Plane 2
RSS Readers
I’m a bit slow. I’m just now getting into the whole RSS reader thing. I’ve had my photoblog running for about 8 months which has a RSS feed and we’ve been doing the MIS Guys site for a couple of months and haven’t really even kept an eye on the RSS side of things. I’ve tried a couple of readers in the past but just couldn’t get into them. I sat down and decided to find a good one and here are the results.
I tried some that are embedded in Firefox, a couple that are embedded in Outlook and the rest as stand alone versions. So far my favorite is JetBrains Omea Reader. It is really sharp looking and it’s free! It has a cool newspaper view that I have turned on so that the posts for the RSS feed look more like a webpage instead of a bunch of seperate posts. This reader also handled enclosures well. Enclosures are kind of like attachments to RSS posts. For instance This Week In Tech is an excellent tech podcast and their RSS contains the enclosure for the MP3 of the poscast. Omea Reader made it really easy to find and download the MP3 for their recent posts.
I also tried NewsMonster. It is embedded into Firefox or IE. It looked good from their website and the screenshots. However, it crashed my Firefox and I had to delete my profile and set it all back up. In all fairness, it might have been my Firefox or my computer. But, I didn’t feel like spending time trying it again so I went on to a different one.
FeedDemon was the next reader I tried. I liked it but the Omea Reader is just as good and free. Ever the cheap person I am, free wins the day.
FeedReader came in second because like the Omea Reader it is also free. FeedReader worked well and looks sharp and I am still running it along side the Omea Reader to see if there is anything about it I like more. One thing about it was there was nothing that clearly let me know there was an enclosure on posts. If you double click on a post it would prompt you to save the enclosure but until you did so you didn’t know one was there.
I didn’t try it but Pluck looks good as well, but it’s a in-browser addin for Firefox and or IE.
NewsGator works well but it is basically a web service and I want to be able to use an RSS reader on a portable machine that might not be connected to a network. This is actually good if all you want to do is read the RSS feeds on computers that are always connected to the web. The other benefit of this is that you don’t have to setup all of the RSS feeds on other computers you want to use because your preferences are stored on their servers. So, mobility beats out and JetBrains Omea Reader is my choice for now.
There are many other readers out there and I didn’t spend a huge amount of time looking into them all. Let me know if you have other suggestions as I’d like to try some more readers.
Flying
Opinion time…with or without grain.
Wrong direction
Missouri countryside
This isn’t as good as Kathleen’s excellent photography from A Walk Through Durham Township, Pennsylvania but it does show some of the excellent colors surrounding us here. On another note check out my recent post on my blog and let me know what you think. I’m reading a biography on Ansel Adams and read an interesting statement.
Missouri countryside
I accidently posted two pictures today, so act surprised tommorrow if you already saw the other one. On another note check out my recent post on my blog and let me know what you think. I’m reading a biography on Ansel Adams and read an interesting statement.
Ansel Adams
I’m reading a biography about Ansel Adams by Mary Street Alinder. I’m in no way aspiring to match or come close to Ansel’s photography skills, but I read a statement in the book that made me smile. “…when Ansel reached the peak of technical proficiency, he never made a perfect negative. Either some edge needed slight cropping or a rock or some other element had to be darkened by burning. There was always something.” There is hope for me yet. :) (The above image is one of Ansel’s incredible shots.
Red Tree
Contemplating the meaning of life
Inspiration
It’s definitely fall. The trees are changing all around us. Missouri is certainly a great place to experience a broad range of wonderful colors. I think this year I am more sensitive to the colors because it’s the first fall to go through where I tend to look around and see photographic opportunities even when I don’t have my camera. I purchased my Nikon D70 last December and shooting with a DSLR is different than your normal point and shoot variety. You know you have the photography bug when everywhere you turn you are thinking…”that would be a cool shot….oh, that would be a cool shot.” It’s cool how looking at other people’s photoblogs tends to fuel me on as well. Every now and then I think, why am I concerned with taking pictures and putting them on the web? I get no monetary return on the hours and hours of time spent looking for that perfect shot. But then I look at a shot that someone posts and I think “I want to go take pictures.” Sakana (I think that’s his name) got me thinking that tonight as I browsed his shots. Sometimes the things that make us happy and give us joy have nothing to do with making money.
On another note I was reading Ephesians 3 and found these verses to be really good. Eph3:17 & 18 “And I pray that Christ will be more and more at home in your hearts as you trust in him. May your roots go down deep into the soil of God’s marvelous love. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love really is.”
Wow
- Camera: NIKON D70
- Taken: 22 October, 2005
- Aperture: ƒ/5.6
- Focal length: 300mm
- Shutter speed: 1/1000s