Information Manager Journal

NewzCrawler 1.8 rocks

I've been fairly unhappy with the rate of improvement of NewzCrawler, my three-pane RSS aggregator of choice for the past 2+ years. But the new version 1.8 (build 3312) offers some nice productivity improvements. (Now if I can only figure out why podcast feed enclosures aren't downloading...)

Whatever happened to synching a desktop aggregator with an aggregator service? Some time ago, FeedDemon hooked up with Bloglines, but the idea of synching all read-vs.-unread items seems to have gotten lost in all the OPML noise.

The Gray Box: Kitchen conversations

At some point, it occurred to me that the frequent kitchen conversations I was having with my wife River about tech were better than many podcasts I've heard. So, I'm recording and releasing them as a new podcast, The Gray Box. Three episodes are already up. It was also my way of teaching myself to use Feedburner and get better at using Ourmedia. More about why we chose the name at a later date.

Review: ENewsBar

When you search Google for "news tickers" you get a paid ad for ENewsBar. Tucows lists it as #38 on its Internet Top 50 software programs. First the bad news: Once you install it, it's stuck on your task bar and has no uninstall feature. Boo! Now the good news: It's free, it lets you customize the ticker to a search term (today mine is "election," and you can even have RSS feeds delivered into the ticker. I haven't actually tried that so I don't know how elegant it is. At any rate, ENewsBar has it all over AOL and the BBC for an election-watching news ticker.