Retickr: A News Ticker Focused on Delivering News, Not Noise.

The other day, I stumbled across a piece of software called retickr. The idea behind retickr is to help eliminate all the noise that you have to weed your way through every day online. The app is being developed by a little startup in Chattanooga, Tennessee and is available in the Mac App Store for free.

I have to be honest, the current version (1.3.1) is pretty buggy and could definitely use some user interface tweaks and enhancements, but I’m still pretty excited about this app because version 2.0 is rumored to be shipping very soon and is supposed to bring a whole new approach to the application. Now, I haven’t seen or tried version 2.0 yet, but I’m hopeful. Here’s why:

The developers realized that version 1.3.1 just wasn’t cutting it and have openly admitted that on their website. I love their transparency in this matter. Additionally, I like some of the features they have already implemented in 1.3.1 such as playlists. Playlists are a way for you to sort your RSS feeds which essentially allows you to group similar sites together.

Retickr also features social integration in the app, making it easy to share stories on Twitter and Facebook. Additionally, the app also allows users to sync their Google Reader accounts with it making it super convenient to switch.

Once retickr is installed, it sits either on the top, left, right, or bottom of your screen and scrolls through your selected playlist of RSS feeds. It features a built-in quick-look browser window so you can read the article without having to open a real browser window (however, you can opt to open a browser window if you so choose).

Currently my only real complaints about retickr are that it feels kind of clunky when you use it and that it returned a lot of error messages (relating to the the company’s servers). I hope version 2.0 fixes many of these issues and also brings new innovations to the application. I’m excited to see what the retickr team has in store for us.

On a side note, I would love to see an iPad/iPhone version of this app.