alphonsolabs.com

Apple removed the Pulse News Reader from the App Store after the New York Times Company objected to it. It was later reinstated. See our post on the matter.

Much has been made of the opportunity presented by Apple’s iPad to big media companies. But surprisingly, it is a $3.99 application created by two Stanford graduate students that is now the top paid application in the entire iPad section of the App Store.

The application, Pulse News Reader, was developed by Akshay Kothari, 23, and Ankit Gupta, 22, a pair of Indian-born graduate students at Stanford University’s Institute of Design.

The two developed the service in the Launch Pad class, which asks budding entrepreneurs to develop and introduce a product in just 10 weeks. Mr. Kothari said the project was inspired by “a personal frustration at the whole news reading experience” on mobile devices.

Pulse is a stylish and easy-to-use news aggregator. Users select which news sources to follow and the latest articles are presented in a grid of texts and photos. Users can finger-swipe back and forth across various articles from a single news source, or up and down through up to 20 news sources.

The app allows users to see text-only versions of articles, which are basically cleaned-up versions of a news site’s RSS feeds, or to see the full articles as they are presented on the Web. It also lets people easily share articles through Twitter and Facebook – bypassing the individual sharing tools presented by each news site.

The students estimate that about 15,000 people have downloaded their app, which translates into more than $40,000 in revenue, taking into account Apple’s 30 percent cut.

The pair have created a company, Alphonso Labs, and are now working on versions of the app for other devices, as well as talking to potential investors.

News organizations still puzzling over their iPad strategies can perhaps derive some hope from Pulse’s success — or at least its price tag.

“You absolutely do not have to give away something great for free,” said Michael Dearing, a former eBay executive who is a teacher of the Launch Pad class. “If you build something great, people will pay you for it.”