First question i always have - what's the feed refresh frequency? For me (a journalist who needs keeps very close tabs on hundreds of sites), the only feed reader so far that's been of acceptable speed is Newsblur (i believe the refresh rate is 5 minutes), and I'd happily pay more for faster.
This product appears to be decently-executed, but the same can be said about most RSS readers. Frankly, this looks identical in both aesthetic and functionality to the dozens of other services that are attempting to supplant Reader. Feedly and Digg reader already offer this product for free. Fever, Feedspot et al. offer novel idiosyncrasies that cater to niche markets. (And "we want to be sustainable" is not a unique justification. There are a myriad of other services offering the same appeal.)<p>You've made a great product, but so has everyone else. Why is kouio unique, and why does it warrant $5 per month?
The closest thing to the reader I always wanted is Hackernews; a selection of significant, educational and relevant articles on topics I'm interested in.<p>Meanwhile RSS readers have done little, if anything, to figure out how not to waste my time "nexting" through stuff I have no time or interest in.<p>The entry point for any software in this field should be "how much time per day do you have to spend on reading feeds?"<p>For example medium.com has a brilliant little feature - labelling articles with the time it takes to read them e.g. "2 min read". Yes! More like this please.
Looks really well designed! I added it to our list of reader alternatives here: <a href="https://starthq.com/apps/kouio" rel="nofollow">https://starthq.com/apps/kouio</a><p>As a sidenote: I think it's quite ironic that your blog doesn't have an RSS feed. I noticed the same thing for some of the other alternatives we've listed.
Is this going to be freemium like NewsBlur or pay-only? I'm happy to use the service and tell people how much I like it (and at first glance I like it a lot more than the other readers I've used!), but I have ~20 feeds almost all of which rarely update so $5/month is a hard sell.
Looks good. A few questions, though:
1. Is there no "Mark all as read" (per feed, and general)?
2. Is there a way to only show those feeds with new items?
3. It says "Free for July". Afterwards what's the pricing?
4. Is there a mobile app or mobile-optimized site?
Thanks!
j/k missing. Instead up and down are used to go to the next/previous article. How am I supposed to scroll in an article? I am starting to think I really have to make my very own feed reader that fits my needs.<p>Edit: Ah, good luck with your reader though!
FF22 on Win7 doesn't like your font at all, blog post is very hard, same in the app. @yoleoreader had the same problem and changed to a different font I think (maybe only for some users like me?), much better now.