If you’re looking for an alternative to the newly redesigned Google Reader for your iOS device, Newstream might be a good option.

The app turns feeds of any type into a clean newspaper layout, much like Flipboard does on the iPad. It’s simple, yet extremely functional at the same time. The design is a bit reminiscent of recently updated Instapaper, but Newstream stands alone as a discovery app, not based on the premise of marking things to read later.

Discovering feeds to read on Newstream

RSS feeds haven’t been the most consumer friendly technology. Most people don’t understand the technology behind what an RSS feed is, so Newstream takes that confusion out of the equation. Simply search for things or publications that interest you and add it to your saved feeds.

Newstream lets you turn images off, and asks you whether you want to see a full story or just a summary. Not a lot of options here, but it’s well executed.

Reading your news

When you open Newstream, you can swipe from right to left to cycle through your subscriptions. It’s nice to have a mix of blogs as well as Twitter feeds, as everything shows up in the same clean design.

Once you’ve read an article you can Tweet it, email, or post it to Facebook. The simplicity of Newstream shines through here, not giving you a lot of useless bells and whistles. The newspaper-like layout is easy on the eyes at any brightness level, and the Flipboard style swiping lets you consume a lot of information quickly.

Once in a while you’ll catch Newstream showing random HTML tags, but that’s easy to overlook and doesn’t seem to be a huge issue.

After spending a few days with Newstream, I’ve decided that it’s the easiest way to add more publications to my reading on the go. It also gave me the opportunity to start from scratch with my reading list, which was nice. There’s no desktop version or way to manage your subscriptions online though, which is a plus of a service like Google Reader. The app is $2.99, and will serve you well if you’re suffering from information overload.

Google announced some upcoming upgrades to its Google Reader product today on its blog, here are some details:

In the next week, we’ll be making some highly requested changes to Google Reader. First, we’re going to introduce a brand new design (like many of Google’s other products) that we hope you love. Second, we’re going to bring Reader and Google+ closer together, so you can share the best of your feeds with just the right circles.

As a result of these changes, we also think it’s important to clean things up a bit. Many of Reader’s social features will soon be available via Google+, so in a week’s time we’ll be retiring things like friending, following and shared link blogs inside of Reader.

Using Reader for your RSS feeds has been simple enough, but since Google+ was introduced, there has been a major disconnect between the two products. Luckily, Google hasn’t forgotten about Reader, and is making sweeping changes.

If you prefer to take your feeds elsewhere and aren’t interested in its new upgrade, Google says you can take your feeds with you and points out that “your data belongs to you, after all”.

We think the end result is better than what’s available today, and you can sign up for Google+ right now to start prepping Reader-specific circles. We recognize, however, that some of you may feel like the product is no longer for you. That’s why we will also be extending Reader’s subscription export feature to include the following items. Your data belongs to you, after all, and we want to make sure you can take it with you.

• Your subscriptions
• Your shared items
• Your friends
• Your likes
• Your starred items

Sharing news easily with your circles is what Google+ has been missing, and should be a welcomed with open arms by publishers everywhere. Copying and pasting links into Google+ or even using the +1 button on individual stories has most definitely slowed down the flow of news in streams. This will kick things up quite a bit.

Ongo, one of our 8 Social Media Apps to Watch in 2011,  has today officially launched its paid-for social news service.

The Silicon Valley based start-up offers a type of news aggregation and sharing service – normally nothing to write home about – but this particular startup is backed by three major media companies: The Washington Post Company, The New York Times Company and USA Today publisher Gannett. Each has reportedly invested $4 million in the company.

Ongo aggregates from around 20 publications and charges $6.99 to to read from multiple site in one place with no ads and a generally elegant reading and sharing experience. What you’ll find initially baffling is that the large majority of the sites Ongo is aggregating from are free, non pay walled news sites, and all with their own RSS feeds.

So what makes this different to Google Reader?

In an interview with the NY Times, Kevin Scaggs Ongo’s CCO (Chief Content Officer) claims “The key thing is they don’t have to go to the other sites” to read the stories.  Ongo’s founder Alex Kazim, a former eBay executive, says Ongo is different because it gathers stories from a large number of publications, people can access it on the Web or on mobile devices, and professional editors choose the top stories.

So Google Reader with an editorial layer then?

Well not quite, here’s where Ongo differentiates more significantly. For $6.99/month, readers get  articles from a number of respected publications, yes the majority are free but in time it will be possible to add other newspapers, some for an additional fee,  between 99 cents and $14 a month which the publisher sets. The value of accessing pay-walled news sites from one location might just be enough to make Ongo a consideration. That is if paying for content gets mainstream acceptance.

We’re in an era where we aren’t necessarily devoted to one specific news publication, we enjoy reading between a few and each have our own way of doing it, whether it be an RSS reader or Twitter. Where both falter is that pay walled sites aren’t accessible from either, If I could get all my content in one place from multiple sites, pay walled or not, then Ongo may be onto something. Unfortunately for Ongo I, like many of our readers out there, am not planning on paying for online content any time soon – if ever – unless its work specific and absolutely necessary.

In the mean time, with Google Reader, Feedly, Flipboard and more all currently providing superior reading experiences and value propositions, it’s going to be a long road ahead for this new company. Firstly, not only is the startup banking on pay walled content thriving to make its offering notable but secondly it then needs to ensure that its product is a step above other competing services, many of whom I’m certain we’ll see launch if the prior happens. A web based version of Flipboard with support for pay walled sites would be very interesting wouldn’t it?

Visit Ongo and try it out for yourself here, you’ll hand over your email address for a free one day pass.

Leave a comment and share your thoughts on Ongo. Is there a space or even a need for it?