Stumbling on Your iPhone with StumbleUpon

There is a huge amount of content on the web. Billions and billions of pages all waiting to be discovered. Millions of pages are being added everyday. The problem is finding the little guys. The guys who don’t have an audience because their voice is swallowed in the sea of information. The guys who turn out pithy one liners and insightful pieces.

Stumbleupon is an online service for discovering content on the web. By hitting “Stumble” you are whisked to photos, videos, comics, articles and more about your favorite topics.

Once you log in, you are taken to the home screen. This is the control panel for all your stumbling. We’ll start at the top and work our way down.

Basic Stumbling

This screen is the meat of the app. In the top navigation bar bar we have our main tools. First, we can go back home. Next, we can give the stumble a thumbs up, or a thumbs down. Finally, we have the Stumble button. This takes us on to another stumble.

The bottom toolbar hosts the buttons for interacting with the stumble. First, we have the standard web view controls. Back, forward, refresh. Next we have the action button. This lets us send the stumble to different social networks and services. There’s the standard stuff, Facebook, Email, Twitter. And then there’s some cooler actions. Instapaper, copy the link to the clipboard, and send to Tumblr. You can turn on and off as many of these services as you want.

The final button reveals an entirely new content view. We can see how many times the page has been viewed by other Stumble Upon users, and what categories it’s in. We can switch into a new view by hitting the “Liked By” button. This shows us a grid of users and their profile pictures. Finally, you can read reviews of the stumble to see what other people thought. You can also write your own with the little pencil button.

Now lets go back to the main control panel and explore some more.

Specific Sites and Content

Just below the “Start Stumbling” button is a quad button complex. Each of these lets us go stumbling for the different content types and sites.

You can choose from:

• Photos This choice takes us only to photos.
• News This stumbles us to various news sites, CNN, BBC, etc.
• Flickr Only flickr pictures.
• Youtube Videos from Youtube

Remember, each of these four choices also factors in your topic choices. This makes them very powerful. I really like using the news category. My topics are all centric around computers. Programming, hardware, and hacking.

Lets head back to the home screen.

Topics

At the bottom of the screen we find a tableview with all of our topics. Touching one of these sends you stumbling through only that topic. At the bottom of the table view is a link for editing your topics. This pulls up a new modal window for adding more topics to your account.

Following and Favorites

When you’re on the home screen, two buttons are added to the toolbar. The first is a little star icon. This takes you to a list of all your favorite finds. Tapping on an individual item takes you to it.

The second button takes you to a list of people you’re following. This produces a stream of your friend’s latest favorites. Again, tapping an item takes you to it in the stumble viewer.

Applause & Criticism

Stumble Upon is great, but there are a few hiccups. The scroll bars can get wonky. The horizontal bar can be present, even if it’s not needed, and it collides with the vertical bar causing issues. Also, and I’m nit picking here, but some of the interfaces can be a bit raw. For example, the stumble detail view.

Unfortunately, the app chooses a web view over a set of native controls many times. This is very frustrating and awkward. For instance, adding more topics to your account. Too many links and check boxes to click. Some of the main features aren’t available in the app either. Like following other users.

The Stumble Upon service is fantastic. I didn’t expect much, just another suggestion network, but I’ve discovered some great stuff. The ability to find interesting pieces based on interests is tremendous. Ever more, Stumble Upon’s library is based on user submissions. The more votes an item has, the more you see it. Stumble Upon is a team of like minded fellows donating their free time to filtering the best content on the web. Seriously, give it a try.

Wrap Up

Overall, Stumble Upon is truly a great app. You can do almost everything you can do in the web interface right in the app. There are a few kinks, but it’s a great way to find things on the topics you are interested in. Things to make you laugh and things to make you think. It’s perfect for your down time. I highly recommend this app.