Many people use RSS news feeds to read the latest updates from their favorite websites synchronized in a single place. It is much more productive than surfing around and reading content surrounded by ads and useless stuff.
With the subscription list increasing in number, having a powerful new reader with a good set of features is a must. There are a lot of news reader clients available for all operating systems but many people still prefer the one and only Google Reader.
Google Reader offers you a host of features in an easy to use light-weight UI and is accessible from everywhere since it runs online. But still Reader users miss the luxury of having a desktop application that runs from the local computer.
With SSB (Site Specific Browser) application that create a standard application based on a website, it is possible for you to create a desktop application of Reader. Prism and Fluid will do the job for you just perfect.
However you can enable this feature in Firefox 3 in few simple steps. No need to install any other application.
- Run Firefox and logo to Google Reader.
- Click Tools > Add-ons and install Prism. You need to restart Firefox for the changes to take effect.
- Click Tools > Convert Website to Application.
- The URL is entered automatically. Simply type in a name and check the options as you wish.
- Click OK and wait a few seconds for the application to be created.
If you chose to have Dock or Desktop shortcuts you can click them right away to run the Reader application, otherwise find it in the Applications folder.
Similar approach applies to Linux and Windows users (if they have this option available).
Note: Chrome users can enjoy this feature too. But since Chrome is still not supported on Mac OS, I focused on Firefox.
I bet you have now a list of eligible websites in your mind that can transorm into desktop applications.
In the previous post, I talked about EventBox and how it can make your feed-loaded life easier. But here’s the thing: It’s again skimming through 100s of feeds. Could I be lazier?!
Well, there is a way that you can merge all (or a particular group of them) together and filter them against some keywords.
So what? Then you have a SINGLE feed filtered based on the topic you want to read about. Imagine you are interested about what is happening to GM and you check CNN, BBC, MSNBC, and millions of other feeds everyday. What if you could just check one single feed?
Getting Started
All you need is a Yahoo account. Yahoo has a brilliant tool, Yahoo! Pipes, that will let us create what we want. Actually Pipes can do much more than what we need and you can check it out if you are interested.
OK just login to Pipes page at pipes.yahoo.com to start creating your first pipe. There are useful demos and documentation for you to get into the details.
Click on “Create a pipe” to go to the design environment.
It might look a bit scary for newbies but it’s extremely easy to use.
Start with dragging a “Fetch Feed” component from the right sidebar and dropping it to the work area.
Suppose you want to focus on the “Large Hadron Collider” that CERN built to find out about the begining of the cosmos.
So we need to search in news and scintifics sites. If you don’t have any particular sources in mind, just create a related Google News feed and add it to the “Fetch Feed” component.
I added 2 more feeds (you can add as much as you want) from Reuters and Science Magazine to enrich my search scope. Try adding more sources yourslef.
Note: Don’t forget to save your work regularly or you lose your beloved pipe!
Now drag a “Filter” component from the sidebar and drop it below “Fetch Feed”. It’s in the “Operators” section.
Well, now to make the work flow to make sense, try to connect the output of the “Fetch Feed” (the circle on the bottom of the dialog box) to the input of the “Filter” (the circle on the top of the dialog box).
We need to put something in the “Filter”. Try “Large Hadron Collider” for the title of the feed. To make sure we won’t miss anything, enter “LHC” for feed title as well as “Large Hadron Collider” for the description.
don’t forget to change “Block” to “Permit” AND “all” to “any” at the top of the dialog box, otherwise you’ll see everything but what you were looking for!
Now it’s time for the output. Just connect the output of the “Filter” to in put of the “Pipe Out” and click on the “Pipe Out” itself (or click on “Refresh” in the debugger area down below the screen) to see the results of your very first pipe.
There’s one more step to go. To use the output of the pipe you need to add its RSS feed to you favorite news reader. Click on “Run the pipe…” on top of the screen. A new window/tab opens that has loads of options and tools like publishing tools and etc. All we care is to get the output as RSS. By clciking on “Get as RSS” you can add the feed to your reader and save time by checking ONLY one feed about a topic.
Just note that this pipe is very basic and you can fine tune it with other tools like Regular Exressions and etc.
Few days ago I found a neat application that although tiny (almost 600KB!) changes the way you work with your iPhone/iPod.
Personally I was a bit irritated that I can’t access my files on my iPhone as easy as drag&drop. Now it is very easy to keep some files in my iPhone and even being able to access it by “Finder” (a jailbroken iPhone app).
Just download it from DiskAid Website and install the tiny DMG the Mac way! Voilla!
When you open the application it recognize your device in few seconds and shows the home folder.
Well, it is not exactly the home folder, it is ~/Media which is all you need to play with files securely.
It is also possible to copy files to you iPhone/iPod which makes it even better.
To download files it is just a simple drag&drop or choose the first item in the toolbar “Copy to folder” to select the destination folder.
Let me mention that there is a Windows version too so everybody can enjoy. It is a pitty that Linux is not supported although I’m sure Linux geeks will do (or already done) something about it.
To upload files I just created a new folder “DATA” to keep miscellaneous files separately. Then in any PC/Mac with DiskAid installed I can access to my files.
I’m not sure if Apple will reveal some new feature in the new version of iTunes for iPhone 3G but for the time being it is a nice tool.
