The Download Blog

FeedDemon 3 is ready for public use, after months spent in a beta version that saw a confusing migration from proprietary online syncing to Google Reader.

That rough patch sorted, FeedDemon remains one of the best desktop RSS and Atom feed catchers. This version contains a lengthy list of changes, including greatly enhanced Twitter connectivity, a tweaked interface that's a bit easier to use, and better tagging and sharing.

FeedDemon has dumped its proprietary synchronization site, Newsgator.com, in favor of syncing with Google Reader. New users won't notice, but older users are likely to lose many unread feeds, since Google can't import feeds with more than 10 unread items. Once synced with Google Reader, unread feeds can again include more than 10 items.

There's also a new, persistent ad placed in the lower-left corner of the interface, and FeedDemon's performance could be a lot better--RAM usage was hefty, and 3GB of RAM didn't prevent occasional program hang-ups.

Twitter feed reading has been baked in because FeedDemon supports authenticated feeds. Hyperlinking and short-URL expansion are automatic, and if you use Twitter as a live news stream, FeedDemon's Twitter link sharing should appeal to you. To set that up, you need to subscribe in FeedDemon to your Twitter feed here.

Tagging, tag clouds, and item sharing get a massive overhaul in FeedDemon 3, with all three features added to the item view and a tag cloud added to the Subscriptions Home view. The interface will look similar to FeedDemon 2.8, but there are many little tweaks to improve its usability.

Flags have been renamed Stars for Google Reader consistency, for example, while the Home page features videos, pictures, and content from your feeds. One smart improvement over Google Reader is that you can view your starred feeds in the folders they came from, instead of in a single "starred items" folder.

We'd like to see performance addressed in future versions, but overall, FeedDemon remains a favorite option for desktop feed management. Let us know your thoughts on the new FeedDemon in the comments below.

The Cooliris Firefox plug-in (Mac or Windows) is one of the most popular extensions in our library. Fire it up once, and you'll see why: Cooliris turns your image or movie searches into a 3D wall that is easy to navigate and just plain cool looking. When they came out with an app for iPhone some time ago, it didn't have enough of the cool features to make it worthwhile. But they've just released version 1.5 for iPhone and after giving it a test drive, I think it might be worthy of another look.

Cooliris for iPhone attempts to move the mostly seamless browsing experience from the Firefox Extension on to your touch-screen iPhone, and it does a fairly good job. You'll need a fast broadband Wi-Fi connection to get quick load times, but the app is still usable on slower connections. New features in this 1.5 release include faster search results (up to five-times faster, according to Cooliris), the capability to use Microsoft's Bing search engine for queries, and full Twitter support (read content from the public Twitter feed or read Tweets from the people you follow). They've moved to a slide-out user interface (think of a drawer being pulled out from the left) for most of the features like switching search engines, choosing browseable news categories, and RSS feed management.

Overall, Cooliris for iPhone is a unique and fun way to browse images, videos, feeds, and tweets, and it's difficult to find fault with such an interesting and unique app that's always been free.

The publisher of popular RSS readers FeedDemon and NetNewsWire is ditching its proprietary online RSS synchronization in favor of Google Reader. Newsgator's eponymous online service will cease on August 31..

When the beta version of FeedDemon updated earlier this year with the ability to synchronize to either Newsgator or Google Reader, fans of the program rejoiced. Google Reader synchronization, the company says, was one of the most requested features for the Newsgator desktop clients. They have instructions for users who need to move their feeds to Google.

Google Reader may frustrate some, but it has far more users than Newsgator. Newsgator says that this was the main impetus for ditching the Newsgator synchronization for Google, but it's also using the opportunity to revamp its product line.

Along with Google Reader synchronization for FeedDemon, NetNewsWire, and the NetNewsWire iPhone app, Newsgator will discontinue Newsgator Online, Newsgator Go!, Newsgator Inbox, the Newsgator browser toolbar, and the desktop notifier. Several features in the desktop apps that depended on the proprietary syncing service will also cease to function at the end of August. If you use the blogroll, ratings or headlines features, Newsgator recommends removing them from any Web site they're used on by August 31. The shared clipping feature will transition into Google Reader's analogous feature.

Despite its popularity, one feature that Google Reader doesn't support that Newsgator does is authenticated feeds. For people who used Newsgator solely for that feature, their opprobrium on message boards and in comment threads is palpable. Interestingly, the last answer in the Newsgator transitioning FAQ points to another reason for the switch: a growing emphasis from the company on their enterprise-based business.

Newsgator recommends that all FeedDemon and NetNewsWire readers upgrade to the beta builds before August 31, since only those latest versions contain the Google Reader option. It gave no word on when the beta builds would finish development, but readers who want the current stable builds can get them for Windows and Mac.

Editor's note: This post was amended to reflect a later release date for this app. My6Sense for the iPhone was originally expected to be on the app store Thursday morning, although it remains in Apple's approval process. For the purpose of this review I was using the same version which was installed using a testing provision.

My6Sense, a company that previewed its RSS recommendation technology at the Under the Radar Mobility conference back in late November, is finally ready to get its tools into the hands of users. The company soon plans to release its first native application for mobile phones (currently for the iPhone only), which pulls in RSS feeds and adjusts what it presents based on your reading habits.

To make those adjustments, the product revolves around a machine learning algorithm called "digital intuition." As you read, it slowly builds a profile for recommendations on other items you should check out, and ranks them accordingly.

There are six levels of digital intuition in all. Any time you check for recommendations it updates a small bar that tells you how far along its cold, robot brain is to knowing your deepest reading desires. In the hour or two I spent with the app, I nearly got to level three. Apparently it takes much more browsing than I was willing to give it before it could offer expert recommendations. Nonetheless, after just that short amount of time it was doing a pretty good job pointing me toward articles I did, in fact, want to read.

Feeding frenzy
Finding feeds to begin with is quite easy. You can enter URLs manually, download packs of RSS links that have been curated by My6Sense, or import the news feed from places like Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, and Flickr. It's also got a tool for grabbing your feed collection from other RSS services like Google Reader, My Yahoo, NewsGator, and Netvibes. I just used my feed collection from Google Reader, which was as simple as plugging in the credentials for my Google account. My6Sense was even nice enough to keep all my folders and meticulous feed organization intact.

Now the real heart of the app is feed reading. My6Sense wants you to give up using any other readers, and do everything inside of its app, since that's what makes its recommendation engine tick. This would be fine, except for the fact that the app can get intolerably slow when it comes to loading headlines.

Over a healthy 3G connection it took around 12 seconds to load up a list of just 10 stories. It took even longer to pull in an additional 10 results. And this was just the text--images don't load until you open up a story to read. In comparison, Google Reader in Safari is not... Read more

How long does it take you to sync your iPhone? I have the 16GB 3G, about 9GB of music, almost 2GB of apps, and about 60 photos. My "Other" category shows up as more than 2GB (!) in iTunes, but that might be worthy of a separate post. In any case, from start to finish, syncing my iPhone on my Windows PC (it's where my music library is) takes almost an hour. A lot of that time is spent backing up or transferring purchases, but it just doesn't seem right that it should take that long.

A friend of mine uses his Mac for syncing his iPhone and he says it takes less than 10 minutes. Please let me know in the comments how long it takes you to sync your iPhone and what type of system you're using. Any tips for speeding up the process would be greatly appreciated by me and anyone else who suffers the same problem. Now, on to this week's apps!

This week's apps include a new (to me) news feed aggregator and a brand-new game from Freeverse that's on sale for a limited time.

Fluent News (free) is a recent discovery for me and well worth the download if you're looking for a better way to get your news. Fluent News grabs exclusively mobile news content from all the top news sources including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and CNN. Unfortunately, the app is primarily U.S.-centric so international users won't get the news they're looking for. But among the news apps available for iPhone, this one just might be the best I have seen yet.

The interface is easy to use, with tabs across the bottom for Top News stories and sections organized by category. But the layout is what makes Fluent News a standout app. Each story has the headline, which source the news came from, related stories, and a brief description of the story (like many desktop RSS readers). Even better, all the news stories are in mobile format so they're easy to read in the app's included browser. If you find a story you want to share, you can easily post the link to Twitter or Facebook, once you connect to your accounts in the settings menu. Overall, Fluent News is the best free newsreader I've found so far, and it's definitely worth a free download.

Warpack Grunts (99 cents for a limited time) lets you command a squad of four tiny soldiers for shoot-'em-up action in a top-down perspective. Touch the screen to move your squad around the map and double tap to fire your weapons. A few early tutorial missions help you get accustomed to the control system and the different weapons you'll find in the game. As you progress through missions, the game gets harder with more enemy squads to battle and other dangers like snipers and mounted machine guns. As an added bonus, you can play this game in landscape or portrait mode--Warpack Grunts easily switches views on the fly.

Warpack Grunts, like many titles from Freeverse, offers comedy relief with funny voices and sounds to keep the game lighthearted while remaining challenging. There are several items to find in the game like rocket launchers and sniper rifles, along with items that replace downed units (to bring your squad back to four) and increase your health. The missions are quite difficult later in the game and offer unique challenges to keep the game interesting. You can also choose the Zombie Survival gametype to blow away wave after wave of shambling undead. With a ton of missions to explore and the extra game type, Warpack Grunts is definitely worth more than the introductory price, so grab this one while it's still cheap.

What's your favorite iPhone app? Do you have a better newsreader than Fluent News? How long can you last in Zombie Survival mode? Got a secret way to make iPhone syncing faster? Let me know in the comments!

Newsgator pushes its popular RSS reader FeedDemon into release candidate status, introducing some new features and fixing bugs from the previous beta version.

The big news for FeedDemon 3 came with the fourth beta, which introduced Google Reader synchronization. That feature did not come without bugs, and continued to be refined through the beta development. Several fixes in the release candidate fix Google Reader synchronization bugs, including properly marking starred items as flagged in FeedDemon, syncing tags, and marking feeds disabled. Another big repair to FeedDemon's Google Reader behavior fixes an error that prevented users who had nonalphanumeric characters in their Google password from logging in.

One useful new feature in the release candidate is a hot key for e-mailing an item. Hit "E" on your keyboard when reading an item, and FeedDemon will open up a new message window in your default e-mail client. I found this integration to be smooth and faster than I'd anticipated. FeedDemon fans will notice that this feature takes over the hot key for opening an item in an external browser, so the new hot key to do that is "X."

FeedDemon 3 RC1 can also be set to launch when Windows loads, and the installation process gains an "express" mode for quick installing. After using the FeedDemon 3 beta for the past month, I've found it to be work well for a beta, with few crashes and a faster overall experience.

The changelog for FeedDemon 3 can be read here.

Have you ever used an RSS newsreader? Though you can surf to your favorite sites using your Web browser of choice, RSS readers bring all the news to you in a simple format that's conducive to getting more information quickly. The best RSS readers make it easy to add your favorite sites so you can quickly sift through headlines. When you find something of interest, you can often expand the story in an RSS reader or go directly to the site to read more. If you spend a lot of time on the Web, RSS readers are a great way to find the stuff you want without having to load a bunch of Web sites.

RSS readers come in a lot of flavors, including some that are browser plug-ins, others that offer a standalone desktop app, and still others that behave almost like widgets.

KlipFolio offers a unique RSS experience, giving you a personal dashboard that you can customize with news headlines, your favorite blogs, weather feeds, and tons of other information. The program sits on the side of your desktop and it's skinnable so you can customize it to your style.

Sage is a basic RSS feed and news aggregator for Firefox. With this add-on, you can navigate the latest newsfeeds right in your Firefox sidebar. The interface is extremely easy to navigate, with a top panel for headlines and a bottom panel if you want more information about a story. If you're looking for the easiest way to break into RSS, Sage is a good place to start.

RSS Bandit is a standalone reader that has many attractive features, allowing a user to merge news headlines from multiple sources onto a single page, and organize articles based on keyword, read/unread status, and date. The built-in tabbed browser allows you to read a full article and then switch to a different story without closing out the original article. If you like to open and read several stories at once, this is the reader for you.

Snarfer is a top-notch feed reader that will devour your RSS and Atom feeds, but more experienced RSS junkies might find it too basic. An uncomplicated, uncluttered interface follows a generic app design of left-side listed entries with a right-side preview pane. Experienced users will miss customizations like changing fonts and preview pane location, but if you want a simple way to get your news in one place--without an overwhelming amount of settings--Snarfer might be the right choice for you.

FeedDemon is a well-crafted, standalone newsreader that makes for an ideal choice for both novices who've never heard of an RSS feed and advanced users looking to put some oomph and flexibility into their reading habits. FeedDemon also features a Watch Channels option to search for news items containing user-specified keywords and places them in a separate group so they're easier to find. If you're looking for customization and flexibility, FeedDemon delivers.

RSS Captor is an easy-to-use RSS client with a three-pane interface. Feeds are listed on the left, a list of stories on the top right, and details on the lower right. Tabs offer quick access to sections where you can set up folders for automatically saved messages and manually saved messages. RSS Captor excels with its options for sorting, filtering, and searching stories. If you plan on committing yourself to getting all your information via RSS reader, RSS Captor offers a lot to work with.

Some people can get by with using their bookmarks to save their favorite sites. But if you spend a lot of time on the Web and want a way to get the latest news from several sites, any of these programs are up to the task.

RSS aggregator FeedDemon and e-mail client Postbox both have released recent updates to their not-quite-ready for prime-time programs.

FeedDemon 3.0.0.20 beta 5a continues to build out the feature set of the popular RSS and Atom feed manager. FeedDemon 3 is shaping up to be a must-grab improvement on the last stable release, version 2.7.

FeedDemon 3 is able to synchronize feeds not only with FeedDemon's own Web site, NewsGator, for online news reading, but it can also talk to Google Reader. I jumped away from Google Reader because at the time it was sluggish and I wanted to get my podcasts out of my music jukebox, but I've always regretted losing the convenience of having my e-mail and my RSS reader online and smoothly talking to one another. Google Reader integration means that users will have more flexibility in how they use the program and should broaden its appeal. Beta 5 synchronizes Google Reader and FeedDemon tags as well as the feeds themselves.

FeedDemon 3 comes with a slight interface refresh, too, although it's mostly done in service to the new features. The aforementioned tagging is new, bringing a bit of modern convenience to those who use keywords. Sharing has been made easier with a new Share icon, and shortened URLs such as bit.ly or TinyURL support mouse-over tooltips now.

This is becoming a must-have security feature as phishing attacks adapt to more pernicious methods, and works well in FeedDemon 3's stronger support for Twitter. Author names, replies, and hashtags are automatically linked, and profile pictures also appear. Fun stats such as how many unread items and how many flagged items you've got are surfaced, too.

If you do decide to try out the FeedDemon beta, back up the current version first. Go to File, Manage Cache, Backup, and create a back up folder to deposit the backups in. Full release notes for v3.0.0.20 beta 5a can be read here.

Postbox beta 12 for Windows and Mac updates the well-received remix of Mozilla's Thunderbird. New features include search suggestions when you're typing and smoother integration of folder search with global search. Switching between the two is now marginally simpler. The inspector pane on the right side of a message has been tweaked, as well. Sender details, image thumbnails and dimensions, and the revamped search options for messages, images, links, and attachments have been rolled into the pane.

Mac users should find better support for native Mac address books and Growl notifications. Firefox 3.0.10 bug-fixes have also been integrated into this version of Postbox.

Postbox beta 12 is a small update overall, but because of the bug- and security-fixes that have been implemented I'd strongly recommend upgrading. Full release notes are here.

Until native RSS-reading is perfected on mobile phones, third party newsreaders are often the quickest path to keeping up on headlines. Viigo has been our favorite for Windows Mobile phones to date, but the new application iBrowz beta provides a familiar widget paradigm for subscribing to feeds, and a sharp-looking reader.

Instead of assigning each subscription its own icon, iBrowz groups them by category--under news, tech, and sports thumbnails, for instance. You tap to view the bundle, tap again to see headlines for a news source, and tap a third time to open the story in iBrowz's glossy black reader. A banner ad floats above, and pictures look crisp. Managing subscriptions from the phone is simple, but it's even easier from your account online, where a mouse click is all it takes to add or yank a feed.

While the feed functionality is there, the subscription content is weakened by the limited number of available RSS feeds. More will surely come in the future, especially as iBrowz grows its user base. Third-party developers and publishers are also welcome to add their own. However, those with a particular group of favorites may be frustrated by this modest starter crop. As with most RSS readers, you'll also set a sync schedule. iBrowz's ranges from every thirty minutes to once a day.

There are a few extra touches in iBrowz--e-mailing a story to a friend and tab navigation to get you back to the start screen. iBrowz also does local storage for offline reading (a fact that suggests you might download it to an external storage card rather than to the device memory.)

On the flipside, there's a lot more iBrowz could do, and hopefully will, when it emerges from beta. Bookmarking comes to mind, as do greater organization choices that let you shuffle your feeds within a category, or, better yet, decide to lay them bare on the home screen for quicker access. The subscription content is the app's major stumbling block, especially with rival Viigo letting users subscribe not just to any feed, but to aggregators like Google Reader, too. Still, iBrowz's sophisticated feel gives it hope, and a road map that includes syncing documents from your Windows or Mac computer may yet give it a future edge.