From more than 500,000 apps available for downloading in the Apple App Store, there are less than 100 that sit in Apple's App Store Essentials HALL OF FAME. Part of that list is Angry Birds, Facebook, Google Earth, and Pulse News.

Endorsed by the late Steve Jobs as a "wonderful RSS reader," Alphonso Labs Inc.'s Pulse News, according to tech writer Brad Stone, is a "stylish and easy-to-use news aggregator."

Pulse takes users' favorite news sites and transforms them into a colorful and interactive mosaic. Swipe up and down to see headlines from various sources, and swipe right and left to browse stories from a particular source. Tap on the article to see a clean and elegant view of the news story. Save stories for reading later across all platforms or sync them with Instaper, Read it Later and Evernote. Sharing a story via Facebook, Twitter and email is as easy as two taps. Users can add up to 60 news sources. Pulse has an "offline sync," loading news stories you read even when there's no Internet connection. Check the Web site for answers to frequently asked questions .

Although the app has received mostly accolades, common complaints about Pulse is that it doesn't have a "newspaper" layout like Currents; it relies too much on images; articles need to be flagged or read individually in order to read them when offline; and Byline and other RSS readers may be more suitable for more serious news consumption.

Pulse previously sat atop iTunes' list of paid apps, with Alphonso Labs charging the RSS readers US$3.99 to download the app. Designed by Ankit Gupta and Akshay Kothari -- students at Stanford's Institute of design -- Pulse eventually became a free app after the developer obtained US$9 million of funding.

An Apple Design Award Winner of 2011, Pulse is available for Android and Apple mobile devices via the Android Market and the Apple App Store. A version for Windows Phone is also available for download.

Users of Pulse have been calling for a desktop version of Pulse. A Pulse Team member said in a post last year that the firm is focused on the iPad, iPhone and platforms that that time but said that a PC version is "in our development queue and we will exmine it further in the future."

Pulse Community manager Karen Nga later said in a post in October, "We're a small team... Pulse for PC is on the table."

Windows, Mac or Linux PC users who want a more effective alternative to Google News or the Chrome-based Web app Good Noows for their may have to wait longer.

A recent post by Pulse staff says that the development team is releasing shortly a Google+ integration and syncing for the Kindle Fire, an Amazon tablet that's quickly emerging as second to the iPad in the tablet market.