Negative Stars

Monday, March 27, 2017

News Republic: The Worst App on the Play Store?

Those of us with HTC handsets once came to love Blinkfeed, HTC's "extra home page" which would enable us to get updates of RSS feeds, social media, our calendars, and various other streams simply by swiping to the right. With the advent of the HTC One M9, however, HTC retired the "old" Blinkfeed, and required users to install and use News Republic.

This application purports to permit the user to select topics and content providers, and receive a stream of personalized news updates tailored to the user's own preferences.

Between the intent and the implementation there is many a mis-step and News Republic nails every mis-step. First of all, it pushes out content from a variety of feeds which the user cannot "de-select" or remove. (If it weren't for the Kardashian's, some days my feed would be empty.) It has pushed out offensive and adult data over the feeds coming from content providers that don't even appear in its "settings" pages. And, since this is a blog and not Moby Dick, I won't go into details about the click-bait News Republic pushes out.

I have gone round and round with technical support, which insists that I shouldn't run the latest version of the app, but rather downgrade to an earlier version. Excuse me, but since when did Microsoft tell folks with Windows 10 issues, "Sorry, you should downgrade to Windows 3.1?" That's not an answer, that's a cop-out.

One star does not begin to adequately assess the depth of frustration a user who actually cares about curated content faces with this miserable application. For now, Google News is an adequate substitute, but: (1) It doesn't run in Blinkfeed and (2) It occasionally has its own share of click-bait.

And the geniuses at News Republic have compounded their sin by repeatedly "responding" to one-star reviews on the Google Play Store. Yeah, that doesn't cut it either, people.

Congrats, News Republic, on infuriating me just enough to launch my long-time planned "Negative Stars" blog. I'm sure you'll be the first of many.

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Why Negative Stars?

In more than 30 years of dealing with technology both to do my job (I'm a lawyer) and enjoy myself on the weekends, I have experienced the very best hardware (Texas Instruments Travelmate), software (Windows 2000) and service. Okay maybe not service.In more than 30 years of dealing with technology both to do my job (I'm a lawyer) and enjoy myself on the weekends, I have experienced the very best hardware (Texas Instruments Travelmate), software (Windows 2000) and service. Okay maybe not service.

Many providers and sellers of apps, services, software and hardware (all of whom shall remain nameless) insist upon a simple rating from 1 star to 5 stars. This is a problem. Why would I give something I detest one star? Why would I give it ANY stars? Some products and services are just so very bad that they deserve NEGATIVE stars.

So, for some, I'll just be that angry old man yelling, "get off my lawn!" For others, I might just hit a nerve. And maybe, just maybe, we can make a difference. Mediocrity is easy. Quality is hard.

DISCLAIMER: All content is my opinion. Take my rants for what they're worth. Maybe you'll agree; maybe you won't, but last time I checked, the First Amendment was still part of the constitution (whether the President has actually read the constitution or not is irrelevant.)