RSS Reader: JetBrains OmeaPro

How do you keep yourself updated with news especially when so many things are floating around? The simple answer to this question would be to get yourself acquainted with RSS (Really Simple Syndication). RSS basically transforms the way you approach news. Instead of you going in search of news, news will come to you and from the sources that you want. For a introduction to RSS please see this post.  

JetBrains OmeaPro is one of the best feedreaders around. It is ranked at the top in the 3 among the best RSS readers and at the top as the best free RSS reader.

OmeaPro can scan hundreds of blogs and news items every day. It has most of the features that you would look for in a RSS reader. Two things I would want it to have

- Synchronization capabilities

- Relationship among news items.

 

OmeaPro has many other features in addition to feed reading capabilities. It can help you manage bookmarks, Usenet, manage to-do lists etc. But, in this post I will only talk about the RSS reader.

OmeaPro became Free from December 4th 2006. You need to get a key from the website which is pretty simple thing to do.

First Look

Once you install OmeaPro and launch it, you will see a tab on top which says

These are all the things that you can manage with OmeaPro. I use it to manage my feeds, but if you are interested then it can even manage your mails from Outlook. From now on, I will refer only to the Feeds section.

The Feeds section has 4 areas which are very helpful. These areas are “Views and Categories“, “Feeds“, “Post information” and “Detailed post“. It also offers  you the choice to have preview pane on the right or at the bottom or view the feeds in the newspaper mode. The picture below shows the exact location of each and every section. I prefer having the Preview pane at the bottom of the screen.

The “Views and Categories” section is one of the most useful and powerful sections in Omea. By default, Omea classifies feeds according to Date and groups them as “Today”, “Yesterday” etc. This is a really useful feature to have in case you are starting your feedreader after a week or so. Most of the feedreaders require you to construct Smartfeeds to get this done. This section also has headings like “Flagged“, “Annotated“, “Clippings“ and “Categories“. Basically, a post can be tagged, annotated, clipped or categorized and once you have done that you can go here and retrieve them.

I find flagging and categories more important than the other two features. Categorization allows me to quickly filter through articles and also refer to similar articles on the same kind of topics. Reading the feeds becomes faster when you use categories to find what you want. Likewise, I use flagging the articles to show their importance or if action has to be taken based on them. Categories is similar to tags but you cannot use the tags specified in the post for finding similar feeds.

 

Start Feedreading

To get started with feed reading, you need to have some feeds. The file format which feedreaders use for these feeds is OPML and if you have an OPML file, then you can just Import your feeds. (File->Import Feed subscriptions). Once you have done that, you are all set to start unleashing the power of the Omea Feedreader. If you don’t have an OPML file, then you can use the Subscribe to Feed option to start Feedreading. (Tools->Subscribe to Feed). Once the successful import of your feeds is completed, you will see the “Feeds” section to contain the feeds. Omea will retain the directory structure in which the feeds were stored.

Omea lets you have granular control over the feeds. You can specify the interval of feed updation, feed expiration rules and also properties like “Marking the feed read” when you move to the next feed or folder.

In case, the feed requires “Authorization” then you can specify the login and password under the Settings section of Properties. Some of the other features are:

- Show the total unread feed count

- Pause feed updation

- Directly open the feed home page

- Update a single feed alone

- Notify if messages arrive in a feed

There are lot more features that are available and can be explored.

Configuration

If you are someone who is happy with just basic Feedreading, then no configuration will be required. But, if you want to customize some of the features, then go to Tools-> Options.

Some of the important configurations that have to be done are:

- When to Mark items Read

- Search results display

- Whether Omea should minimize to the system tray (I prefer a normal close and open)

- Whether Omea should open web pages in the default browser or inside the application (I prefer the default browser. I would like the option of don’t switch to the browser once the page is opened. But, it is not available.)

In case, you are behind a Proxy server, then specify the Proxy Server address and authentication, if required under the Proxy Configuration tab.

Once you are done with the General Configuration, you can slightly customize the way you read Feeds.

Some of the important configurations that can be done are:

- Set the feed update interval

- Feed update timeout (Change this to 120 if you are using a dialup connection)

- Feed expiration rules

- Desktop alerts

 

If you have come this far and followed the configuration, Congratulations you are all set to read feeds using Omea.

Special features

The best keyboard shortcut that I have found in Omea is the usage of “Spacebar” for moving to the next new feed. And it is pretty smart in the way it does that. A lot of feedreaders use the Spacebar to move to the next unread feed, but the difference from Omea is that in Omea when you press spacebar, it will move to the next feed only if the current post can be displayed within a single page. If the current post cannot be displayed within a single page, then it first goes to the second page in the current page and so on and only after it has gone to the end of the post, it moves to the next feed. So, you don’t require to use the Arrow keys to move down in a post. Most of the normal keyboard shortcuts work with Omea. ‘F5′ is for refresh, ‘F11′ is for full screen view etc.

The Search facility offered by Omea is also pretty advanced. You can specify conditions and exceptions to every search which can get you pretty accurate results. You can also use the search bar provided at the top of the screen for quick searches.

 

 

You can also set Expiration rules for feeds, which will lead to scheduled cleanups. This will be useful, if you have a lot of feeds and the database has become so large that Omea becomes slightly slower. This rule setting is also powerful as you can specify conditions under which expiration should be run.

Some other things are:

- Toolbar for Firefox/IE for faster subscriptions to feeds.

- Forward a Post using the default mail client

- Blog This option (Configuration of a blog client is required)

- Organize feeds into folders (the normal view )

- Import subscription from Bloglines

There are many more things that you can try with OmeaPro and it will take a few hours to go through all the features. But, if you are comfortable using the features listed above, then you will find using Omea a breeze.

So, what to look for in a RSS reader apart from what is mentioned above? It should offer you Mobility, synchronization, maybe it should be cross-platform like RSS Owl etc. There are some readers out there which do that, but I have found OmeaPro to be the best among the free readers. I never really used Feeddemon or Newzcrawler for a long time to talk about it comprehensively and anyway they are paid software. Earlier I was using Newzie, but I moved to Omea again as Newzie started becoming really slow when the number of feeds increased.

I don’t know if OmeaPro is being actively developed now as I don’t see any activity for the last 6 months. Anyway, what is existing itself is pretty powerful to handle my requirements for quite sometime.

Omea Homepage

Download OmeaPro 2.2 (Size: 6.8MB)

Alternatively, you can also download OmeaReader. (Size: 5MB)

More Screenshots

Feature list

Technorati tags: Jetbrains, OmeaPro, Omea, RSS, RSS Reader, Newzie, Feeddemon

Application Launcher: Objectdock

Ever wanted a Max OS like dock on your desktop rather than the dull start menu? Well, it that is the case, then Objectdock is a good answer for that. There are many applications that are floating around, but I have found Objectdock to work the best. I will write about Rocketdock and RKLauncher some other time as I don’t use these often. This sort of an organization gives you better control over the applications and also de-clutters the desktop.

I have been using Objectdock for quite a few months now and whomever I have introduced it to have liked it. It has a slick interface, zoom effects, nice visual appearance, ability to hide off the screen when not in use etc.

Installation 

Download the software from Stardock‘s website (end of the post has details for download). The on-screen instructions during installation are simple and suffice for the installation process. Once you are done with the installation, launch the application thru’ the start menu or quick launch. (Well, you have to use the start menu at this stage. )

You will see a application launched which is similar in appearance to the picture above.  Voila, you have launched Objectdock and you can slowly start forgetting about the Start Menu.

Configuration

If you use the standard Microsoft applications, then you might not need much configuration to Objectdock. However, if you use applications that are not part of a standard Desktop PC (Windows + Office), then a little bit of configuration is required while adding shortcuts. (Right click on the dock-> Add-> New Shortcut)

A few others things which might be of interest are:

- Positioning: You can choose where you want the dock to exist (or hide). I prefer having the dock on the Top of the screen rather than on the bottom. You can also configure the dock to “Hide off the screen when not in use”.

 

 

 

- Effects: You can configure the icons to have a Zoom effect when you move the mouse over them. Personally, I feel this is quite an distraction, but if you like it then you will see a screen like this

Objectdock comes bundled with some docklets and you can also add your own. If also has a Startmenu launcher, in case you want to have the Startmenu access from the dock.

A couple of other configurations that might be useful:

- Choose the dock to display currently running applications (In the configuration window, choose the Dock Contents option and then check the appropriate button).

- You can choose the magnification size of the icon (if you are using the Zoom effect).

It consumes about 5MB of memory when it is in idle state and around 6.5MB of memory when it is invoked.

Overall, this is a good tool to have if you are tired of the start menu or have a cluttered desktop with application shortcuts all over the place.

Objectdock

Download Objectdock (free version) (Size: 12MB Latest version: v1.9)

Feature comparison with paid version

List of Features

Technorati tags: Desktop, Application launcher, Objectdock, Stardock, Software

Taskbar Rearranger: Taskbar Reshuffle

Ever wanted to rearrange the program that you have minimized to the Taskbar into groups or just put similar programs next to each other. If you wanted to, then Taskbar Reshuffle is for you. The biggest advantage of tabbed browsing is the ability to arrange tabs into groups and this facility just got extended to the Windows Desktop with Taskbar Reshuffle. There are many other programs to do this, but I found this to be really efficient and above all it is FREE.

Have a look at this picture, in case you haven’t understood what I mean by reshuffling in the Taskbar.

I am trying to move the file BB-Access-Tech.PDF from the 3rd position to the 4th position on the Taskbar.

This is one of the simplest programs to use. Download -> Install -> Run -> Start moving items on your Taskbar. In case, you want to move items on your system tray also, then hold the ‘CTRL’ key and then move the items as you want. This is pretty efficient compared to some other programs that I have used and occupies only around 5MB of memory.

A little bit of configuration can be done, if you feel that something is not correct with the default settings. (Right Click on the icon -> Settings)

I have left things to default. If you feel that holding some other key other than the CTRL key will be effective then change it. Other than that I don’t see a reason to change settings.

Homepage

Download Taskbar Reshuffle (Size:630KB)

Download the standalone version

If you have any questions, then you can post it to the mailing list or have a look at the forum. The links can be found on the Homepage.

Technorati tags: Taskbar, Taskbar Reshuffle, Windows, Desktop

Application Launcher: 8Start Launcher

8start Launcher is a free application launcher. I have always wanted a launcher program that is non-intrusive, doesn’t take time to load and also doesn’t clutter the desktop. Too many shortcuts on the desktop make the system slightly slower, too many programs in the start menu leads to longer time for the start menu to load and quick launch is not equipped to handle a lot of shortcuts unless you want to have a taskbar three times the size of a normal taskbar.

There are lots of application launchers around and any download site will give you a few good ones. I liked Slideslide, Rocketdock and Objectdock, but was finding them intrusive as they would show up every now and then when the mouse goes near the edges on the right hand side of my screen. The advantage of having an application that sits on the side of the screen is that it can be faster, but the disadvantage is that it can become intrusive. I should start trying the launchers which are keyboard based, but I am not too worried about any degradation in system performance by running another graphical application at this moment. So, for now I am sticking with 8start.

8start launcher is a portable application launcher which helps you remove the clutter from the desktop and also ensures that you have quick access to all the applications you want. It doesn’t sit on the desktop like some of the other launchers, but is launched using Middle Click or from the system tray. In that aspect, it might be slightly slower compared to some of the other applications, but as far as access to applications is concerned it is really quick.

On the left is a picture of the 8start launcher. Launching applications is intuitive once you have done the initial setup. It offers Categorization of the application and you can also put them into groups. It doesn’t limit the number of applications that can be added, but I prefer to keep the row size at 5 icons as anything more than that becomes difficult to handle from a usability perspective.

Put the applications that you use most near the centre of the launcher. This can save you time if you invoke the launcher using the middle-click of the mouse.

This is the configuration window of the 8start launcher. At first, it might be confusing, but play around a little bit and it becomes very easy to add applications. It offers the facility to add Groups, Categories and Applications. You can select which Group and Category each and every application should fall. You can also have folder shortcuts under the categories. By default it starts with My Computer group showing the C and D drivers for launch.

 

 

 

8start launcher also offers the facility to launch the application in different ways. You can either use ‘Double Click/Hold the middle button’ or ‘Single Click’ or Hotkeys to launch this application. I found the ‘Holding the middle button’ to be the most useful method as it required least effort to launch. There are a couple of more settings, but you can leave it to default.

 

 

 

 

You can also change the Skin of the launcher. Personally, I have found the default skin to be the best so far. I use 8start Black Glass skin. The Vista skin looks decent, but my preference is still with the default.

 

 

 

 

 

The complete list of features: (taken from 8start.com)

- Organize shortcuts into groups and categories

- Accessed by system tray, hotkey and middle mouse

- Create and manage buttons fast and easy. Shortcuts, URL favorites, files, folder, and application link can be defined easily

- Launch applications and files fast and intuitive

- Keeps the desktop clean, no more shortcuts block the view of your wallpaper

- Portable with relative path defined supported, can be run in flash drive or install in harddisk.

- Show program name / description when mouse over the icon

- Quick access to the drive content by click the drive letter

- Changeable skin with transparency png format supported, 30+ beautiful skins available for download

- Able to use picture files .jpg, .png, .ico, .bmp, .gif as button icon

- Individual customizable button style. Link to the application, favorite documents, music files, folders…. intuitively by apply the most suitable style

- Auto download website favicon to local for URL type button. URL icon still available if the Internet cached have been deleted.

- Launcher auto shrink to fit number of icons

- Whole new concept of launching your applications and files

- Run on Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista

Homepage

8start Launcher (File size is around 520Kb)

Additional Skins

I will write about other application launchers that I have tried in a few days.

Technorati tags: Software, Launcher, 8start launcher, 8start