We literally have millions of sites and apps available to keep us updated, entertained or for that matter to help us kill our boredom and we have zillion kinds of content to make that happen too.
But do we have any site or app, actually catering to our needs???
I’m so sure at some point we all have wished to have such a medium, right!!!
Well, we now have – Dull!!! Yeah you read it right!
Let’s tell you what Dull exactly is…!!!
Ironically unlike its name, Dull – the creation of Roeland P. Landegent is the most fun and entertaining app amongst the whole lot!
To give you a brief introduction, dull is this new mobile application that helps you kill the free time by collecting data feeds from all other sites, apps, or any other locations and filters it with the most trending, interesting ones and the ones you opt for! These range from photos, music, GIFs, news and information, products, etc, etc, etc!!!!
Now, you definitely cannot compare or replace it with your existing news apps like Wall Street Journal, CNN, New York Times, etc. but dull can be looked at as a dish created with the help of multiple cooks such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and some other popular youth centric websites or applications with light content.
Unbelievably, dull was just a side project of Roeland but when seventy percent of the users came back again on the same day during the beta test of the app amongst 150 users, he began to take things more seriously.
And the facts became more obvious, when they launched the app on ProductHunt during the second last week on 2014 and received over 10,000 hits on its website.
Finding it interesting already??
How it works?
When you first download the app, you will find it quite cluttered, messy and a tad-bit irritating but then once you’re done with the introduction part, be sure that your going to get blown away with what you will see.
To begin with, the concept of dull is such that it collects content from various networks which include all the famous and trending ones like Reddit, Giphy, Flickr, Instagram, Vine, SoundCloud, YouTube, Shuffler.fm, 500px, Canopy, Pinterest, Fashionista, XKCD, ProductHunt and many more!
So, once you’re on the main screen you will see a news-feed style interface wherein all the data from all the sources will be shown.
Although, the app doesn’t let you personalize the content by entering the URL’s of the sites or blogs but then you get an option on the settings panel to choose from the list; which sources you wish to receive the content from.
These feeds by default come with a set timer (a few seconds) and after which they automatically scroll and if not then you can scroll them yourself too.
All you gotta do is swipe left to remove and move on or swipe right to share! And as far as reading any content or playing any kind of media is concerned, just tap on it!
Features
You can modify the app as per your taste by subscribing to sources like Reddit, Instagram, YouTube, Medium, New York Times and many more!
The app is equipped with the latest and the coolest technology of multiple swipe gestures. And works like this: left swipe to remove, right swipe to share, tap on it to read or play, double tap to fave (favorite) it, long press on it to go to the original source.
The feeds are strictly collected on the basis of the top trending posts that are running around the internet!
Apart from that, you also have an option to re-share the content you like directly on mostly all the social media applications like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Whatsapp, or for that matter you can also mail them too!
Unlike other Feed-Readers, dull it-self curates all the content to decide what is actually trending via multiple ways such as by API, or RSS top articles, and sometimes XHTML DOM parsing.
The app also has an inbuilt feature wherein it connects to all the apps that are on your phone, so if you wish to view some content and you have the application of the original source, it will directly open the same.
Presently the app has only been made available for iPhone users but work is in progress and android version will soon be launched too!
Now even though the app is new and is still gaining traction; the makers have taken a bold move by getting in display ads as content within stream. But you can always stop these by paying $2.99.
And one other information about the app that has been kept hidden is that – “You must be at least 17 years old to download this app”!
All-in-all, one word – Mind Boggling App!
