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Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Productivity, Freeware

Newzie RSS reader will monitor pages without RSS feeds

Newzie
It's been a few years since we last checked in on RSS reader Newzie. And it turns out the developers weren't sitting on their behinds for the past three years. Because the latest version of this free RSS reader for Windows is even cooler.

First up, Newzie has all the same basic features we loved, including color coded indicators that let you know at a glance how new an item is. But it also has one awesome new feature: the ability to monitor pages without RSS feeds. Just click the add button, select webpage, and then decide what kind of changes you want to monitor. You can get alerts when a certain keyword pops up on a page, when new images are uploaded, or when anything at all changes.

You can also create several different types of custom channels. For example, if you subscribe to several similar RSS feeds that don't publish posts very often, you can combine them into a single "bulk" feed. Or you can create a "word watchdog" feed that monitors all of your feeds for certain keywords and creates a single feed displaying articles from any other feeds that mention that keyword.

[via gHacks]

Filed under: Internet, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Web services, Freeware, Beta, web 2.0

Apprise: RSS reader with Twitter, AIM integration

Apprise
Sure, most RSS readers give you a few button that lets you share interesting stories you're reading with friends, loved ones, and enemies via email or a link blog. But what if you want to broadcast a story to your Twitter friends, or send a story by instant messenger? Apprise is an RSS reader designed to save you the few seconds it would take to copy and paste the link.

Apprise lets you sign into your AOL IM or Twitter account and send a page to your contacts with the click of a button. The reader is built on Adobe AIR, which means it should work on Windows, Linux, or OS X. But it's worth noting that Apprise is available as a public beta at the moment, which means you might experience some bugs. After importing a few hundred feeds, I found that Apprise crashed every few minutes. The Linux version is described as an alpha.

Aside from the Twitter and AIM integration, Apprise has a few other tricks up its sleeve. For example, you can view the full web version of any feed item. You can search your feeds, and you can import and export OPML files. One things you cannot do? Email a story to a friend.

[via Sizlopedia]

Filed under: Internet, Web services, Beta, web 2.0

Sync your Google Reader, Newsgator feeds with RSS Bandit

RSS Bandit
At first glance, the latest version of RSS Bandit looks just like pretty much every other desktop RSS reader for Windows. In other words, it looks like Outlook. But this week saw the released of RSS Bandit 1.7 Alpha with one killer new feature: support for synchronization with your Google Reader or NewsGator feeds.

Here's how it works. You download and install the open source application, and then click the File menu and select Synchronize Feeds. Pick your service and enter your login information and RSS Bandit will import your feed list in a matter of seconds. Any actions you take using the desktop reader should then be reflected at your online feed reader. You can mark items as reader, unread, or shared. And you can subscribe to feeds or remove feeds using RSS Bandit and the changes should apply to your online account.

At least that's the theory. In practice, we're still waiting for our changes to show up in Google Reader. We read a few items, unsubscribed from a feed, and over an hour later Google Reader is showing no sign that it's noticed. This is still Alpha software, so it's possible speedier updates could come at a later date.

RSS Bandit 1.7 Alpha also adds a new podcast download manager.

[via Digital Inspiration]

Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Windows, Blogging, Freeware

YeahReader: RSS reader and blog client in one package

YeahReader
Have you ever found yourself reading an item in your RSS reader, only to think, "wow, I should really write about this on my blog?" Well if the reason you didn't follow through is because you were too lazy to open up a second application or web site, YeahReader can help. It's a feed reader and blog client all wrapped up in one.

Neither the feed reader nor the blog client are anything to write home about. You can import OPML files, arrange feeds by category. And you can post entries to your LiveJournal, Blogger, or any application that uses the MetaWeblog API, including WordPress.

The cool part is the way the feed reader and the blog client work together. In addition to the usual feed reader tools that let you mark items as read or unread, you can also click a "blog this" button to copy feed items into the blog client. Just be careful to use this power for good and not evil. In other words, if you're going to say, write about an article you found on Download Squad, please don't copy the whole article and pass it off as your own work. That's what we like to call copyright infringement. On the other hand, you can use YeahReader to copy quotations and other tidbits to your clipboard while writing up your 100% original content inspired by an item you found on another site.

[via AppScout]

Filed under: Internet, Web services

FeedJournal: Kill a tree and print your RSS feeds like a newspaper

FeedJournal
Ever wish you could print out your RSS feeds and read them like a newspaper? FeedJournal is a new service that lets you convert RSS feeds into printable PDF files. The layout is very newspaper-like. You can choose the number of columns, and whether or not your paper will include images. Web publishers can also add a widget to their web sites that will let visitors view their content as a newspaper-style PDF.

There's something compelling about the newspaper format. For one thing, it can be much faster to read text in short columns because your eyes don't have to move across the width of your computer screen. On the other hand, why the heck would you want to print out a "newspaper" with a list of feeds that are updated far more frequently than your daily paper? Do you know how much paper and ink that could potentially waste?

FeedJournal Developer Jonas Martinsson says that FeedJournal works best for sites with longer articles that you might not want to read while sitting in front of your computer. So he acknowledges that you might not want to print every article from every blog or news site you follow. But most sites that publish long articles don't include the full story in their RSS feeds, and FeedJournal will only grab the portion of the text included in the feed.

Overall, FeedJournal presents a neat trick, but we're not sure we can see ourselves using it very often.

Filed under: Internet, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Blogging, Productivity, Adobe, Freeware

Voyage - an online 3D RSS feed reader

VoyageWhat the world needs is another RSS feed reader, and specifically one that is 3D. Heck, isn't any productivity application made better if you can add the word 3D to it?

Sarcasm aside, Voyage is actually a fairly compelling take on a 3D feed reader. Headlines float nebulously in space in varying layers. The ones closest to you are easiest to read, and they get smaller and fuzzier as they go off into the distance. Clicking on a headline (on any layer) will zoom to that layer and expand a story synopsis.

Stories that are further away are older, a fact that can be seen by watching the horizontal timeline that bisects the screen. Using your keyboard's up and down arrows you can travel into the past, or back towards the present. You can also directly click on a headline that is in a layer beneath the one you are currently looking at; the interface will zoom to the layer and show you the synopsis you've selected.

Voyager defaults to a number of popular RSS feeds, but you are free to delete them and use your own feeds. Unfortunately, there is no bulk upload functionality, so you can only add feeds one at a time.

At this stage Voyage is fun to play with for a few minutes, but doesn't appear to be ready for any RSS feed heavy lifting.

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