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Regator provides news aggregation for the more blog-minded
Catching up on the happenings around the blogosphere is a difficult task. Luckily, I happened to stumble upon John Burke's Download Squad piece on the release of Regator [iTunes link]. So, if you'd like to get caught up on the latest news, insights and commentary on Rod Blagojevich around the blogosphere (now that's a tongue twister), Regator could be of assistance. Regator's user-interface is similar to USA Today's iPhone app [iTunes link]. A horizontal menu displays a number of categories -- such as sports, lifestyle, and entertainment -- that are touch-scrollable. Tapping on a category displays its subcategories. For instance, NBA news would fall under the basketball branch of the sports tree. While a breadcrumb trail displays your viewing hierarchy, the browsing menu disappears as you scroll down; this was my only annoyance with the app, although it's a relatively minor one. Regator's stand-out feature is what it calls "trends." Like a tag cloud on a blog, in which bigger clouds are usually associated with more hot topics or issues, trends provides a listing of the latest hot topics around the blogosphere. For instance, a look at sports trends shows Tiger Woods at the top of the list -- which is no surprise given Y.E. Yang's surprising victory over him this past weekend. And Brett Favre's retiring-unretiring-retiring-unretiring-retiring-unretiring puts him near the top of the trends list as well. Regator is available as a free download at the iTunes app store. Domo arigato, Regator!
wowTwitter is a Twitter just for your characters
I'm not sure how well this will scale, but it's an interesting idea: while it's certainly possible to just create a Twitter account for your World of Warcraft characters (so anyone interested can always see what you're up to), the folks behind a new site called wowTwitter have gone a step further, and recreated Twitter's functionality specifically for Azeroth's virtual denizens. It's very barebones right now, but basically, after you register, you can punch in any of your characters, "verify" them by changing something about them in the Armory (like unequipping the piece of gear on your wrist), and then you can send and receive messages on that character, with special channels created for the guild, your realm, and so on. I thought it used Twitter somehow, but it seems completely separate: they're running their own database and servers, so while the two work the same way (there are "@" replies and hashtags), they don't interact at all.Which means they'll also have all of the problems that Twitter has had -- when only a few people are using your database, it runs fine, but if it starts to scale up at all, then you run into lots of "Fail Whale" downtime. And I'm not sure we need a whole other system just for WoW characters (though this one does have the nice bonus of "claiming" your character so it can't get impersonated). At any rate, they're in beta right now, and actually hosting a cash money prize contest for the most characters verified and tweets posted, so a link from us will probably show them how ready their system is. If it's your thing, go forth and wowTweet!
WoW.com's RSS feed issues should be fixed now
A lot of you have noticed some issues with our RSS feed this afternoon (and a little bit last night) and trust me, we know that you know. Our inbox has been absolutely flooded! So to try and help the confusion (and slow the flood of e-mails), here's what happened: Our network (us, Joystiq, Massively, Engadget, etc) was hit with a few database problems over the last 24 hours. It's nothing to worry about, everything is fixed now and should be just fine. In the process of making things fine, our RSS feed was pinged with all sorts of 'new' information, causing the duplicates that a lot of you saw. Seven postings of the latest Around Azeroth? WTF? Yeah, sorry about that. We definitely keep an eye on our own RSS feed to make sure everything is going smoothly, so if it isn't, we'll know about it pretty quickly.Again, we're sorry about the spam to you guys using our RSS feed. To those of you that aren't using our RSS feed... why aren't you using it!? Google Reader is probably one of the most convenient things ever. You can find out about our various feed offerings over here.
Getting WoW status updates on Twitter
You readers are awesome -- yesterday, when I posted the link to the online server alert page (which, yes, wasn't all that new, but lots of us hadn't seen it before), I suggested that it get hooked up to Twitter somehow, and sure enough, Scyntinth and blkmasta55555 wasted no time creating @WoWStatusUS and @WoWStatusEU, respectively (Ed also pointed out the EU status page). Tsaavik created an RSS feed for the alert as well, if you'd rather use that. And those aren't the only way to track Blizzard's realm status on Twitter -- looks like @wowalerts has been in action for a little while, and @pikestaff pointed out to me that @wowrealms tweets about realm downtime as well. And, hey, even your friends here at WoW.com are on Twitter keeping you up to date with the latest at @WoWInsider.So yes, there are tons of ways to track what's happening on your favorite realms via Twitter or any number of updating services.
iPhone app Feeds handily synchronizes with Google Reader
Google Reader is unarguably an extremely popular RSS news reader with a very good mobile interface for the iPhone. But as good as the mobile interface is, for me well done native applications will always beat an in-browser experience. A good iPhone app that synchronizes with Google Reader already exists by the name of Byline ($4.99, iTunes link), but a new one has just been released that is worth your attention.I used Byline for a few months before finally tiring of not having the ability to unsubscribe from feeds that I'd lost interest in. In fact, I switched to NetNewsWire (free, iTunes link) on the Newsgator platform for just that reason. But this new RSS reader has come along with not only the ability to synchronize with Google Reader, but also the ability to manage my Google Reader subscriptions right on my iPhone. This new (to me, anyway) app is called Feeds ($2.99, iTunes link).
Apps that feed your nose for news
News junkies: Every headline is our toke, every cutline is our crack. A true news junkie doesn't stop at just one app, feed, or source; s/he wants them all. Thankfully, your iPhone or iPod touch can be your connection to news from your community and from around the world. While RSS feed readers like Byline and NetNewsWire let you customize feeds tailored to your interests, there are dedicated apps for a wide variety of news outlets and subject areas. If you prefer having everything in one place, a feed reader is tough to beat. However, if you want to avoid drinking from the firehose of information, one of these specific apps might be for you. Next, we'll take a look at a veritable cornucopia of news apps for any interest.
DoYouFeed.com turns RSS into an iPhone web app
Reader Stéphane M sent us news about a website he's put together called DoYouFeed that will apparently turn any RSS feed out there into an iPhone web app -- just punch your RSS/XML feed URL into the site itself, and you'll get a TinyURL back that you can bookmark in your iPhone to read the feed on demand. I'm not sure how scalable it is (there's probably a strain on both Stéphane's site and the RSS feeds themselves that could turn into trouble if too many people use it), but as a tool, it works just fine. There aren't ads on the first page you see of the feed, but there are some ads on the permalink pages of the reader, which again probably isn't too much trouble if you're just using the site for personal use, but on a larger level might ruffle some feathers.Still, until the site goes down (for whatever reason), it's a pretty handy feed-to-web-app converter, and it loads quickly and easily on the iPhone (which is what all good web apps should do). NetNewsWire is free in the App Store, but if you don't want to get bogged down with a bunch of feeds at one time, DoYouFeed.com might be what you're looking for.
NetNewsWire vs. Vienna
var digg_url = 'http://www.tuaw.com/2008/01/10/netnewswire-vs-vienna/'; RSS (or Really Simple Syndication) is becoming an ever more popular way to read online content quickly and without having to visit individual websites. As RSS feeds becomes more popular, so do the RSS readers that allow you to access the feeds. In my opinion, the two best RSS readers on the Mac are NetNewsWire and Vienna. Now that NetNewsWire costs the same as Vienna (i.e. nothing), what better time to take a look at what each has to offer?
WoW Insider and Massively special WoW 24/7 feed
As many of you know, our new sister site Massively is also in the habit of covering this little game we know and love. Some of our readers have expressed concern about missing any potential WoW news across the two sites, and we are nothing if not concerned with what our readers want. So by popular demand we are pleased to offer this special "WoW 24/7" feed that includes all post from WoW Insider as well as all posts in the World of Warcraft category at Massively in one handy RSS feed. That's all WoW, all the time, folks. Enjoy! WoW 24/7 feed This feed is a combination of the WoW Insider feed and all posts from Massively in the World of Warcraft category. If you're looking for a one-stop feed to get all the WoW news we're covering on either site, this is the feed for you. Warning: this feed may contain occasional duplicate news stories that are picked up by both sites -- although they will often contain different levels of analysis. Warning 2: this feed may occasionally miss a feature column that mentions WoW tangentially but is not categorized specifically WoW. You can still check out any of Massively's regular features in one convenient spot. Subscribe to the WoW 24/7 feed We hope you enjoy the custom feed -- let us know if you're experiencing any problems with the feed. If you have a special request for another feed remix, you can also send it our way and we'll do our best to add any popular requests to the special feeds offerings.
An easy way to import NetNewsWire feeds into Safari
Well color me surprised - after trying a few convoluted methods for exporting some of my NetNewsWire feeds in a format that Safari could import (as RSS, not HTML links to real sites), I finally realized that either Brent Simmons and/or Apple have already done some of the heavy lifting. If you toggle Safari's Show All Bookmarks view from the Bookmarks menu (or simply use ??????B), you can simply drag and drop one or multiple selected feeds from NetNewsWire into Safari's bookmark editing window. Unfortunately, you can't drop a Group of feeds from NetNewsWire, but this trick should satisfy most users who need to get some feeds into Apple's browser. When you import feeds into Safari like this, it won't recognize them as true RSS feeds (or begin downloading headlines and displaying unread counts) until you visit them at least once. After that you're all ready to roll with a few (or all?) of your favorite NetNewsWire feeds in Safari.If you use a desktop-based RSS reader other than NetNewsWire, be sure to let us know if this same trick works for your reader.
Receive RSS feeds as SMS messages
TUAW reader digitalintrigue discovered a brilliant little hack to send RSS feed updates as SMS messages. He headed over to RSSfwd.com, subscribed to an RSS feed and sent the results over to his iphone-number@cingularme.com SMS e-mail address. Now when his RSS feeds update, he gets an instant message on his iPhone.If you've got a lot of SMS messages on your iPhone plan, this is a great way to keep up on your most important feeds without having to check your email all the time. If you have limited SMS messages, maybe not so good. Digitalintrigue reports that if the blog post has too many characters for a normal SMS, the iPhone formats the multiple SMS messages into a single large text bubble. The hardest part of the process is actually confirming your subscription. My confirmation email/SMS split across many messages--8 in my case--and the URL was split as well. I had to type it in by hand. Once confirmed, the SMS updates worked without incident. Make sure to copy the unsubscribe URL after confirming and keep it on hand in case you decide to remove the feed at a later date. Thanks digitalintrigue.
Beta Beat: NetNewsWire 3.0 sneak peek
Brent Simmons has released the first public 'sneak peek' (note: it isn't even a beta) of NetNewsWire 3.0, a much-anticipated new version of his immensely popular RSS client which NewsGator acquired in 2005. Brent has made a brief announcement on his blog, reminding everyone that there's still a lot to do, but he also mentions he'll be writing more in-depth about what has changed in the coming days.Adventurous users - remember: this isn't even a beta - can check out the change notes for this public sneak peek, and head over to the download page to give it a go. For a tasty primer, a lot is new: Spotlight searching, a much-requested new Combined View, a Full Screen mode, a tab bar on the right with page thumbnails (which can be condensed to mere text titles), the ability to chose a folder when subscribing (a lá Safari bookmarking) and much, much more. As a personal side note, it's great to see even that FeedLight style Brent found recently to make its way onto the built-in styles list.A few words of caution from a blogger who's been testing this version for around a month (hint - that's me): back up your existing NNW support folder if testing software like this makes you queasy. NetNewsWire 3 makes significant changes to the way your data is stored, and you won't be able to run version 2.x without its old support folder after firing up v3. Surfing to ~/Library/Application Support, selecting the NetNewsWire folder and pressing cmd + d is a simple enough backup.With that said, go enjoy a sneak peek of NetNewsWire 3.
Switching from NetNewsWire to Google Reader
I'm not typically one for the web 2.0 movement. I'm a huge fan of the power and flexibility of Mac OS X, and I usually find most web services no match for their desktop counterparts with maybe a few syncing services thrown in to even the odds (.Mac, Google Browser Sync, etc.). This all changed, however, when Google dropped a quintessential upgrade bomb on Google Reader, their web-based RSS reader a la BlogLines and NewsGator. If you're curious as to what the new gReader is all about, I wrote up a walkthrough for Download Squad, but in a nutshell: it's awesome. So awesome, in fact, that after spending a serious week with it for all my personal and blogging needs, I feel confident in cutting my ties (yes, again) to NetNewsWire. Just like Gina over at Lifehacker, the plethora of new and well-polished features in this updated to Google Reader are an absolute dream in the category of web-based readers, and a number of factors clicked to make this my go-to reader of choice.PowerThe most appealing, of course, is the sheer power of the new Google Reader; it truly feels like an application. It's fast, responsive, and behaves like a desktop app. It features a typical expanded view, where all articles are listed in their full form on the right, but I prefer the List View which I have pictured here, with its unique way of expanding only the article you select in-line with the rest of the headlines. Another wonderful new addition to gReader's tool belt are lots and lots of new keyboard shortcuts; it is now possible to navigate everything in Google Reader - the feed list on the left (even expanding folders), headlines, articles, everything - from the keyboard. I'm not saying NetNewsWire can't do this - I'm simply impressed at how well gReader, a web app, pulls it off.OrganizationI have over 300 feeds covering topics for personal, freelancing and blogging purposes (yes, you guys), and Google Reader offers some great ways of bookmarking, sharing and tagging both feeds and individual headlines. The first and easiest method of saving important headlines is, of course, the typical Google UI of the 'star' - marking a star next to a headline, just like starring messages in Gmail, is just like flagging headlines in any other reader. Google Reader goes farther, however. Much farther. Headlines can also be individually tagged, and those tags can have their own RSS feeds, allowing me to easily tag and organize articles for TUAW and for my personal blog. At the tail end of organization, gReader also features a 'Share' button (and keyboard shortcut) for headlines, which creates an actual public webpage with a list of shared (and styled) headlines, that can also be inserted easily into something like a blog sidebar. You can think of it as a quickie-linked list. While certainly not all RSS users need all these fine-toothed filing and sharing features, they're a blessing for my various lines of work, and it's great to have all this under the umbrella of a powerful web app.PortabilityI get around. I bus it to downtown Denver for classes, and I'm constantly running around town doing a lot of errands my wife can't because she works 20 hours a day as a high school English teacher. Being able to fill those few minutes of waiting at the grocery store or the dentist's office by accessing my Google Reader feeds online with my mobile phone is a very handy thing. This feature didn't seem to receive any major upgrades with the new gReader (c'mon, it's mobile web - how great can it be?), but not having to sync my feeds or OPML files between a few newsreaders is a very nice burden to have off my back.No hard feelingsI'm not writing this post to bash NetNewsWire; while I have a few gripes with it, that app has served me well for years, and I'll still keep it around for emergency purposes, for sure. I also think Ranchero NewsGator still has one of the best darn readers on the market, even the free Lite version. On the flip side, Google Reader still isn't without its shortcomings; while it can handle tons of feeds and massive numbers of headlines with skill and grace, it still doesn't feature a search option (I know: a Google product lacking a search - what the?), and it can't handle authenticated feeds, which means I just have to give Mr. Gruber and The Deck a few more page hits a week (hey, it's a Labs product - not even beta. Give 'em some credit). Fortunately, those missing features weren't mortal for my needs, so I wanted to help get the word out on a great RSS reading product that might work as well for others as it does for me. If you haven't looked at Google Reader in a while, it's had a heckuva facelift and feature upgrade. Check out Google's announcement post of the update, or dive in and get your RSS on.
Google Reader Go Mobile brings RSS to your cell
Google world domination step #12,875: get inside their phones. In the latest attempt to filter every bit of data that could possibly hit your eyeballs, Google has introduced a mobile interface for its Google Reader RSS aggregator, so now you can get your news, read your email, and do the search thing without ever surfing away from a Google-owned domain. As long as you have a Google Personalized Homepage with the Reader Homepage Module installed, you can access Google Reader Go Mobile from any cellphone browser, giving you immediate access to the headlines from your favorite sites like Engadget and Engadget Mobile. Google's next step? Implantable RFID chips: get inside their heads.
NNW booted from my Dock, long live endo!
Scott posted on endo yesterday, and today I am happy to report that NNW has gone to that giant "poof" in the ex-Dock sky. Sure, endo has some minor "it's a 1.0 release" quirks, but this is the newsreader I've been waiting for. After putting it through its paces last night I was happy to dethrone NetNewsWire's place in my Dock, and here's why.First and foremost is NetNewWire's age. Version 2.x is old, and it's starting to feel like it hasn't been touched in a while, possibly due to it's dominance in the newsreading market or the NewsGator buyout. Now I don't mean any disrespect; Ranchero is a great company and NetNewsWire both initiated me into and carried me through the newsreading market for a couple of years now. endo simply feels like it pays a little more attention to the market and is aiming to evolve with it, as it offers some really slick integration and headline organizing options. Headlines can be added to a del.icio.us account right from within endo, without the need for snarky applescripts that make me leave the app to do the actual bookmarking in a browser.On the topic of feed management, endo is very customizable, with the ability to set refresh rates for each group and/or feed (and disabling them altogether) and even the ability to colorize particular feed's headlines so they're easier to pick out in a crowd. endo also offers a Growl-like notification system, toggled per feed, that allows you to sift through snippets of new headlines and short summaries while leaving endo minimized or even hidden. The headline column on the left is also quite tweakable, as summaries and tags can be displayed in-line with the headlines, or you can completely turn off both of those items as I have in my screenshot. To round up the feed management angle: for all those times when you can't get online, endo has the ever-obvious "offline" option.
NewsMac Pro 1.2.3 is awesome, NNW beware
As you might remember, NewsMac Pro 1.2 brought some nice enhancements when it landed last November. Even though this latest version is just a .0.3 update, I think this app is finally maturing into a serious reader, and I also hope the NetNewsWire people are paying attention to what Rory Prior is doing with this most excellent of newsreaders.This latest version brings typical things like bug fixes and new features to the table, but I think a couple of the most important new options are a new view (now a total of 4) for arranging your feeds and headlines, as well as more keyboard support for moving between groups, feeds and headlines. While using the keyboard isn't nearly as smooth as it is in NetNewsWire, NewsMac Pro is getting there, and I hope more users submit requests to move this feature up Rory's priority list. Most serious folks I know who use RSS apps barely touch their mouse while they're in the app, and I think it would serve NewsMac Pro well to gain this ability ASAP.A couple other big strengths NewsMac Pro has are flagging headlines with different colors based on user-defined keywords, as well as an iTunes-style built-in podcast player, so you can keep everything under one roof, if you so desire.With all this great stuff coming to life in NewsMac Pro, it certainly isn't still without its shortcomings. The demo casts off a time limit in return for allowing a user to add only 10 feeds. I cannot stress enough how bad of an idea this is, as I would imagine anyone looking at an RSS app like this is going to have far, far more than 10 feeds in their OPML (which reminds me: NewsMac Pro fortunately supports OPMLs with groups). The other clunky thing is the way feed and group updating is defined. You can specify different update intervals (30 minutes, 1 hour, etc.) for each group of feeds, which is certainly nice for some uses, but I can't find a way to specify any kind of a default for the app as a whole.All things considered, I think NewsMac Pro is a great newsreader that includes some very appealing innovations in the world of RSS reading and organzing. If you're in the market for a great way to keep track of all your favorite sites and blogs, head over and pick up a demo. If it really floats yer boat, a full license costs a mere $24.95.
BlogBridge, a second look
BlogBridge might still be a little too rough around the edges to de-throne NetNewsWIre - the web's most popular newsreader on either Windows or OS X - but it has a rocking feature set that I think the folks at Ranchero/Newsgator had better start paying attention to. C.K. took a look at a 1.0 release of BlogBridge a while ago, and I think it's safe to say the app, now at version 2.7, has come quite a ways since then. The installation went smoothly, and signing up for BlogBridge's free web-based syncing service was easy, which brings me to one of BlogBridge's strong features: the app can not only sync newsfeeds, headlines and even preferences with a free, web-based newsreading service, but you can categorize newsfeeds with tags and sync those tags with del.icio.us.Since I have such a huge library of categorized feeds, one seemingly minor feature I really appreciate about BlogBridge is the ability to assign custom icons to the feed categories, making them much more easy to identify when trying to find just the right one. BlogBridge has quite a few other tricks up its sleeve, such as feed-rating and smartfeeds, which can pull keywords from your own feeds or parse tags and keywords from other services like Amazon, Feedster, Flickr, Google and Technorati.All in all, once some kinks get ironed out I think BlogBridge shows some real promise. It's is available as a free download, and since it's java and open source it runs on OS X, Linux and Windows.
Dear Safari RSS Team
D'Arcy Norman, whose blog is one of my regular reads, has written an open letter to the Safari RSS team, pointing out some key spots where he'd like to see some improvements in Safari RSS. Since I like most of his points, I thought I'd point to them to help make them a bit more visible.
