Price: $1.99    Score: 8/10   By Jose Ralat Maldonado

Flitter! is a news aggregator for your favorite RSS and Twitter feeds and Web sites. Unlike other oft Google Reader-specific readers, this application allows you to pull from across the Internet. Want to keep abreast of all your fanboy sites in one place? Want to follow your favorite foodie site? Want to follow the updates of your favorite micro-blog or news organization? Flitter! does that, in one place.

The main screen is a straight-forward list with the name of each feed and the respective icon, which are customizable. Users can select the Web site’s icon or choose from more than 25 Flitter! default images. The built-in icons include such whimsical images as a coffee cup, an 8 ball, a hammer and a heart.

It seems de rigueur that all iPhone applications and Web sites have a share function. Flitter! is no exception. However, If you’re exasperated by the unruliness of other social-media client apps, Flitter! is highly recommended. When you’re exhausted of scrolling through lists ad nauseum of Twitter updates, turn to Flitter!. In the app, you can follow your Twitter peers, leaving the remainder of the 1,452 people you’re following on other clients.

There are a few methods to adding a feed. Manually type the Web URL, Feed URL or Twitter username into the Feed-O-Matic field, click Verify and wait and see. Dyerware, the developer, does admit, “It’s not perfect,” but in my marathon attempt to break the system, I only came up lacking once. Users can also import RSS feeds and bookmarks (e.g., from Firefox), including from their friends. As the developer emphatically states, any RSS reader or web browser that exports OPML (outline processor markup language) file format can be used as a source of feeds.

The app also includes parental controls, for those users with tech-savy little ones. This is especially useful for those with tastes that skew blue (the app requires users be at least 17 years of age).

Among the other solid features, sharing and otherwise, is legible text. This frees the user from the pinching and tapping and all the carpal tunnel-inducing digit calisthenics the iPhone can require.

Other elements include:

• Full in-app search of all downloaded articles and tweets.
• Share your RSS feed list with other Flitter! users.
• Full landscape and portrait orientations for reading and searching.

My biggest gripe is that the interface is initially confusing. Nevertheless, once you get the hang of it, up-to-the-minute feeds are your oyster.

The take-away here is customization, a customization free-for-all. When so many reader apps are rigid in scope, Flitter! gives the user what he/she wants. Flitter! certainly doesn’t flop.

Flitter! is compatible with the iPhone and iPod Touch and requires iPhone OS 3.0 or later.

Price: $4.99    Score: 7/10    By Samuel Bostrom

One of the most useful functions of the iPhone/iPod Touch is the ability to use it as a document reader. You can read PDF from native apps Mail and Safari, but the features are limited. Normally I use the application Files in order to read PDF, Microsoft Office and iWork documents – and it usually works great for that purpose.

However, large PDF files are common and can cause problems. eBooks, for example, are often in PDF format and can easily run over 100 Mb. For a few different reasons there are issues with files of this size being read on the iPhone. The whole PDF file is normally preloaded into the memory of the iPhone, but if the file is bigger than about 50 MB, you won’t be able to load the document and the application will subsequently crash.

This is where the Good Reader app from Good.iWare comes in. Good Reader is an app designed to read large PDF files. It achieves this by loading the documents page-by-page, rather than all at once. I tested files of about 150 MB and had no issues at all. The App Store description states that Good Reader can handle files over 500 MB, so big documents are not a problem.

The downside of using this application is that there is a noticeable load time when moving between pages. Sometimes about 3-4 seconds – which can start to get a little frustrating, especially if you’re just intent on skimming through a document.

From my understanding, Good Reader is the only application that can handle PDF files over 50 MB. If you have the need to access large documents on your iPhone/iPod Touch, then this app will stand you in good stead. The only downside, as mentioned, is the load times – but an otherwise highly functional application.

Bottom Line: If you need to be able to read large PDF files, Good Reader is the way to go.

Good Reader requires the iPhone OS 2.0 or later, and is compatible with both the iPhone & iPod Touch.