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Thursday 08 January 2009

The N.W.R.A

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great news for RSS readers

GreatNews, in fact. I just discovered this RSS reader which is a Windows desktop RSS reader but can synchronise with Bloglines for Web based access.

GreatNews is fast, has a clean logical interface, with an integrated browser, highly configurable (2 or 3 pane display), supports newspaper style for reading groups, drag'n'drop for organising folders, auto feed discovery and perhaps most importantly, displays as much content as possible (no ads), enabling you to quickly focus on what is of interest.

You can't display the feeds into your preferred order but there is a 'Most Visited' view which amounts to the same thing.

So, I have exported all my feeds from Newsgator and will be trying out GreatNews as my RSS reader now.

bitten by Newsgator

I wanted to export my Newsgator feeds into OPML and experiment with SearchFox, who kindly gave me an account, to take part in the beta program.

Only one slight problem, Newsgator doesn't support OPML export. Strange but true.

another RSS reader for consideration

I am using the Newsgator Online RSS reader and simply want to order my most important, must-read blogs (i.e mine) at the top. It doesn't seem like an unreasonable requirement. From a cursory glance at the documentation, it is not immediately clear if I can even do this in Newsgator. This is a little irritating as I now have to do some work to scroll down to 'Oracle' or rename the folder as 'AAAOracle'. And, yes, you're right, I am very lazy.

Then I stumbled across a blog article on SearchFox which is another Web based RSS reader (like Newsgator) but with an interesting personalisation and recommendation engine which automatically bubbles your favourite, most frequently read articles and blogs to the top of your reading list.

This sounds interesting. It is a pity that SearchFox is another Web 2.0 application that is in beta and currently open to a selected few who must apply for an account. Still, I sent them a polite email citing my recent review and asked for access to evaluate their product. I even used a Gmail address to prove my Web 2.0 credentials. I sent the email yesterday and am now polling my Google Inbox every ten seconds.

I stumbled across SearchFox on a arbitrary blog search on feedster about RSS and it struck me that, in the past, I would use Google (Web, Groups), TuCows, SourceForge, Freshmeat to find OpenSource, free RSS readers.

However most of these sources are relatively out of date and had failed to unearth SearchFox when I was recently looking for RSS readers. The fast moving blogosphere is much better suited to finding these sort of hip, new Web 2.0 applications.

Xmas present for bloglines users

Those nice people at bloglines have responded to my recent review of RSS readers and my scathing comments about the sluggish performance.

We feel your pain

Or maybe it is just coincidence.

RSS feeds from the BBC

I subscribe to an RSS feed from the BBC about Manchester United. This feed contains match reports, previews and general news about Manchester United. However, the BBC has an infuriating habit of throwing in content from the Message Boards which are a forum for 'fans'. Think 5 Live's 606 radio phone-in but worse. Worse, this article appears in the feed as a new article on 15 December. This is a thread from the '606 message boards - Liverpool'. Newsgator displays the title as 'If Liverpool don't give Chelsea a run for their money this season, then we certainly will soon - DG' and the Web page thread is named 'well played today' referring to Liverpool versus Chelsea. Why ? What possible relevance does this content have to MUFC ?