Billed as the world's best news reader exclusively for Windows Phone Weave has some big shoes to fill. Sele Games has put together a very comprehensive, easy to navigate around, stable news reader for Windows Phone 7.
Weave pulls from sources such as CNN, the Wall Street Journal, ESPN, and USA Today. You can also add feeds by topic or specific websites. Weave also includes Facebook and Twitter integration.
Weave is priced at $3.99 and to see if it's worth the bucks and fits the billing, ease on past the break.
Lay of the land
When you first launch Weave, you will have a chance to select the category of news you want Weave to pull in. You have 32 pre-loaded categories that include sports, financial, technology and world news. The categories tap into 180+ pre-set feed sources.
The main hub for Weave features your feed categories and two pages of featured news items. Featured news highlights top stories from your selected categoris in thumbnail fashion. Tap on a thumbnail and you see a short synopsis of the story and a link to pull the full story up.
In tapping the category listing will pull up multiple pages of stories within that category. Along with the headline, you'll see a short description and in tapping the headline, you pull up a brief synopsis of the article with a link to the full story.
Articles are pulled up in an internal browser from the source. You can navigate around any links that appear in the article but there isn't any URL navigation. For that you'll need to go into the options menu and open the article in Internet Explorer.
From the full article view, you also have the options to send the article via email, to your Facebook Wall, to Twitter or add it to your Instapaper account.
Settings
Your settings on Weave include:
- Manage Categories: Here's where you manage the pre-set feed categories.
- Create Category: If you need to add a personalize category.
- Manage Feeds: Here's where you go to manage the feeds within each category.
- Find new feeds: Here is where you search for new feeds by topic or website name. You can then add feeds to your categories from the search results.
Weave refreshes itself automatically so you don't have to worry with it. When you launch the app it refreshes the feeds (as long as fifteen minutes pass).
Overall Impression
If you're looking for a clean, easy to navigate around, news reader Weave is worth a look.
With only headlines populating the pages of each feed, you can skim through the stories quickly. I was a little skeptical about not having the ability to set the refresh rate but the automatic refresh rates work. I found Weave to be a stable application with no glitches, bugs, or crashes experienced.
Overall, Weave is a very nice, sharp looking news reader for your Windows Phone. There is a free trial available to let you try before you buy with the full version running.
You can find Weave here at the Marketplace (opens your Zune desktop).