account details (you can logout anytime). This will load all your feeds from Google Reader.

From the list, tap on the news source to add it.

Your Google Reader feeds are now in Pulse!

Some websites give out the whole article including images in their public feed - for these sources, the text view of the app gives you a clean coherent look at articles. No more weird layout, no more flashy ads, no distractions. period. 

But some websites only give out part of the article (as a teaser), hiding the rest on their website. To work around this, Pulse gives you the SMART Switch. When you're reading through the text view of the partial article, the app loads up the website in the background. Think you want to dive deeper and see the full website? Simple - just click on the web tab on top right. You will be able to see the full webpage in Pulse!