The advent of the smartphone has only whetted our appetite for consumption of more news and information. Flipboard for one does a great job of curating stories we want to read but I discovered that I liked the Glean (previously called Delvv: Personalized News Feed) a lot better. This is a clever little news app that suggests topics for you to follow and then pulls out the best stories from the web for you to read in an attractive format. Here's a closer look at Glean in action.
Glean App: Weaning the Best Stories from the Web Effortlessly
Want to get started with your favorite news stories everyday? Just install Glean on your Android and hit the Continue button.
The app will present a ton of great topics for you to follow with some preselected options such as Politics, Books, Fashion and Dining. Tap on the topic titles to select and add them to your news feed or tap the selected ones to remove them.
Since the topics are too many to scroll through and discover, you can make use of the Search button at the top of the screen to quickly find them.
Once you've made your selection, click Next at the top of the screen.
You'll be asked to create an account or login via Facebook and once that's done, you will be directed to the Home page where your news feeds are populated.
At the top right of the screen is the News drop down menu with the Search button displayed at the far right. This is followed below by the main tabs. The Home tab displays articles from your chosen topics in a beautiful endless scrolling format. The Topics tab displays all your chosen topics and you can choose to add more topics or remove them here.
The Trending tab shows you all the stories of the day that are making noise on the web while the Favorites tab houses stories you favorited. Finally the Recently Viewed tab gives you a list of all the stuff you recently viewed.
Swiping to the right of the screen displays the Glean menu where you can find your Collections or bookmarked or shared items, Favorites, Recent Searches and Settings.
Apart from just delivering your favorite news stories, Glean app also lets you find the best apps and big events that are happening in your locality. To access these additional pieces of information, go to the News drop-down menu at the top of the screen and select either events or apps.
If you want to return to your news feeds, hit the drop-down again and select the News option. The feeds themselves are displayed in an attractive format, with a big image for the first article, followed by smaller images. All feeds have big bold titles with the website details in smaller print displayed at the bottom of the feed card. You can also see when the article was published.
A vertical three dotted menu lets you provide feedback to the Glean app on whether you like the story and want to see more of it or don't like it. This helps Glean to provide you with more refined results as you keep using it.
When you tap on an article, you are taken to the story summary. If you scroll down the page, You'll see a bottom menu where you can adjust the font size, view related stories and browse the website. At the top of the story is a share button, a favorites button, a Collections (bookmarks) button and an Open button that lets you read the story on the website.
Here's a summarized list of the features of Glean app.
TOP FEATURES OF GLEAN APP
- Offers a humongous list of topics to choose for reading
- Lets you discover trending stories in real time
- Gives you event recommendations happening in your locality
- Helps you discover iPhone and Android apps
- Lets you bookmark all your favorite stories as collections
- Lets you add interesting articles to your favorites list
- Lets you share cool finds with your social networks with apps like Facebook, Whatsapp and Twitter
In our use of the app, here's what we liked and disliked about it.
Likes
Glean has a nice attractive UI with a material design that presents the news you want to read in a beautiful format. For instance, I like the convenience that the addition of the font buttons offers to increase the size of the reading material.
Glean throws up a huge huge list of topics to choose from : from the popular health, fitness, and memes to uncommon ones like A.I and Robotics, Scientology, Conspiracies and Cigars.
I love the fact that the app collects feedback using attractive buttons to improve the stories it presents to you.
For anyone who likes to know the hot and happening events around, I think Glean provides that little advantage.
The Apps feeds offers an intuitive Download Now option which lets you grab the apps from the Play Store.
The loading times on the app were quick, making it super easy to quickly scroll down and check out more stories.
Dislikes
As with most feeds, it gets annoying when you have to navigate too many times to read the complete story.
The Apps feeds, which ought to find and deliver the best apps according to my interests doesn't really work as it should. Plenty of news stories are mixed up with these, making it totally annoying to browse through.
Final Thoughts
Glean for Android brings a wealth of the best stories of the web without any effort on your part. And just like wine, it gets better as you keep using it. If you love to check out the hottest news and happenings from around the world on various topics without having to subscribe to feeds every time, Glean is one of the best apps to deliver that service to you. It doesn't cost a thing to sign up and use, so be sure to check it out!
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