Fav.or.it is a new kind of RSS aggregator, somewhere in between a pre-set collection of feeds like Alltop and a full-on Google Reader-style service. It had been in closed beta, but now's it's opening to everyone. It includes a set of 2000 of the most popular and interesting feeds, and provides recommended stories based on what you're reading, how long you spend on it, and how you rate it. Basically, Fav.or.it tries to pay attention to what you're paying attention to. Also, as we reported earlier, your comments show up in Fav.or.it and on the original story.
It's no reason to abandon Google Reader, but if you're not already reading RSS feeds, this is a good introduction to managing them. With it's Top-Story-focused, categorized startpage, it reminds us more of Google News than Google Reader in some ways. Whether Fav.or.it gets a good user base is going to be depend on how happy people are with its recommendation algorithm. Even if you just think of it as site that exposes newbies to a couple thousand top blogs, it's doing a useful service for the Internet.
Snackr is an Adobe AIR-based RSS ticker that pulls random headlines from your RSS feeds and scrolls them along the bottom or the side of your screen, letting you click through to read anything that looks interesting. It's not a replacement for your regular RSS reader, but it makes a great supplement. Snackr's well worth checking out if you're an information addict who has to have the fire hydrant open at all times.
Because it's an AIR app, Snackr is cross-platform and sports a look that won't feel out of place on your OS. Ticker speed and position on screen are adjustable, and you can force the ticker on top of your other windows if it suits you. Snackr supports OPML files, so it's very easy to populate with the feeds of your choice. It also minimizes to a tiny tab when you want to put it away for a while, and shows a preview of each story you click on, instead of going directly to your browser. Snackr doesn't interrupt what you're doing unless you want it to.
All in all, this is one of the most useful, best-designed AIR apps we've seen yet. It's essential for heavy RSS users, or anyone who wants to stay on top of breaking news. Don't ditch your full-featured feed reader, by any means, but do supplement it with Snackr if you're looking for a faster, more dynamic way to consume information.
Several readers have written in to request that we contact Streamy for our our Invite-a-Palooza series. Well, folks, today's your day. There seems to be a groundswell of attention forming around this new Web site that wants to give us a new way to tackle our overload of RSS feeds, social networks, instant messengers and bookmarks.
Since we last wrote about Streamy, the developers have thrown in some new features that make it look even cooler than the first time we looked. Now users can compile all their comments, notes, and saved stories into a single stream. They've also applied the same idea to the Friends page, which keeps track of your social networks.
Intrigued? Want to check it out? Just be one of the first 25 people to leave us a note in the comment section (be sure to activate it if you get an email confirmation). Winners will receive their invitations early next week after Streamy's new system upgrade is complete.
UPDATE: We've given away all 25 invitations for today's featured site but check back tomorrow to see who's up next!
Netvibes announced this week the launch of Netvibes Universe. Netvibes Universe allows users to create personalized home pages with widgets they select and now publish them for public use. Available widgets include things like RSS feeds, weather reports, Flikr Image searches, YouTube video searches and more. Publishers now also have the ability to add their own CSS and HTML to pages as well. Users can add public pages, or portions of public pages to their own page and stay updated on changes.
Personalized Universe's have already been set-up for a number of popular musical artists such as Moby, Ben Harper, 50 cent, and Mandy Moore as well news sites such as Forbes, Time, and Sports Illustrated.
CBS has launched four Netvibes Universes: CBS News, ShowBuzz, CSTV, and Sportslines which give users instant access to CBS video and news feed elements that they can then customize to fit their personal needs.
Alien6 recently released a new RSS reader for Windows Mobile, and it looks like a great little news reader for people who prefer the look and feel of a newspaper to RSS feeds. But here at DownloadSquad, we're RSS junkies, and it's hard to beat a good RSS reader for sifting through piles of information every day.
And lucky for you, while there are some great commercial feed readers for Windows Mobile, including Alien's A6 Times and Illium Software's NewBreak, there are a number of free programs that perform almost as well.
Synapse is an online life manager. As of yet, there is no information as to whether this is a free web based application or not. Synapse is working up to their October 2006 release date, and it looks like it has some nice potential. The Synapse website lists off the main features that it will help users to manage their lives with. These include:
People - personal contact manager
Calendar - calendar and appointment tracker
Broadcast - send out email blasts to contact lists
Lists - daily to-do's
Ledger - financial tracker
Feeds - RSS feed reader
Favorites - bookmark list that is accessible from anywhere
Tags - easily find your favorite items and feeds
I personally can't wait to check out the release of Synapse. All of your most important daily items bundled together in one powerful tool.
I have tried a ton of Pocket PC RSS readers, and the one that I keep coming back to is called Egress, by Garish Kernels. I don't know, but get the impression that Garish Kernels is a one man show, given the very slow updates to the software, and the somewhat lackluster response times to support requests. I'm also somewhat annoyed that a persistent bug still exists in it (at least when using it on my Dell Axim X50v) where if I leave the program running, it will prevent my Pocket PC from going into sleep mode, and eventually run my battery out.
With all of that negativity, how can I possibly recommend Egress? Simple. It's by far the best thought-out user interface for reading RSS feeds on the go that I've seen so far. It renders quickly and well on both high-resolution and regular-resolution Pocket PCs, which not all Pocket PC RSS readers can claim, and it also caches images contained in posts so that reading offline delivers the same experience as online - very few Pocket PC RSS readers boast this feature. It also contains rudimentary synchronization with both Bloglines and NewsGator, although in practice I've found it not worth the trouble to bother with this feature. Also, there are quite a few display settings under options to allow you to make Egress pleasing to the eye; don't judge it based on this screenshot.
By far the biggest advantage I've found using Egress over other RSS readers is that Egress is optimized to allow you to go from story to story, and feed to feed using only the direction pad. This means you can put the stylus away and read continuously without any tapping. It's truly amazing how almost none of the other RSS readers I've tried have this feature.
NewsGator recently debuted their new Pocket PC reader, called NewsGator Mobile (BETA). Although I had high hopes for a Pocket PC reader that would fully synchronize with an online or desktop RSS experience, I was very disappointed with this release. It renders slowly, looks terrible on a full-VGA Pocket PC, requires screen taps for navigation, and does not cache images. In fact, Egress is the Pocket PC RSS reader that NewsGator should have purchased to build their branded version on. It's a shame that they didn't.
Currently Egress offers a 30 day trial, and a license with lifetime upgrades costs $12.
I've had an
invitation to FeedLounge in my Inbox since July, and now I'm never going to get to
use it. FeedLounge is yet another web-based feed reader service, but has gotten pretty stellar reviews, and has just
opened up to the public. It has the requisite AJAXy interface ("you may quickly forget that you’re using a
web application"), a full set of keyboard shortcuts, three different views (Outlook-style, three-column, or river
of news), color-coded tagging and flagging, OPML import and export, 401 authentication, and more. One thing you'll find
in FeedLounge that you won't in most other services, though, is a price tag: FeedLounge costs $5/month or $50/year. You
can try a three-hour demo, but they only let 50 people on at a time, and the waiting list is pretty long.
Several readers have written in to request that we contact 
Netvibes
Alien6 recently released a 
I have tried a ton of Pocket PC RSS readers, and the one that I keep coming back to is called 
