Great start

Cream is a great start toward tackling one of the most daunting problems we face today, and with some improvements, I think it is up to the task. Putting the science of latent semantic mapping behind feed reading is one of the best ideas Ive heard in this space for a long time.

There are some limitations though in this 1.0. First, its not exactly clear how Cream is going to know which stories are creamy. As far as I can tell, its based on which items you clicked on, and theres no way to say, "This wasnt what I thought it was." It would be great if it took the route of Pandora where you can thumbs up, thumbs down, or just let it ride. I cant fault the laissez fair approach entirely—its admirable to want to do the work just by observation—but it makes each click and scroll a little more consequential than I would like.

Second, Id like to see Cream understand more about what various feeds are linking to so that it can infer whether I would care about that linked article, wont particularly care but should see it because its relevant in the zeitgeist, or wont care regardless. Thats a hard problem that apps like Fever have tried to solve but so far I havent encountered a real champion of that cause. This is probably beyond the scope of a 1.0 release, but its a good goal for the future.

Finally, the user interface, while pretty, is definitely a 1.0. The window for listing subscribed feeds feels tacked on and poorly considered. Also, the popover approach to reading articles is frustrating because the article disappears when the list of articles scrolls. I would prefer a more conventional three-panel widescreen or traditional master-detail layout. This would also make it easier to have a list of subscriptions that would take the place of the feeds list window, thus solving that clumsy interaction as well.

Cream is probably not going to replace your conventional feed reader just yet, but it is a worthy 1.0 with a lot of potential and a worthwhile companion to your current reader of choice.

jxpx777 about Cream