Orangeinks

SnackR: Scrolling RSS Updates on your Screen

SnackR is a desktop application powered by Adobe Air and Flex that lets you view RSS feed right on your desktop in a scrolling manner. If you get tired from getting updates from your feed reader, you can use this as an alternative and get updates in a different fashion.

SnackR is a great alternative to normal feed readers available out there. It gives you that news flash thing that scrolls on the bottom of your TV screens. If you are using multiple/dual screens, one way to optimize it is to place it on your secondary screen so it will not be an obstruction to your primary working area. If you are using SnackR on a single monitor, you can easily hide it and let it sit on the corner of your screen until you need to use it. You also have the option to drag and dock SnackR to the four corners of your screen.

SnackR can be easily integrated with your existing Google Reader account. Just be careful on deleting feeds from SnackR for it will also delete them from your Google Reader database.

NOTE: if you enable Google Reader integration, and you delete a feed in Snackr, it will automatically be deleted in Google Reader as well (and if you add a feed in Snackr, it will get added to Reader too). We plan to make this optional in the future. (If you downloaded the previous 0.37 build, this build doesn’t have any new functionality, but makes the synchronization of feeds between Snackr and Google Reader clearer.)

There are also a few other features, such as the ability to post items to email, del.icious, digg, etc.–and a bunch of bug fixes.

Instead of going to your feed reader checking for updates, you can check them right on your desktop without opening your reader or scrolling your feed gadget installed in your system. If you’re not much of a feed reader kind of guy/gal, this is a cool way of discovering the power of RSS.

Tags: feed reader, feeds, RSS, snackr

Regator Opens to the Public

After 9 months of development, Regator, the social blog aggregator slash feed reader opens to the public. We previously covered it’s private beta and updated you with changes and new features of the service.

Regator is not just unique because of its ability to serve a wide spectrum of users, it also has an unexpected method of selecting its content: human power. The thousands of blogs featured on Regator have been hand-selected and categorized by the editorial team for their quality writing, original content, frequent updates, and relevance. “We sort through the junk, so you don’t have to,” says editorial director and co-founder Kimberly Turner. Regator’s category structure, search options, and selectivity make it easy to find the things you need-and fun to discover things you never knew you wanted.

Check out the free service now.

Tags: blog aggregator, feed reader, regator

Feedly: A Social Start Page for FireFox 3

Feedly is a Firefox Add-on, news/ RSS aggregator, feed reader, social networking site and a browser start page all rolled into a magazine style page. This is a new concept in news reading and sharing them with your friends. The idea basically sums up to reading news and RSS feeds from your favorite blogs and do social networking on the start page of your Firefox browser. It’s like a do it all in one page social networking Firefox add-on. Whew.

You can apply Firefox Live bookmarks, My Yahoo!, Bloglines, Netvibes, Twitter, Yahoo Mail, Gmail and Friendfeed to your Feedly. A personalized Google search bar is provided which makes searching your feeds easier. You can save for later, annotate, recommend, email, tweet and preview an article in your feedly account. The annotation tool lets you highlight sections of text, write a side note, and share that particular section with friends or search for related topics.

The wall feature is a place in Feedly where you can see the recommendations and annotations from your friends. And there is a screen saver feature that flashes the Title and Image/video thumbnails (if any) from each article. It’s not very useful but I have to admit that it’s quite cool. Check out the screenshot below.

Feedly is also integrated with Google Reader so any subscriptions you add to Feedly will be added to Google Reader, any article you read or recommend in Feedly will be marked as read and shared in Google Reader and vice versa. There is also a recommendation portion in Feedly where they suggest related articles based on your selected feeds.

Feedly is an entirely unique and interesting way of reading feeds and social networking, maybe even better than iGoogle. To use Feedly, you need to install the Firefox add-on and login to your Gmail account. Give it a try and see how it goes.

Tags: feed reader, feedy, Firefox, news aggregator, RSS, Social Networking, social site