Random thought of the day.

As an avid news consumer with daily commute time to keep me captive, I spent time over the summer experimenting with the best ways to catch up on daily events on my iPhone. Sure, I love my iPad, but when I'm standing on a crowded train, my iPhone is easier to hold and control. Besides, I'm almost never without my iPhone at home or on the road - I have more moments to steal some productivity with my iPhone than any other device.

Last summer, Scribd announced Float, which on the surface looked perfect: a single user interface for any content I want. No more Twitter hyperlinks to poorly designed websites, or trying to manage everything with Google Reader. One app, one place to go, finally.

One problem: the app didn't work.

I downloaded Float on my iPhone 4 the day it launched, and quickly setup a few key content feeds from the list. While not everything on the web was accessible, it was a good enough selection to get get started. On the first day, it seemed to crash and close every second article or so. Many articles failed to load. But, hey, it just came out, so I gave them some slack.

Over the next week or two, it seemed that Float had an update to push every day. Every time, stability seemed to get worse. The user interface had a confusing preview feature you could kind of use by sliding over the article, and that itself would crash the application on occasion. After about 2 weeks, I grew tired of the constant updates, user interface, and instability. So I stopped using it.

In December, Flipboard launched their iPhone app, about 5 months after my Float experience. Flipboard for the iPad may be the most elegant piece of software I've ever used, and the iPhone app promised the same 1-stop interface Float had promoted. So I tried it.

The iPhone interface is every bit as spectacular as the iPad experience. The smaller form factor requires some design changes, of course, but the user features and the content presentation are outstanding. The presentation of my Twitter and Facebook content may never replace the iOS clients for those applications, but the ability to present the content linked in my social feeds is unparalleled.

So I use Flipboard, and I'll never go back to Float. Flipboard wasn't the first to market, not even close. But they did it right, which ultimately was more important than being first.

Lesson learned.