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Alertbear - the *different* RSS reader - free!

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brotherS:
Please discuss "GreatNews vs. FeedDemon" in https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=502.0

Thanks :)

moerl:
Is FeedDemon really that good?  I've played with it quite a bit, but I wasn't sure at the end of all that whether it was any better than GreatNews (at many times the price!).  Again, I thought it ran quite heavy, which I really don't need in a feed reader...
-m_s (March 28, 2006, 03:58 AM)
--- End quote ---
I never noticed any heaviness on my end. It starts up fast, is responsive, shuts down fast... and I think it really is that good. It just has great features speaking for themselves.. Automatic Watches, Group Newspaper (by far the coolest feature), internal browser with automatic feed-detection, many different display styles for group newspaper, etc. It really makes reading RSS Feeds FAR more efficient. What may have taken you 30min before will take you less than 10min with FeedDemon :)

There was a good discussion between brotherS and me yesterday in the IRC channel, where I explained to him the benefits of FeedDemon and he was all for AlertBear. I concluded that THE ULTIMATE NEWSREADER would be the combination and merging of AlertBear and FeedDemon. AlertBear could provide the River of News aspect by sitting in the tray and letting news flow by as the user sits on the computer, and FeedDemon would be the on-demand full-blown and excellent Feedreader, which would be used to read up on any news that were missed while you were not at the computer. That brings me to what I identified as AlertBear's main problem: if the idea behind it is to have a constantly updated river of news, what happens when you spend a whole day out? You miss all the news of the day! And even if you're thinking of being able to PAUSE the news stream in AlertBear and then press PLAY when you return, just imagine how many bubbles you would end up with with AlertBear if it had to display all the news of one day at once... on the other hand, AlertBear may really cut down the time you spend on RSS daily in general with the River of News concept. Think about it.. with an RSS Reader like FeedDemon or Greatnews, you will basically be out all day, on the job or whatever, only to then return to your machine, open up the Feedreader and be flooded with news. Then you have to go through each feed and read it all. Although this is exactly where FeedDemon EXCELS because of its Group Newspaper feature, cutting down the time it takes to read feeds this way tremendously, it still will take much longer than if you had seen the same amount of news flowing by a la AlertBear. That's why I said.. the ultimate newsreader = FD+AB :), AB for while you're at the computer, FD for anything that was missed.

brotherS:
That brings me to what I identified as AlertBear's main problem: if the idea behind it is to have a constantly updated river of news, what happens when you spend a whole day out? You miss all the news of the day! And even if you're thinking of being able to PAUSE the news stream in AlertBear and then press PLAY when you return, just imagine how many bubbles you would end up with with AlertBear if it had to display all the news of one day at once... on the other hand, AlertBear may really cut down the time you spend on RSS daily in general with the River of News concept.
-moerl (March 28, 2006, 07:11 AM)
--- End quote ---
Alertbear doesn't work like that, there's no PAUSE button. But you can bring up the stack (see screenshot in the first post above) at any time (by assigning a keyboard hotkey or by clicking the tray icon) to scroll 'back and forth in time'.

The tray icon also offers a "show history" entry, which will bring you to a more standard (old-fashioned) interface where you can sort and filter the feeds. Anyone vaguely into RSS feeds should really install and try it for 3 days, then you'll get a *real* idea about it!
:)

moerl:
Alertbear doesn't work like that, there's no PAUSE button. But you can bring up the stack (see screenshot in the first post above) at any time (by assigning a keyboard hotkey or by clicking the tray icon) to scroll 'back and forth in time'.

The tray icon also offers a "show history" entry, which will bring you to a more standard (old-fashioned) interface where you can sort and filter the feeds. Anyone vaguely into RSS feeds should really install and try it for 3 days, then you'll get a *real* idea about it!
:)

-brotherS (March 28, 2006, 10:10 AM)
--- End quote ---
I know AlertBear doesn't have that feature. I was referring to an idea jgpaiva came up in DC's IRC channel ;). You're right. While I do believe I have a good idea of how AlertBear works, I should certainly try it out first before judging it, which, admittedly, I have not done yet.

brotherS:
While I do believe I have a good idea of how AlertBear works, I should certainly try it out first before judging it, which, admittedly, I have not done yet.
-moerl (March 28, 2006, 10:13 AM)
--- End quote ---
"Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one's thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world." -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Lets see how many DC users act and try it for a few days :)

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