Pulse Hints

There are small blocks of time you get during the day. Standing in line at the coffee shop, commuting to work by train, waiting for your boyfriend to pick you up, sitting outside the airport gate before your next flight... and so on. A lot of people (we talked to) spend this time by checking their email, stalking their facebook friends or playing games on their mobile phone. We believe you can use this time more effectively by catching up on what's going on in the world and reading news on-the-go.

The current news apps on Android have one thing in common - they all look like your inbox - you can browse down infinitely, seeing an endless flow of text articles. In this sea of information, it is hard to pick news articles that really interest you. Not any more.

Pulse News gives you news visually in bite-sized pieces. Each article is a small square filled with the headline and an associated image. Pulse incorporates colorful panning story bars and fills them with content from your favorite websites.

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.

We hope you enjoy Pulse!

PULSE PACKS: On the home screen, click on the management icon on the top left and swipe over to the right to add a new page. Click the square plus button, and you'll find our options for adding category packs. Tap to add a set of feeds from a category of interest to you.

FEATURED: On the home screen, click on the management icon on the top left and tap the + button to add a new feed. The first tab at the bottom is Featured, which the Pulse Team updates weekly with new and interesting sources.

CATALOG: On the home screen, click on the management icon on the top left and tap the + button to add a new feed. Move over to the categories tab at the bottom. Browse the categories to select sources that look fantastic in Pulse.

SEARCH: On the home screen, click on the management icon on the top left and tap the + button to add a new feed. Move over to the search tab at the bottom. Type in what you're looking for in the search box, and hit search. You can search for a source name like "techcrunch", or put in website URL like "www.nytimes.com", or search for keywords like "fashion" or "design" or a full feed URL like "http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_topstories.rss". You will see search results from our database as well as Google Reader search results.

Feel free to drop us a note on our forum if you run into any troubles trying to find a source you want!

Customize your Pulse to the way you want it to be.

HOW TO ADD A PAGE: On the home screen, click on the management icon on the top left and swipe over to the right to add a new page. If you have multiple pages already, you can also click the small "+" next to the page names on the home screen to directly add a new page.

HOW TO DELETE A SOURCE: On the home screen, click on the management icon on the top left. Delete the feeds you no longer want by tapping on the X next to the feed name. You cannot delete pages at this time.

HOW TO REARRANGE SOURCES: On the home screen, click on the management icon on the top left. Hold down on a source and move it to where you want it to go.

HOW TO RENAME A PAGE OR A SOURCE: Long press on the name of the page or source from the tile-view of Pulse (not management). 

If you have Pulse Version 2.3 and above, use Pulse.me to create your personal Pulse profile. Don't have the newest version? Head over to Android Market to update the app. 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 the iPhone or iPad, 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!

After you've created your Pulse.me account (look at a previous post on Pulse Hints to learn how to do that), click on your profile picture to edit your account.

Under the section "Bookmarking Services" tap the checkbox for the service(s) you want to connect to, and follow the login flow. To connect with Evernote, you must have the Evernote app installed on your device.

After you’ve connected, tapping on a star while reading a story will automatically send the story to these third-party services! Enjoy!

To get your Facebook newsfeed, the status updates and links shared by your friends, tap to add a source to Pulse and head over to the Browse tab at the top. Scroll down to the Social category and add My Facebook Links, My Facebook Status Updates and My Facebook Wall to Pulse. 

You will be prompted to login with your Facebook credentials. Once you login, you can enjoy the news shared by your Facebook friends in Pulse!

Pulse includes Google Reader integration, allowing you to easily import your feeds. No need to search, no need to discover - sign in with your account and pull up your favorite feeds. Not only that - the articles you read on Pulse are marked "read" on Google, and vice versa. The stories you star on Pulse are starred in Google Reader after you set up your Pulse.me account (look at a previous Pulse Hints post on how to do that).

Here's how: On the home screen, click on the management icon on the top left and tap the + button to add a new feed. Switch to the "Google Reader" tab (at the bottom of the screen). 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 sources you want to add to 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.

Other websites only give out part of the article (as a teaser), hiding the rest on their website. Want to dive deeper and see the full website with the full article? Tap on the title of the article and you'll be taken to the story on the web within Pulse.

To open a story in your browser, tap the Menu button on your Android device and select "Open in Browser"

If you have been browsing through Pulse for a while, you may want to see the new posts that have been published since you've been browsing.  We have multiple ways to refresh the news in Pulse - here they are:

• Option 1: Pull-to-refresh an entire page: Pull all the feeds on the page you want to refresh from the top down
• Option 2: If you want to quickly update an individual source, select the refresh icon to the top right of the feed you want to refresh.

Found an article that you'd like to share with friends? Sharing it via Facebook, Twitter and email is as easy as two taps. Pulse uses the article and populates the message, tweet and email accordingly.

Twitter & Facebook: To share to Twitter or Facebook, just tap the Facebook and Twitter icons.

Email and Other Apps: To share to email and other applications, tap on the last icon to the right and choose an application to share to based on the applications you have on your device.