Wow. That’s how we feel towards Yomomedia. Short for Your Mobile Media, YomoMedia seem to have everything you need in a RSS aggregator for all sorts of media type. The best part is its equally well oiled web application, the Yomo Reader. Apart from reading any new updated articles, you can listen to podcast or watch video all from the application.
YomoMedia is unique and set apart from other RSS feed reader such as Google Reader and Bloglines, mainly because it is both a web service and a mobile service, both are fully-developed applications and they communicate with one another seamlessly. Provided as a freeware, this application, if you follow any sort of RSS feeds at all, this application should be on your device.
Installation
Download the desktop install exe file from YomoMedia or at the end of this page. You can install it in any storage. And the lovely thing about installing YomoMedia’s mobile application is that it provides you with the option to go directly to the application rather than having to go to Start > Program and scroll all the way down to find the initial Y.
Design
Lovely design, really. Since this application is has considerably more functions, we’d except there to be a lack of focus on design. But were we wrong. Once loaded, the entire UI is fairly intuitive where you have the bundles of RSS feeds on the top and a listing of them below. The font, color and the relations between components are all ergonomically sound.
They did however left out efforts to stylize its setting page, leaving it to the ruin of the standard Windows Mobile layout. We forgive them just because they amount of settings and information they provide through the ranks. We will discuss them further in the usability/features section.
Another component that we really like is the Status bar on the bottom. It provides useful information such as the update schedule as well as download status of videos or audios.
Usability
The application is fairly easy for pickup uses. You don’t have to wait forever for the application to load. Once the application is loaded, you can use your finger to slide between categories (or bundles as its called).
When it comes to regular text RSS feeds, you can add your own Feed provided that you have a user-defined bundle that you have created on the web application, Yomo Reader. Otherwise, you can pick from a range of pre-defined categories, including Entertainment, Sports and Video.
To read the feeds, simply click on the name of the feed and it will take you to the latest feeds available. From there you can pick and choose the articles that you’d like to read further. Do note that the length of the synopsis or the article is defined by the feed owner (i.e. summary, full, etc).
For video and podcasts, you can download them by clicking on the button provided. Once downloaded, you can click on Menu and hit play to play the media. By default, YomoMedia will utilize the media player on your device (e.g. for Omnia, TouchPlayer will be launched).
Features
- Finger friendly interface that allows you to switch between bundles or categories
- Ability to add user-defined bundles and feeds
- Ability to watch or listen to media feeds, such as podcast
- Status bar that displays information about updates and download status
- Various useful information such as memory info and user info
Pros
- Great design and user-interface that utilizes finger-friendly gesture
- Ability to download multimedia feeds
- Informational status bar
Cons
- While the application does allow for finger-friendly gesture, the buttons and each selectable feeds are sometimes too small for a finger to pin-point.
- It would also be great if a Search feature can be added, to search for feeds that is out there
Should I get it?
This is a great RSS feed reader for various content types. And with asynchronize-able web application, you can better manage your feeds on a screen bigger than 3 inches wide. If you are following any RSS feed, use YomoMedia to keep track of them on the go.
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