rss

Google has begun work on one much-requested feature of its Chrome browser, the ability to detect when a Web page offers a subscription service through RSS or Atom technology.

Google programmer Finnur Thorarinsson formally marked the RSS support issue as "started" on Wednesday, though the feature is disabled for now.

"The first part of this has been implemented and checked in," Thorarinsson said, referring to the part that discovers when RSS feeds are available on a Web site. The feature is disabled for now, though, because the second part, which will produce a page that lets … Read more

Techfuga, a tech news aggregation site, is releasing its 2.0 version on Wednesday.

What hasn't changed in the new version is the site's blend of automatically-generated links and clustered stories, like you get on Techmeme, with a dashboard view of RSS feeds from popular tech Web sites, as on PopUrls and Alltop.

The new version has a reportedly better clustering algorithm, as well as a list of "upcoming" stories that aren't yet big enough to be listed in the main section but that are trending toward becoming big. The new site also has a … Read more

One of the great things about the Internet is its extraordinary depth. There is more information online than anyone could ever--or would ever--want to read. The modern problem is one of information overload. We have so many different things to read, look up, or view that we can't keep them straight. Feed Readers (or news aggregators) are a common remedy to that problem. This app is a worthy entry into that crowd, if you can look beyond its quirks.

Aesthetically, it's a decent-looking application, with a bit of flair and easily understandable icons. Of course, there's the … Read more

This free toolbar comes jam-packed with helpful tools to enhance your browsing. Though we encountered a small glitch, it performed well for us overall.

DidDone Toolbar offers a fully customizable interface. The settings menu offers tabs for changing skins, adding and removing buttons, adding Web sites to your white list, and managing your RSS feeds. The toolbar also offers zoom and cleaning options. We found the cleaning options hit and miss. The clean cache and cookies features worked as promised, but the clean history feature failed to work. This was the only flaw in an otherwise useful toolbar. The log-in … Read more

We made it onto Engadget! Well, sort of. It was kind of an accident, but Engadget is Engadget right? On today's show, we discuss some video game news with our buddy Russ Frushtick, the games editor for UGO.com. We also talk about our accidental plug on Engadget.com, explore some of the unhealthiest foods on the planet, and we briefly consider raising our kids on our favorite movies from the sci-fi universe. The second half gets absurdly dirrrty, with red light talks on fleshlights, 3d porn, massage therapy, and a very disturbing reading from Wilson Tang.

Today's … Read more

The iPhone developer behind Podcaster has found a way to get into Apple's App Store without invoking the wrath of iPhone Inspector No. 5.

The developer, who has a private Blogger profile but appears to go by Alex according to Uneasy Silence, has a new application called RSS Player that duplicates the basic function of Podcaster--letting you download podcasts to your iPhone or iPod Touch--but without some of the features that Apple appears to have disliked. For example, you can't search for podcasts through the app, you have to subscribe to the RSS feed for those podcasts.

Back … Read more

It may be the scaled-down version, but Feed Editor Lite's straightforward interface offers just the right amount of options for creating and managing RSS feeds and podcasts.

The program's wizard to create a new RSS feed gets you off to the right start. The wizard was easy to understand, but also included a help feature to keep you covered. The wizard gives you two options for creating feeds--standard RSS or standard podcast. After that, simply enter a name, brief description, and the source URL in the appropriate field. Once we got all of that information into place, we … Read more

Despite an initially intimidating interface, this RSS feed reader turned out to be very simple to use. Webu launches a no-frills but very functional interface with a series of buttons for adding and deleting news feeds and keywords for narrowing feed hits. Helpful informational windows pop up on first launch to help guide the new user.

This application performed well in our tests, responding promptly to our clicks. It quickly checked selected feeds for our user-defined topics, and adding and deleting feeds and keywords was a snap. We liked that we could choose to check RSS feeds or Web pages, … Read more

In an effort to make Google Reader more approachable, Google has put out a series of help videos that show people how to use it. There are only two clips to start out with (posted below) which cover basics like adding and reading feeds, and using the tool's sharing features. Google says future videos will cover some of the more advanced features.

Google's efforts are notably overshadowed by YouTube users who have taken it upon themselves to create screencasts similar to the ones made for last year's YouTube help video challenge. How-to site ExpertVillage in particular has 16 different clips, while Web guru Ed Dale has put together a three-part, half-hour series about how to use it.

One thing to note is that Google's videos cover some of the changes made since the redesign in early December. See also our Newbie's Guide for Google Reader, which despite being written in late 2007 is still remarkably up to date.

I've put the second how-to video after the break.… Read more