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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The search results window is also not the usual top x results. Feedmil (via Make Use Of) provides access to filters, classifications and more sliders. The filters and sliders can be used to finetune the results list while the classifications give an excellent overview of post frequencies, popularity, authority and activity of each of the listed blogs.

The filters can be used to filter by feed type or language and to sort order. Several different feed types can be selected including blog feeds, podcasts, videocasts and microblog feeds. Languages should be self explanatory while the sort order can be changed from Fedmil rank to quality or relevance instead.

The sliders on the right side make it possible to finetune the topic significance to lay more or less weight on specific related terms. Each blog that is listed in the search results is also described by a list of tags.

The idea is definitely interesting. The main problem currently is that the service does not offer a large index of blogs in its database. Site owners can submit their blogs to the search engine to have it included in the search.

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FeedDemon 3 Beta 1 comes with several interesting new features and also one drawback which will be addressed later on. The short setup wizard will be started even if an older FeedDemon version is installed on the computer system. This might confuse users as it could seem that all feeds that have been added to that version have been lost during the upgrade. This is however not the case. The old feeds will be integrated into the new version. This takes some time as the feed items are imported and the databases checked.

The first thing that springs to mind is the new interface that looks friendly to the eye. The RSS feeds are still listed in the left sidebar and the contents in the main right window. A new addition is a small advertising window at the bottom left of the screen. That’s the drawback that I mentioned earlier on in the article. The advertisement is not really that obtrusive but could irritate or annoy some of the users.

A lot of new features have been added to this version of FeedDemon including tagging support for items which can be synchronized with Newsgator and displayed in various ways including a tag cloud at the Subscriptions Homepage. Multiple new features have been added for Twitter users like subscribing to Twitter feeds with avatar images, Twitter timelines, balloon popups for short urls that display the redirected page, replying to Twitter posts directly, automatic hyperlinking of information in Twitter feeds, the ability to send links to Twitter and even a Twitter search engine.

That’s a lot of additions for Twitter users but that’s only a tiny fraction of all the new features of FeedDemon. Users can now import Google Reader subscriptions directly but still no Google Reader synchronization. This feature is planned and it might be released in upcoming versions of FeedDemon 3.

Performance has been improved quite a bit especially when searching subscriptions or browsing popular topics. There are two interesting – and new – export options available. The first will export feeds in newspaper format into an external html document. Excellent for sending someone else a compilation of interesting feeds in that format. The second is to export the top feeds only.

Interested users can take a look at the full changelog of FeedDemon 3 Beta 1 here. This is also the location from where the RSS reader can be downloaded to the local computer system.

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GreatNews is another desktop rss reader that comes with all the features one would expect from a rss reader. It can import opml feeds which is a standard XML format that contains feed information. Basically any feed reader can export and import opml files. The first thing that observant users will notice is the low resource usage. A direct comparison between FeedDemon and GreatNews revealed that GreatNews was using between 10-20 Megabytes of computer memory less than FeedDemon did. (GreatNews uses about 3 Megabytes when minimized while FeedDemon uses more than 7 MB)

Resource usage is not everything on the other hand. Updating feeds in the rss reader seemed to be a bit faster than it was in FeedDemon as well. This might be caused by a subroutine of the desktop rss reader that automatically detects dead or feeds that have not been updated in a very long time giving the user the option to remove those feeds from the rss software. FeedDemon has a similar option as it displays feeds that are no longer working or have not been updated in a specific time as well. This is a manual process however.

One of the more interesting features of GreatNews is the so called News Watches. This makes it possible to make the desktop rss reader search for keywords automatically in previously defined rss feeds. It is for example possible to search for the name “Bill Gates” in all subscribed rss news feeds, or for the term Linux only in the Ghacks feed. This is an excellent way to find keyword related news articles faster than usual.

Other features are:

• Various styles can be selected, custom ones created. This includes styles that do not display images, flash or other multimedia contents.
• Offline reading.
• Saving news articles locally.
• Article labels to access articles faster.
• Full page reading
• Statistics
• Track Comments

Are there any disadvantages? The only thing that’s not looking bright is support for the desktop rss reader. While the software developer is still active on the website he does not seem to have plans to update the software further except for a few necessary bug fixes. This is not a problem right now as everything in the news reader is working as intended and without complications. GreatNews as of now is an excellent alternative to FeedDemon.

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So how does Folder RSS work? A click on folder-rss.exe will explain the command line basics. It basically involves launching the same executable with a series of parameters that define what to watch and how to watch it. The basic command is folder-rss.exe [parameters] [folder to watch] [output file path]. The command folder-rss.exe c:\downloads c:\downloads.xml would create an RSS feed containing the latest changes to the c:\downloads directory. The RSS feed would be accessible by loading downloads.xml (or file://localhost/C:\download.xml)

Folder RSS comes with a set of optional parameters that can be used as filters. It is possible to to configure settings to monitor only files, folders or a specific file extension. It can also be used to change the maximum age of the files, the maximum amount of files that get displayed and to include Read only, Hidden or System files.

The RSS feed is not automatically updating itself. It has to be executed to update it. This can be done with a simple batch script that the user clicks on or that gets added to a task scheduler.

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Reminder Feed is one of the few services that does not ask the user to register an account before allowing them to use the service. Everything can be done without account registration. The main page of the reminder service displays the form that can be used to create a new reminder.

The only mandatory fields are the title, the start date and the description. Optional fields are the end date, a link and a password. Reminders will be send out daily until the end date is reached if it was specified.

The reminders can be edited at anytime by anyone if no password was specified or by the creator if a password was specified. This could be used to change the message and title to something else.

The service has not been updated in three years but it is still working as intended.

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FeedDemon was a RSS news reader that many people seemed to recommend. Rarst was one of them and he made me take a closer look at the software. The RSS news feeds were exported to OPML format in Newzie so that I could import them in the reader if OPML import was supported.

FeedDemon is the Windows software of the Newsgator family of products. There are also clients for Macs, mobile devices and even an online reader (that is synced with the local feed reader) for those who want to use both an offline and online product.

It was possible to import the opml feed into FeedDemon. The program began to update the feeds immediately. The first thing that users will notice is the speed of the program. It is very responsive and does not produce slowdowns even when updating feeds.

Feeds can be sorted and displayed in numerous ways. It is for example possible to display only the titles of the latest feeds, or to display summaries or full posts if that is desired. Next to each title are information about the data and site that published the news and options to mark it read, flag or delete it, to send it to someone, add it to clippings or see who is linking to the article.

A click on the title can open the url in the default browser. This has to be changed in the options as the default display mode is in FeedDemon itself. Keyboard shortcuts such as [CTRK M] which marks all posts on the active page read speed up the work further.

All elements of the feed reader have been streamlined to be fast and efficient. Here are just a few examples of features that make FeedDemon an excellent feed reader:

• Caching: Download contents for offline reading
• Panic Button: The Panic button can be used to mark older feeds as read if you are really lagging behind.
• Reports: Will display feeds with errors, most popular feeds, popular topics (by analysing similar topics in the subscriptions or by using the online account), feeds that have not been updated for a while.

FeedDemon is the most responsive feed reader that I have worked with (and I had my share of offline and online RSS readers). It is fast, offers options to sort the feeds after my liking and integrates nicely with the default web browser.

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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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I usually fired up Google Reader and kept it open all the time to read new RSS feeds. The problem with that approach was that this meant that I was always logged into my Google account. The Google account was used for other Google services as well. Having read about Gmail and Google vulnerabilities before I decided that it would be best to move from Google Reader to another client to prevent that the account data would fall into the wrong hands. Yes, the likelihood was not very high but the chance existed.

Newzie was one of the first RSS readers that I evaluated and I immediately liked it. It was easy to import the opml file from Google Reader into Newzie so that all of the subscribed feeds would be available in the new RSS reader as well.

The default display mode of this RSS reader is to sort feeds by the time they were last updated with the most recently updated feeds at the top of the list. This view can be changed to a folder mode that simply lists all feeds alphabetically in their folders. The order of the feeds can be changed and the visibility of the complete menu can be toggled to increase screen size for the actual news items.

The RSS feeds are displayed in their own browser-like interface. A click on a title or link will load that link in a new tab in the Newzie interface. This is actually one of my complaints that I have with the RSS reader. I would have preferred that links would open in the default browser instead but I guess many users will think that reading them right in the RSS reader might be the more comfortable way. There is actually an option to load the link externally but it is hidden in a submenu.

The main interface provides access to three view modes:

Report View: Will only display new feed items filling out the complete interface
List View: Will divide the main interface into an upper panel that is displaying the RSS items and a lower panel that is displaying the contents of the active item.
List View 2: Like the first Live View only that the contents are divided vertically and that the RSS items are sorted by date

All posts can be marked read, deleted, flagged or copied / moved.

One interesting feature of Newzie is the ability to look at the news items of a particular feed by hovering the mouse over the feed. This makes it possible to quickly look at new items that have been posted without having to actually load the feed.

New items can be filtered right from the main interface using so called on-the-fly filtering. Commands like title=name would list all posts with name being part of their titles. Other filters make it possible to view only posts that have been updated before, at or after a certain period in time, posts that have been posted in a specific folder or posts that have a certain priority associated with them.

There is also a second interesting option which makes it possible to create so called virtual channels which apply word filters to RSS feeds. It would be possible to create a virtual channel that would contain all posts that would contain “portable software” in the body. It is currently only possible to apply those filters to the title, body or all of the news item. These filters can be combined by using AND or OR relations. It would be nice to see support for other information like author or tags added to the filter in the future.

Newzie offers another interesting related feature. It can monitor websites even if they do not offer an RSS feed. It can monitor any website for any kind of changes or specific changes. Specific changes can be words, text segments, links or images. Those monitored websites would then be added to the same menu containing the RSS feeds.

Other features Newzie is offering:

• Statistics
• Newsticker
• Monitoring IE favorites
• Feed priorities

A few more options to customize the RSS reader would be helpful. This would include the option to load links in the default web browser by default, an option to always display only the titles of the items in the overview and the ability to filter additional variables like author or tags.

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One of the popular reasons to connect to the Internet is to catch up on the latest news. This can be done by browsing to websites and reading the news there or by installing an RSS News Feed reader and use its interface to read the news. The advantage of the latter method is the concentration of news in one application, the notifications of new messages and reduced bandwidth costs.

The iRSS mobile phone RSS News Feeds reader is just one application that can be used to read rss news feeds on a mobile device. One advantage of it is the compatibility with lots of different devices like smartphones, mobile phones and PDAs.

The news reader can store up to five feed groups and one hundred RSS News Feeds which should be sufficient for mobile usage. It supports rss, xml, atom and rdf feeds and is compatible with RSS 0.91, 1.0 and 2.0 feeds. It also comes packed with a few popular feeds like Yahoo Technology News or Youtube Recently Added Video News.

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The second option is to use a desktop client to view the feeds and Mindity is the client that I’m reviewing right now. Feeds can be added by pasting a url of a feed into the interface or importing a opml file that most online and offline applications can create. I did import my opml file from Netvibes into Mindity.

Before I was able to do that I had to create an account and verify the email that I specified during setup. The import of 160 RSS feeds took several minutes and nothing was displayed after finishing the operation. I was about to give up when Mindity began updating the feeds and added roughly 1600 news items in a matter of seconds.

That was overkill at that time. New feeds after that initial download are announced with little overlay bars in the right lower corner of your system, the name of the website and the title of the article are listed there. A click on that story or in the feed reader opens an excerpt of the article.

A right-click on any item in the list opens several options like reading the full article, editing tags, marking the story read, recommending the story, feed properties and information who reads that feed (only Mindity users).

If you click on Read Story a new window opens displaying the full story on your desktop (or in your browse if you change the option). Until now Mindity was just another desktop feed reader but it does have some interesting social features.

Users can vote for stories and the global vote count of a story is displayed in Mindity. In addition those stories are displayed on the Mindity website. Users can get recommendations which are directly taken from other voters of the article that you are currently reading.

It is furthermore possible to view a list of subscribed feeds of users who voted for an article and several other means of finding new feeds that are probably interesting for you. You can also add friends to your reader which makes it easy to share feeds and news using Mindity.

What I like about it is that you are notified of updates in real time more or less while I only see new stories using Netvibes when I visit the homepage or refresh a tab that I have created. I probably will remove some of the feeds that I do not read daily from Mindity again to decrease the amount of updated feeds displayed per hour.

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Newsgator, the company that developed the three applications, did not only announce that they would be free from now on but released new versions of their products at the same time. Users with a Newsgator account can use this account to synchronize their feed on several computers and devices.

I suggest you take a look at the individual websites for FeedDemon (Windows), NetNewsWire (Mac) and NewsGator Go (Mobile Devices) to read about the features and download the software if you like what you see. I will try out FeedDemon on my Windows XP system. I already spotted two nice features. The first is to prepare Feeds to be read offline and the second to find out my popular feeds and what other NewsGator users think is popular.

You can import various formats into FeedDemon including Opml which can be generated by many online and offline RSS readers including Netvibes and Google Reader.

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The name of this new service is Feed Crier and I’m writing about it mainly because it delivers feeds to different Instant Messengers. Feed Crier supports AIM, MSN and Jabber / Google Talk and uses the same technology that Anothr is using. This means they run bots that are added to your Instant Messengers contact list who then post new RSS Feed items in a chat window.

Feed Crier requires no signup at all. Just enter your screename, the Instant Messenger that you are using and the url of the feed that you want to receive updates from. The Feed Crier website does not contain lots of information about bot interaction, the only two commands that I was able to find are list which lists all subscribed feeds and unsubscribe url which unsubscribes the feed specified.

What I like is that only the url of the updated news item is delivered which makes it easier to keep an overview.

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It works by adding a bot as a contact in Skype. (I suppose it works the same way in MSN and Google Talk). Once the bot has been accepted as a contact it will add feed updates right into a private chat window displaying the usual summary and a link to the article on the original website.

Feeds can be added using the feed url of the feed or by exploring already existing feeds that other users have subscribed to. Feed delivery options can be modified to limit the amount of updated feeds at a time, set a delivery timeframe (great for work / sparetime), to send only the title, title and summary.

Lots of options at hand which makes Inezha, or how they call themselves Anothr, a valuable unique service that should appeal to many users. Instead of using the website interface users can communicate with the bot directly. Subscribing to feeds is possible by issuing the command “+ feed url” for instance.

The website was rather slow when I tested the service but since it is not necessary to use it at all after setting up an account and adding the bots to your Instant Messenger or Skype it is not a huge problem.

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Short time ago I found a nice online RSS aggregator called Rootly. Important thing is that you can customize your account very well. You can use their feed presets or even better insert your own feed addresses and create unique tabs. Rootly then collects all the news for you and displays them in a very clean and well styled interface.

You can choose in which tab your news will appear and the order of tabs too. I appreciate that this service mixes all news together and displays them on one page instead of dividing the feeds according to their source. I hope that in the future they’ll add at least one more option – the possibility to choose how many news you want to display on a single page.

And the best thing at the end – Rootly supports OpenID (read previous article for more info on that). Actually, when I found the service few weeks ago, I had some serious problems with logging in using OpenID among other minor troubles but at this time it looks like everything works fine already.

Rootly is not really an alternative if you are already using Netvibes for instance as your news aggregator. I’m basically using it at work because Netvibes has been banned there while Rootly has not. The interface of Rootly is not that intuitive and it takes a step longer to perform actions. Adding feeds for instance has to be done on a separate page while you can add them on the fly so to speak in Netvibes.

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