Not everyone gets into RSS readers and subscribing to relevant websites like all the techies out there. However, if you are a business owner, or a student of business, or simply enjoy business and want helpful articles that are aimed at helping you improve your business, then OPEN Forum by American Express (free) will be an excellent iPhone app for you.
Upon opening the app for the first time, the feel is good. The presentation layer is very appealing and seems to fit well in the iOS platform. When you tap the app, you will find yourself on the “Recents” page under the “All” category. This is where all the articles trickle through the feed. Browse here and read at your leisure. At the top, underneath the OPEN Forum banner, you will see a horizontal slider that you can move and select to filter the category that your current page is viewing. For example, choose a category such as marketing, then click on the “Popular” page button at the bottom and you will be viewing the popular articles in the marketing section.
On the bottom, you have five pages to choose from: “Recents,” “Popular,” “Experts,” “Saved,” and “More.” We already discussed “Recents” and “Popular,” so on to “Experts.” Here, you can view what some leaders in their respective fields have to say on the topics of business. It is a separate page, so you lose your “Category” slider at the top. This section is article specific to the correlating expert. It is very clean and there is a nice variety of people who excel in business.
When you are reading any article throughout the app, you can click the “Send To” icon to send it to your “Saved” page, or you can share it on Facebook, LinkedIn, or other social networking websites. The “More” page has the “About” page, where you view the details on OPEN Forum by American Express. It also features app support and the usual back-end options.
This app is great over all; I really liked it. From the moment you download this app, you are reading or saving articles while enjoying the look and feel of the app — no account necessary. While reading, you can simply tap the “font size” button to re-size your font for easy reading. The only bummer is that the app does not support landscape view and while you are reading, the interface does not disappear. I always find it a nice touch when the interface fades away as I begin to read. This is not enough of a reason to avoid this app, however.
