RSS Xpress is another desktop rss reader that does not come with the functionality of the latest version of FeedDemon but provides users with an optimized interface that looks like those of desktop email clients. Users can import their feed lists from other applications right into the RSS reader which is available as a portable version as well.

The feeds are displayed in the left sidebar of the application. They can be grouped in folders or listed as single feeds. The top pane of the main window contains the feed titles and other information while the lower pane displays the feed message. Some feeds are not displayed fully which is rather strange considering that they are displayed with their full text in other feed readers. It comes with filtering and notification options but stays pretty basic otherwise.

The main benefits of RSS Xpress are that it is available as a portable software program and that it is easy to use without all the advanced features offered by other feed readers. It does however require the Microsoft .net Framework 2.0 which is included in Windows Vista and later and should be installed on most Windows XP systems as well. Users who like advanced features might want to take a look at the latest FeedDemon beta version or Google Reader.

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FeedStitch offers multiple third-party ways of logging into the service including using Twitter, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Open ID and AOL. Once logged in it is possible to paste RSS feed urls into the form to add them into groups. Groups are made up of multiple RSS news feeds and other news sources and provide access to a single RSS news feed url or Json item.

The other news sources that can be added in addition to news feeds are Twitter (either by username or Twitter search), Flickr, Delicious, Github and Tumblr. A new url is created for each new group that gets created by the user. Each group can be accessed directly in the web browser or in a feed reader. It is also possible to customize the url in the form http://feedstitch.com/groupname/.

FeedStitch is a nice service for users who want to quickly combine multiple RSS feeds into one especially if they have an account at one of the services that can be used to log into FeedStitch.

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Usage is pretty simple. The basic rule is to simply append /feed/ to the url to access the RSS feed of the category, tag or author. To give you an example. Jack started posting about Linux today at Ghacks. If you wanted to subscribe to his Linux articles you could do it the following ways:

Subscribe to the Linux category, tag or the author.

This method is not unique to Ghacks. It is the native way how Wordpress handles feeds. You can use it on any standalone Wordpress blog as long as they are not catching all feed requests and sending them to a feed processor like Feedburner. (I disabled the feed fetcher plugin to make the custom feeds work)

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One prime example where keyword filtering can be useful is a website that several authors write for. If you are only interested in one author you could use the author’s name as the keyword so that only the author’s stories land in your RSS reader.

Notify.me has been mentioned on nearly every tech blog out there in the past weeks. It is basically a keyword filtering service that monitors RSS news feeds and informs the user of posts that match the selected keywords.

It is a bit different from services like Yahoo Pipes because it can send those notifications only to an email client, cell phone or instant messenger. The process can be divided into the following steps:

• Configuring a destination (cell phone, email, instant messenger)
• Adding a source
• Configuring keyword filters

It is not really complicated but the user needs to know about RSS feeds. The keyword filter can be set to either include or exclude posts that match keywords. Setting up no keyword filters sends all new items to the selected destination. An include keyword filter will only send the items containing the keyword while an exclude keyword will send all except those that are excluded.

The keyword filtering is still a bit rudimentary. There is no option to filter parameters like title, tags or authors which is definitely a much needed option.

Another thing that is missing is the ability to configure multiple destinations of the same type. Only one account of each type can be configured. This basically means that it is not possible to setup multiple email addresses in one account.

I cannot really see the need for such a service right now. What’s your take on this?

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A userscript compatible browser is needed for the new interface theme to work. Long time users of Google Reader will need a few minutes before they grow accustomed to the changes. Many would call them drastic and some might say that it is to minimalistic.

At its ore lies a CSS file that can be used to customize the display further to suit individual needs. The main advantage of this userscript is that it puts the focus on the feed items by removing unnecessary buttons and items in Google Reader.

Helvetireader is a project in development. Interested users can follow the development process on the project’s homepage or on Twitter.

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A user of Feedrinse may add up to 500 feeds to the service and group those feeds in different channels. He can do so by adding them manually in a web form or importing a opml file that contains a list of feeds. The filters can then be configured for feeds individually or for every channel.

The filter options can be used to allow or disallow feed items that do or do not contain specified posts, titles, bodies, tags or authors with a certain string. It could for instance be set to only include feed items that have been written by a specific author or that have been tagged with a certain keyword.

A new RSS feed link will be created that contains only those items that have passed the filter. Users who need more options to filter and customize feeds should take a look at Yahoo Pipes instead.

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These news feeds can then be subscribed to in any news reader so that the user can read incoming emails in his news reader instead of his email client. Why would someone want to do that? The only practical issue that came to mind was to publish the news feed on a website so that multiple users would have access to the email. It could also be interesting for situations where multiple users need read access to email accounts but that’s configurable in mail clients as well.

There is not really a reason to use this service independently, at least none that we could think of while reviewing it. Many users will (rightfully) dislike the fact that they have to enter the data of their email account on the website to enable the service. Another aspect is that the latest news entry on the company’s blog dates back to last year. The project feels abandoned.

Can you think of another reason why someone would want to forward email to RSS?

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RSS FWD (discovered at Donation Coder) is a service that can turn RSS news into emails. The service provides an easy to use interface. It works by entering the main url of the website in the form on the main page which is convenient for many users who do not like to search for the RSS news link on a website or do not know what RSS actually is.

The service will automatically discover the RSS news feed – if there is any – and display a preview of the latest items. The user has to sign up afterwards by providing an email address and password which will be used to login to the service and manage the subscriptions.

The interval of the updates can be selected during the subscription. It is possible to select real-time, daily or weekly updates in the inbox. Users with many RSS news feeds can import an opml file so that all feeds contained within will be automatically added to it.

Webmasters can make use of small pieces of code they can place on their websites to allow email subscriptions. Each email send out will contain an unsubscribe link which can be accessed to unsubscribe from the website. It is also possible to manage subscriptions directly on the RSS FWD website.

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It is an interesting concept in my opinion. Several filters are offered. Users can filter languages, display popular, upcoming or recent stories and change the layout of the stories that are shown. All items are related to technology but there are unfortunately no filters to further diversify the results.

What I really like is the option to show the full story on Readburner directly without having to visit another website first but I guess it’s not different from full feeds that are displayed in RSS readers.

The developer promises to work on the project in the coming weeks to add more data and functions to it. Will be interesting to see how this project evolves.

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