NetNewsWire
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An exhaustive exploration of Netnewswire
Blogger Shawn Blanc has written an exhaustively thorough review of NewNewsWire (We interviewed Brent Simmons, author of NetNewsWire, over the summer). He begins with a description of how he first became aware of the application and goes on to describe a history of the UI, his "favorite things" about NNW and concludes with an exploration of the paid version.Note that Shawn intends to give other popular applications, like Coda, SuperDuper! and Transmit, the same treatment. We can't wait.
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.
Newsgator mobile for iPhone
A while back David opined about eight apps he wanted on the iPhone and number one on his list was a old TUAW favorite, rss reader NetNewsWire. Well that hasn't happened yet, but Newsgator (which owns NNW) has announced an iPhone optimized version their web based newsreader at http://m.newsgator.com. What's significant about this, of course, is that like the regular web based Newsgator, this mobile version can be synced to NetNewsWire to preserve your feeds and read/unread state. So if you're an iPhone using NNW junkie you may want to check it out.[via Ranchero]
NewsLife out of beta
ThinkMac has announced that their RSS newsreader, NewsLife, has hit 1.0 and come out of beta (and as you can see above, they couldn't have chosen a better site to show it off with, if I may say so myself).David did a quick rundown on the app last week, and found it to be "a simple, streamlined app for reading your favorite news sites and blogs." There is a cool feature called the News Bin, which seems like an easy drag-and-drop clipping interface. The obvious comparison to NewsLife is NetNewsWire, of course, but NewsLIfe appears to be filling the role of the simpler, cheaper (€12, or about $16 US) alternative to that old favorite. You can pick the 1.0 release up right now from ThinkMac.Thanks to everyone who sent this in.
TUAW Automator App: Export NetNewsWire feeds
Not many people are familiar with how flexible and shareable your NetNewsWire / NewsGator subscriptions are, so I thought it was time to elaborate a little and play with Automator again. First on our sharing list: the ability to embed an automatically updating list of your NetNewsWire / NewsGator subscriptions into your website or blog. To enable this, simply sign into your NewsGator account (if you're using NetNewsWire 2.1.x or 3.x I believe you automatically get at least a 1-year NewsGator subscription) and go to Settings > Edit Locations. Assuming you have syncing with NewsGator enabled, you should see at least one location related to your NetNewsWire feeds which should have a 'Blogroll' option listed. Clicking on that will give you all the options you need to embed a small snippet of code in your site to create a list of the subscriptions you want to share publicly. There is another way to share your NetNewsWire subscriptions in a handy-dandy file format, easy for friends, family and visitors to download and import into just about any newsreader they use, including NetNewsWire, Google Reader and even Vienna (this is technically referred to as an OPML file, with the extension .OPML). NetNewsWire offers a File > Export Subscriptions command, but there are a few options involved and this isn't very automation-friendly. If you want to make your subscriptions available to, for example, website visitors or simply back them up on a regular basis, I put together two very basic, two-step Automator apps (packaged as zip files) that can work fine on their own or easily be incorporated into larger workflows.
WWDC Video: TUAW interview with Brent Simmons
Brent Simmons has earned a spot in our docks for years now with NetNewsWire, perhaps the premiere RSS reader on the Mac. But Brent loves developing Mac apps, and he's a big fan of the platform in general. Funny how that works. Mr. Simmons was kind enough to sit and chat with Scott about the WWDC keynote, his competition and some cool new features in NNW3.
5 questions with Brent Simmons, creator of NetNewsWire
Hot on the heels of releasing NetNewsWire 3 Brent Simmons, developer and creator of said program, sat down with me in the virtual HQ of TUAW (a.k.a. the Internet) and answered my questions five. Read on to hear what Brent has to say about NNW's new UI, the feature he would have liked to have included, and what apps are most often in his Dock.
NetNewsWire 3.0 now available
The NetNewsWire 3.0 beta is now over. That's right, RSS junkies, NNW 3.0 is now publicly available. I've been using NetNewsWire 3.0 since Macworld 2007, and it has really come together in the last few months. There are lots of new features, including: Growl support Spotlight integration Twitterific support A New UI Performance enhancement (this sucker screams on Intel Macs) Improved Tabbed browsing Microformat support That's just the tip of the iceberg in regards of to new features. Check out Newsgator's website for all the details.NetNewsWire 3.0 is available now and costs $29.95. Upgrading is free, if you have the NewsGator Online Premium Package. NetNewsWire Lite, the free version of NNW, is still a work in progress.
Apple Mail plug-in roundup
Since I solved a number of the issues plaguing my Mail account setup - including a workaround to kinda use Gmail over IMAP (more on that soon) - I have sunk my teeth back into Apple's excellent email client. Now I'm pretty happy with using a few plug-ins like Scott Morrison's stellar MailTags 2 and Stefan Schüßler's Mail.appetizer (which we have previously mentioned at length here and here), though I am continually surprised by the number of plug-ins that endow Mail with everything from better support for Windows Office attachments, to creating events from messages and even more fine-toothed Smart Mailboxes for your Address Book contacts. One only needs to run a search for Mail at MacUpdate to see what I'm talking about, but I figured I could round up a few of these plug-ins just to give you an idea.
NetNewsWire 3.0a8
We here at TUAW are unabashed fans of NetNewsWire, the best of class newsreader for the Mac. That much you probably knew already, however, you might not know that NewsGator has just released an Alpha of NewNewsWire 3.0 (which brings us up to 3.0a8). Check out the release notes to get the full run down on what's new in this version. My favorite new additions? Here they are: Send to Twitterific for posting stuff to Twitter (another TUAW favorite) Microformats support (very cool) Performance enhancements (it is fast I tells ya!) Remember this is a piece of Alpha software, and there are bound to be bugs.
TUAW Podcast #21 - the NetNewsWire 3 beta screencast
The TUAW Podcast is upon us, and for #21 I decided on a screencast of that NetNewsWire 3 beta sneak peek released a couple weeks ago. The new version is a slick piece of work with a lot of nice new features, and I go over all the good stuff in just under 8 minutes. This H264/AAC podcast weighs in at 800 x 450 and 42MB, and can be had from our iTunes Store Podcast directory, this direct link or our own podcast rss feed. Enjoy!P.S. - don't forget to digg us in the digg podcast directory as well![Update: It seems we had some problems with properly linking the podcast directly and for the iTS, but things should be good to go now. The direct link is now working, and our iTS podcast directory should refresh at least within an hour or two, but likely within 30 minutes.]
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.
Slife 1.0 Awareness Browser
Slife is a rather unusual piece of software. I tried it out in its previous incarnation (Onlife), but it has now been released under a new name and seems considerably more polished. Its developer calls Slife an "awareness browser" which "let's you visualize and organize your computer activities like never before." Basically, Slife "observes" your use of applications like Safari, Mail, iChat, iTunes, Word, NetNewsWire, etc., and records what you're doing with them (e.g. what web pages you looked at, the text of your emails, what songs you listened to, etc.). You can then visualize these interactions in a variety of different ways (e.g. one visualization is a kind of scatterplot over time) and go back and see what you were doing on your computer at any given time. In other words, it's sort of like a global history of your computer use, which instead of merely recording what pages you've looked at in your browser, records what you were doing at any given time in a bunch of different applications. You can also search through all of this mess, to find things you were doing, but perhaps lost track of or forgot where you looked at them. Finally, SlifeLabs offers a subscription service called Slifeshare where "you can share your Slife activities such as browsing the web and listening to music with your friends, family or anyone you care about" (I'm not entirely sure why you'd want to do that, but whatever). While something like this is definitely not going to appeal to everyone, Slife has a lot of potential to help you keep track of things you've lost and to understand better how you use your own computer. And since it's a free download, I think it's definitely worth a look.[Via MacMinute]
NetNewsWire style: FeedLight
These NetNewsWire styles just keep getting better, especially since this one is designed for both NetNewsWire and Vienna. Not long ago I found a couple of really slick NNW styles, one of them taking a crack at a Spotlight look + headline wrapping, and now Brent Simmons via the Ranchero blog has highlighted FeedLight, a style based heavily on Mac OS X's Spotlight searchbar. While it bears resemblance to other Tiger styles available (including NNW's own built-in style), I really enjoy FeedLight's approach of displaying all the important data like a properly wrapping headline, feed, date and author in a concise, static top bar that remains in place (only on NNW, not Vienna) even as you scroll through a long article. Of course, the fact that it comes in two sexy gradient-ific versions, one for Aqua and another for Graphite, doesn't hurt either. All FeedLight styles and versions are available from Alex at BrokenLogic.
NewsHawker: Listen to NetNewsWire
NetNewsWire is probably the single most used application on my Mac. If I'm connected to the net, NNW is open and refreshing my hundreds of RSS feeds. It's how I get stories for TUAW, of course, but it's also one of my primary sources of entertainment (I realize that might be kind of sad). Because of all this, NewsHawker piqued my interest, as it integrates with NetNewsWire to actually read aloud various NNW text (headlines, bodies, etc.) via Mac OS X's built-in text-to-speech functionality.NewsHawker is definitely beta software (on the way to being shareware), and I'm having some trouble getting it to work correctly. Nonetheless, this might be of interest if, as the developer suggests, you like "to eat and read your news at the same time." [Via Ranchero]
TUAW Podcast #18: Macworld interview with Brent Simmons and Paul Kafasis
On Friday of last week at Macworld 07, Brent Simmons (of NewsGator/ NetNewsWire/ MarsEdit fame) and Paul Kafasis (of Rogue Amoeba/Audio Hijack/Airfoil fame) were kind enough to unite their powers and sit down with me for an interview. For just over 20 minutes we discussed Macworld, the iPhone, the state of Mac OS X, being a developer, whether competition or web services are slowing them down and a whole lot more. The interview turned out great, but the audio needed a little cleanup. My XtremeMac MicroMemo usually does a good recording job with my iPod, but we did the interview in the large press room hall at Macworld so it picked up some background noise. It sounds pretty good now (thanks Mike!), and it should be a good listen for anyone interested in a perspective on the state of Apple and their products from two influential 3rd party developers.This TUAW Podcast #18 weighs in at just under 21MB, and can be had from this direct link, our iTunes Store Podcast directory or our own podcast RSS feed. Enjoy.P.S. - On a related note, our TUAW podcast is now listed in the digg podcast directory. Why not head over and show some love by digging our podcast and your favorite individual episodes?
AppleScripts for integrating Safari, NetNewsWire, del.icio.us and Yojimbo - oh my!
I don't know how I missed this post at Hawk Wings a few weeks ago, but I am glad I found it at least sooner or later: Tim Gaden has been keeping a watchful eye on the Yojimbo mailing list, and he caught a set of scripts written by Dylan Damian that can take a link from either Safari or NetNewsWire, bookmark it on del.icio.us with Pukka (which I highly recommend as a paid user) and then archive the link in Yojimbo using the same tags you used on del.icio.us. I completely agree with Tim: after testing these scripts out with NetNewsWire, they work like a charm and have just been added to my toolbelt.You can score the scripts by checking the Yojimbo mailing list archives (they're online here if you aren't subscribed), or simply by heading over to Tim's post at Hawk Wings, as he is hosting the files himself.
NetNewsWire styles: Reflex and Spotlight+wrap
It's been a couple of months since I switched from NetNewsWire to Google Reader, but I am happy to announce that I saw the light and have returned to greener pastures. While Google Reader is still roughly 3000 times as functional as NewsGator Online, I simply could no longer resist the torture of no search (in a Google product, no less), and no support for authenticated feeds. Aside from those two setbacks, however, I still recommend gReader as the best web-based reader that is easily head and shoulders above the rest.Since I'm back to NetNewsWire though, I have once again gone kookoo for styles and have come across two that impressed me quite a bit. First up is Reflex for NetNewsWire from Oliver Boermans (pictured above), which is the most functional and optimized style I have ever seen, and has quite possibly usurped my previous favorite: Tiger style by Jon Hicks (sorry Jon!).First, Reflex offers a two column design by default (which can be slimmed to one if/when you prefer) that places metadata (author, blog, date, categories, etc.) in a non-scrolling column on the right of the post body. This is really handy if you don't want to keep scrolling up and down posts just to snag all the info you might need to, say, write about the post or the site you're referencing. Speaking of scrolling, Reflex will fade in a slick overlay headline at the top of the post if - and only if - you wind up having to scroll down so far as to knock the post's headline above the fold. Last but not least, Reflex offers two color styles (white/black) and layouts (single or double column) via a button at the top right of the reading pane.This most excellent Reflex style can be had from Oliver's blog, and I'd like to tip my hat to the man himself for his fantastic work.The second style hails from Jonathan 'Wolf' Rentzsch, of Mac OS X development and C4 fame. Jon's Spotlight+wrap style is a modification of NetNewsWire 2.0's built-in Spotlight style in the name of functionality. First, and most noticeably, he added a wrap to the headline so long'uns will display in their entirety. The other big change is that he borrowed from Takaaki Kato's Samurai Style and eliminated the Feedburner footer that's catching on with so many bloggers these days (the ugly 'digg this, del.icio.us that' standard links appearing in many RSS feeds). Jon also mentions some stylistic battles he had to wage, but at the end of it all is a very functional improvement to a beloved default NNW style. You can grab Spotlight+wrap from Jon Rentzsch's blog.[via Ranchero's blog]
1Passwd 2.1, build #3744 gets new icon, NetNewsWire support
1Passwd, our favorite Tiger-only web form filler and password manager, was updated yesterday to version 2.1 build 3744. It sports a shiny new icon and now supports NetNewsWire! Also in this release are over 20 other improvements and bug fixes, along with the following new features: Added 'Find and Delete Duplicates' do locate web forms that have identical contents. Added NetNewsWire extension (using context menu instead of toolbar). Added dynamic toolbar buttons to all supported browsers. Web forms now can be dragged to web browser to create bookmarks. 1Passwd keychain will be automatically backed-up daily to a local folder. Added Autosave Rules to disable autosave on user-defined domains. Added 1Passwd context menu to Safari, Camino, DEVONagent, and OmniWeb. Complete details are available on the 1Passwd blog and you can download a copy on the main site. Upgrades are free for registered users, and there's a free trial if you need it. New registration will cost you $29.95.
Five blogging apps I'm thankful for
We are a thankful bunch around TUAW today, in honor of Thanksgiving here in the states. Since I spend most of my waking hours blogging I thought I would give some praise to the five applications that make blogging a breeze on the Mac. This is not meant to be a 'Top Five blogging tools post,' if you're looking for something like that, check out Glenn Wolsey's post on ProBlogger (though I have some problems with his post that I won't go into at this moment). Read on to get the skinny on the five blogging applications I am most thankful for this holiday season.
