NewsDesk News

NewsDesk is now Shared Source

David Peckham — 2003-11-13T20:20:00-08:00

Today I released NewsDesk as a Shared Source project hosted by GotDotNet.com. If you're interested in contributing, or just want to see what makes NewsDesk tick, visit the NewsDesk Workspace at GotDotNet. To build NewsDesk from source, you'll need Visual Studio 2003 and Visual SourceSafe.

Welcome to Washington Post and MSN readers!

David Peckham — 2003-09-15T18:04:00-08:00

Many of you who downloaded NewsDesk in the last 24 hours did so after reading Rob Pegoraro's article in the Washington Post (also reprinted on MSN). If this is your first experience with RSS, be sure to read my tutorials. You'll learn how to add more channels, use the NewsMenu system tray icon, use NewsDesk's lightning-fast search features, and configure NewsDesk for your proxy server. If you try the "Add More Channels" tutorial, search for "Washington Post" to find several Washington Post RSS channels. Go Terps!

NewsIsFree service was interrupted this weekend

David Peckham — 2003-09-15T08:45:00-08:00

My thanks to those of you who reported that the NewsIsFree service was interrupted this weekend. Mike Krus at NewsIsFree fixed the problem and restored service late on Sunday (Pacific Time).

RSSExplorer adds AutoDiscovery to NewsDesk

david@wildgrape.net — 2003-07-31T18:45:00-08:00

Barry Paul has just released RSSExplorer, an add-on for Internet Explorer that brings RSS autodiscovery to NewsDesk and other RSS readers. What that means is that RSSExplorer works in the background as you browse with IE. When it detects an RSS feed on a website, RSSExplorer shows you the feed address. To subscribe, simply choose NewsDesk from the list of readers and choose a category in NewsDesk for the new feed.

Installation is easy. Visit Barry's download page, wait while RSSExplorer installs itself as a toolbar in IE, then close and reopen IE. Choose View | Toolbars | PlanetNews to reveal the new toolbar. You must also enable Web Subscribe in NewsDesk. Choose Edit | Options | WebSubscribe. Put a check-mark in "Listen for web subscriptions" and another check-mark in "Accept requests sent to AmphetaDesk", then restart NewsDesk.

RSSExplorer is still in beta, so I expect you will find bugs, but it works well for me.

FeedDemon: A new commercial RSS reader

david@wildgrape.net — 2003-07-12T11:35:00-08:00

Nick Bradbury recently released FeedDemon 1.0 beta, and it looks very good. Nick has crafted a gem of a program that exposes many features without overwhelming new users. I don't know if pricing has been set, but if you need more than NewsDesk offers, give FeedDemon a try. FeedDemon reads NewsDesk OPML files, so it's easy to move your channels over. However, in my first try, FeedDemon imported all channels into a single category (which FeedDemon calls a "listing"). FeedDemon does not integrate seamlessly with NewsIsFree or other online channel directories. However, it supports RSS Auto-discovery and synchronizes with online OPML channel directories.

FeedDemon is still in beta, so wait for the commercial release if you can't live with a few bugs.

NewsDesk 1.1 is available

david@wildgrape.net — 2003-06-23T03:00:00-08:00

NewsDesk 1.1 is available. This release includes many minor enhancements and bug fixes. If you already have NewsDesk 1.0, the installer will upgrade you to NewsDesk 1.1 and migrate your channels and settings. Download NewsDesk 1.1

If you subscribe to NewsIsFree...

david@wildgrape.net — 2003-05-16T23:43:00-08:00

If you sign up for a NewsIsFree subscription after your trial expires, be sure to get the NewsIsFree Premium Export ($20) or Premium Combo ($35) subscription. The Combo subscription includes the Export and Portal subscriptions. The Portal subscription, which does not support NewsDesk, allows you to build your own personalized portal for news using a web browser.

If you have questions or comments, just drop me a line at support@wildgrape.net

Use BlogStreet to find weblogs and their RSS channels

david@wildgrape.net — 2003-05-16T22:30:00-08:00

BlogStreet is one of the easiest ways I've found to locate weblogs and their RSS channels. To find the RSS channel for a weblog, use their search page to find weblogs by keyword or URL. When the search results appear, click the [BlogHome] link next to a weblog that interests you. That will take you to a BlogStreet page with a link to the RSS feed. Of the more than 136,000 weblogs they track, about 13,000 have RSS channels. You may also find their Neighbourhood report useful - pick a weblog and it will show you related weblogs.

How to publish your own RSS channel

david@wildgrape.net — 2003-04-03T22:00:00-08:00

For the more technically-minded among us, O'Reilly has just released Ben Hammersley's Content Syndication with RSS, a guide to writing your own RSS channels. To read Ben's weblog in NewsDesk, select a NewsDesk category, choose File | New Channel, then enter this address:

http://www.benhammersley.com/index.rdf

Now you can support NewsDesk

david@wildgrape.net — 2003-03-19T15:30:00-08:00

If you use NewsDesk, now you can show your appreciation and support customer service and development by sending us a donation:

Your donation will help pay for the tools, time, and bandwidth we need to make NewsDesk the best headline reader for Windows.

david@wildgrape.net

Enhanced by NewsIsFree

david@wildgrape.net — 2003-03-19T15:09:00-08:00

NewsDesk is preloaded with many free channels from NewsIsFree and integrates seamlessly with NewsIsFree should you choose to use their premium news service to add more channels. We even offer an easy wizard to create a free trial account at NewsIsFree.

NewsDesk 1.0 integrates seamlessly with NewsIsFree so that new users can quickly search for and add new channels. You don't have to know about URLs, RSS, RDF, OCS, OPML or XML to use NewsIsFree channels. And NewsIsFree has an extensive selection of more than 4,500 popular channels in 25 languages that are updated hourly. With their premium service, you get access to all of these channels, more headlines for each channel, and descriptions for many headlines.

NewsDesk does not require you to use NewsIsFree, however. We make it easy to add new channels from any RSS source. Our website provides a guide to several popular online channel directories. This guide tells you what to expect from each of these directories, and even provides links to their OCS channel directory files should you decide to import their channels. To do this, open an OCS channel directory in your browser, save it to disk using your browser's File | Save As menu, then open NewsDesk and use File | Import to add the channels into your channel tree. Use File | Add Channels instead to search the file and selectively add channels.

We encourage you to try NewsIsFree. It takes just two minutes to setup a trial account, and there is no obligation when your NewsIsFree trial expires. In fact, all of the channels that you add during the trial will remain in NewsDesk when the trial expires, though with a maximum of five headlines and without headline descriptions.

How to add your own channels

david@wildgrape.net — 2003-03-18T17:55:00-08:00

When you're ready to add your own RSS channels to NewsDesk, see the instructions in the Welcome window, which you can get to by choosing Help | Welcome from the NewsDesk menu.

There are many ways to add new channels to NewsDesk. Choose the one that works best for you. If you have difficulty, don't hesitate to contact us: support@wildgrape.net.