DavePress

Am using Google Reader at the moment as the new version of NetNewsWire, which I foolishly downloaded, seems to have problems doing anything.

There’s a number of new features that I need to investigate that weren’t around when I last used the service, like notes on shared items and friends lists. I tend to share the stuff I think worthy of comment via del.icio.us, which posts directly to this blog once a day, but in case I start sharing bits, the URL is http://www.google.com/reader/shared/08096379081421145011. As soon as I have shared something, I will stick it up on my FriendFeed too.

I’m a big fan of RSS, ever since I first discovered it through Bloglines a few years ago. For such a simple bit of technology, though, it’s often hard to explain how it works to those that have never used it before.

Another problem for RSS n00bs is that of where you can kind good quality feeds on the topics you are interested in. Generally speaking, this is an organic process, you subscribe to a couple, which then link to others, which you then subscribe to, and so on…

Could this process be made simpler? I wondered to myself the other day. And lo! Feedbeans was born.

What the site does is this: it makes available small OPML files that can be imported into a feed reader, providing an instant list of subscriptions along subject lines. So far there are two available, on UK News and Knowledge Management. I’m hoping to get some more up over the next couple of days, any suggestions for feedbean topics, and the feeds to go into them, are gratefully received!

I’m also putting some information together about RSS and how it works. Again, this is in constant development, so any comments on that would be great. I need to get the Common Craft RSS video in there somewhere…

I’ve had a bit of feedback from a few folk, and one of the common suggestions is to open this up into a platform, so that people can create their own feedbeans and make them available for download by others. I have no idea how this could be done though, so if anyone has any ideas, please do get in touch!

One day I might reveal the clunking and annoying way I am currently going about creating these things, but for now I will try and retain some pride.

I was alerted by Neville Hobson’s tweet that a bug fix release of FeedDemon was available for download. This announcement came through the FD support forums, which I never look at, so am thankful to Neville for bringing it to my attention.

The upgrade fixes bugs like:

• New instance of FeedDemon loads with misleading “application is hung” error message when attempting to subscribe from Firefox (123414)
• Cyrillic characters don’t display correctly in FeedDemon’s desktop alert
• Buttons cut off on keyboard shortcuts dialog when running at 120dpi
• Exception when importing invalid OPML (123539)
• Exception after synching on Windows 98
• Exception in prefetch options when setting “max items to prefetch” (124117)
• Wrong/ugly colors in newspaper header with some XP or WindowBlinds themes (124000)
• Thousands separators missing from large numbers displayed in panic button dialog and elsewhere (123986)

The top one (my emphasis) was a big fix for me, as this was proving a major pain in the neck, as I mentioned here.

There’s a bug with FeedDemon 2.6, I think.

Whenever I click the little orange RSS icon on the FireFox address bar to subscribe to a new blog, it tries to open a new FeedDemon window. Every. Single. Time.

This is a pain in the neck as I am never sure if I have actually subscribed to a feed or not!

The Newsgator family of desktop RSS applications are now available for download free of charge! This is great news, and I would heartily recommend that anyone who hasn’t tried it before gives the Windows application, FeedDemon, a try. I have been using it for three years now, and while I have flirted with online services like Bloglines and Google Reader, I also come crawling back to FeedDemon. There are other products in the range too, like a plugin for Outlook and NetNewsWire, which is the desktop reader for the Mac.

They are still charging for TopStyle though - boo, hiss. It’s a great CSS editor. If you are thinking that’s a strange app for an RSS company to be selling, you’re right. The story behind it is that when Newsgator bought Nick Bradbury, the guy behind FeedDemon, he brought his other project with with, which was TopStyle.

Here’s a nice post explaining why FeedDemon is so great.

When I was at the Online Information conference last year I had an interesting chat with the guys from NewsGator. They have some cool enterprise products, which focus on making SharePoint actually useful, all through the magic of RSS.

I recently undertook the task of organising all my feeds into folders in FeedDemon - before this I had just the one (very) long list of sites I checked, not broken up in any way. This had become unmanageable.

So, here are the folders I have created, in order of the attention I give them.

• Must Reads
• UK
• WordPress
• Search
• Software
• PR, etc
• Blogs about blogs
• News, etc
• General
• Books
• Software
• Del.icio.us (also including other links feeds such as Google Reader shared items)
• Flickr

If a feed falls into more than one category, then generally I stick it in the one that appears the highest on the list above. So, for example, Neville Hobson’s blog could fit into PR, etc or UK but I in fact have it in Must Reads.

The General folder is heaving though - I need to go through that again, I think!

are, according to FeedDemon: