Nick Bradbury

About a year ago, I wrote about how link blogs are attention streams. The premise behind that post was that while attention algorithms can uncover what people are paying attention to, the articles people are sharing provide an even better way of determining their attention. As I mentioned in that post, seeing what other people are paying attention to has... [read more]

Techmeme now supports returning search results as RSS, so I’ve updated FeedDemon’s Techmeme search definition to enable quickly subscribing to Techmeme search feeds in FeedDemon. Here's how to use it: View this page in FeedDemon, then click here to install the updated Techmeme search definition Click the Subscribe button, then type the keyword you wish to search for and click... [read more]

Now that Techmeme (finally!) has a search feature, I figured I'd create a search definition which enables searching Techmeme from within FeedDemon. Here's how to use it: View this page in FeedDemon, then click here to install the Techmeme search definition Click the down arrow on FeedDemon's search toolbutton (it's on the far right of the address bar, as shown... [read more]

The final release of FeedDemon 2.7 (which was called FeedDemon 2.6.1 during the beta period) is now available As you can see from the release notes, there aren't many big new features in this version - unless, of course, you count speed as a feature :) The most significant change in version 2.7 is that it's much faster in many... [read more]

Rick Segal believes that the "panic button" makes FeedDemon sticky: "By putting this feature into the service, it can potentially prevent me from getting frustrated via the overwhelming inbound amount of reading to do which might cause me to throw up my hands, uninstall it and try something else." Although I wouldn't say that my primary goal when adding this... [read more]

FeedDemon's shared clippings enable you to easily share your favorite items from feeds you're subscribed to, but what do you do if you want to share an article that's not in one of your feeds? For example, how do you share an interesting article that you stumbled across while browsing the Web? Luckily, FeedDemon enables you to share any article,... [read more]

Last week's posts which provided FeedDemon "search definitions" for FriendFeed and Tweet Scan were fairly well-received, so I figured it would be worthwhile describing how search definitions work. If you open FeedDemon's Data\Search\ subfolder in Windows Explorer you'll find several FDSRCH2 files, each of which defines a separate search engine. The FDSRCH2 format is based on OpenSearch, which is the... [read more]

In the comments to yesterday's post about Tweet Scan, Amit Agarwal suggested using FriendFeed to track product mentions and other interesting discussions. So I created a FriendFeed "search definition" for FeedDemon to simplify subscribing to FriendFeed searches. Here's how to use it: View this page in FeedDemon, then click here to install the FriendFeed search definition Click the Subscribe button,... [read more]

Twitter doesn't have its own full-text search feature, but luckily there are third parties meeting this need. Tweet Scan is the one I use - it's a great way to find out when someone tweets about FeedDemon or TopStyle, especially since I can get the search results as an RSS feed. FeedDemon customers can simplify the process of subscribing to... [read more]

The first beta of FeedDemon 2.6.1 was kept fairly quiet, but I'm done keeping quiet now that beta 2 is out :) Version 2.6.1 is primarily a bugfix release, but it also contains some nice improvements: "Find Feeds" now enables subscribing to multiple feeds at once Clippings folders that have an RSS feed now have an RSS icon overlaid on... [read more]

I've been in the coding dungeon lately, which explains why I haven't posted for a while. One of the things I'm working on is moving some of FeedDemon's data out of XML and into SQLite, which I didn't think would be a big deal since I spent a few years working with SQL before I entered the world of indie... [read more]

Among the most frequent requests we receive from FeedDemon customers is to enable using Mozilla/Firefox as the embedded browser, and this is something I would love to offer. Unfortunately, I don't see how this is possible. Some history is required here. Several years ago, Adam Lock created an ActiveX control wrapper for the Mozilla rendering engine (AKA: "Gecko"), and TopStyle... [read more]

In my previous post, I asked for recommendations on a new name for FeedDemon's "Next" button. A lot of great suggestions were made in the 40+ comments to that post, so I've created a poll in the FeedDemon forums where you can vote for the name you like best. If you have a preference for the new name, please cast... [read more]

A few weeks ago, I blogged about how FeedDemon's "Next" button helps you quickly blast through your unread items: "This unassuming button marks every article on the current page as read, and then moves to the next page that contains unread articles. If there aren't anymore unread articles in the current feed, this button automatically moves to the next feed... [read more]

OK, but this is it! You can... ...in the address bar, type define: followed by a keyword to get a definition of that keyword (ex: define:spam) ...toggle which actions to confirm by clicking the "Confirmations" button in FeedDemon's options ...move between browser tabs by pressing CTRL+TAB and SHIFT+CTRL+TAB ...copy a feed URL to the clipboard by right-clicking the feed, then... [read more]

Yes, there are still more! In addition to the FeedDemon tips listed in part 1 and part 2 of this series, you can also: ...hide your subscriptions by pressing Ctrl+F11 ...assign keyboard shortcuts to many features by pressing Ctrl+K ...prevent older articles from appearing in a feed by enabling the "Ignore new items older than" setting on the Advanced tab... [read more]

In the previous post I shared 10 Tiny FeedDemon Tips, but there are plenty more. For example, you can: ...find any feed you're subscribed to by selecting "Keyword View" from the Views drop-down above your subscriptions ...find new feeds by clicking "Subscribe" and then typing a keyword instead of a feed URL ...change the search provider by clicking the arrow... [read more]

Every piece of software has them: those tiny little features that few people know about yet aren't substantial enough to blog about all by themselves. FeedDemon is no different - for starters, you can: ...hold CTRL while clicking a hyperlink to open it in a new browser tab ...hold CTRL while scrolling the mouse wheel to change the browser's font... [read more]

If you're new to FeedDemon, you might not know that you can use it to download podcasts (AKA: "enclosures") and sync them with iTunes. When an article has a podcast associated with it, a paperclip icon will appear beneath its title, as illustrated by this screen shot: Clicking this icon adds the podcast to FeedStation (a free "podcatcher" that's bundled... [read more]

One of FeedDemon's lesser-known features is its support for Media RSS thumbnails, which are used in a number of RSS feeds, including those from Flickr. When FeedDemon displays Media RSS feeds, it extracts the thumbnails and shows them in a banner along the top, like this: Navigating to the full-size photo on Flickr's site is as simple as clicking one... [read more]

When people first use FeedDemon, they often treat their unread articles the same as they do their unread email. They read every single article, and only mark them as read after they've actually looked at them. But after they use FeedDemon for a while, it dawns on them that reading feeds isn't the same as reading email. They don't have... [read more]

If you've used FeedDemon for a while, you're probably familiar with the "Send To" menu, which enables sending a post to an external service such as Digg or del.icio.us. But you probably don't know that you can extend this menu (because, well, I've never mentioned it before!). Each external service in this menu is contained in its own XML file... [read more]

Among the trickier things in software development is getting your application translated into different languages. Beyond making sure you provide enough white space in your UI for longer strings of translated text, simply getting your app localized can be an awful lot of effort, and it often causes your product to be delayed while the translators do their work. The... [read more]

Jake Ludington put together a nice screencast which demonstrates how to save time with FeedDemon's prefetching and watch features. Thanks, Jake! View the screencast [read more]

Wow - the response to the new, free FeedDemon 2.6 has been tremendous! I hope you'll forgive me a little self-promotion, but I wanted to share a sampling of the reaction to the new release... Development on a Shoestring: "You need to download FeedDemon now! I don’t care what other RSS reader you use, this one is better. The only... [read more]

Amazing. I've already spotted several warez sites that offer supposedly cracked versions of FeedDemon 2.6, despite the fact that FeedDemon is now free. That's right, folks - instead of safely downloading the free version from our site, you can download it from a warez site, where it may come with all sorts of bonus payloads! [read more]

...is that it's easy to dismiss what people want, because they're not giving you money for it. Sure, I enjoy making money as much as the next guy or gal, but I'm really doing this because it's fun. I like writing software, and I'm going to keep writing it until my fingers break off. There's no point in creating software... [read more]

Among the many responses to yesterday's announcement about FeedDemon being free, I spotted a number of people asking why anyone would use a desktop RSS reader. These comments generally focused on two points: Web-based readers are also free, and unlike desktop apps, you can access them from anywhere Desktop readers have to constantly retrieve feeds, causing unnecessary bandwidth burden on... [read more]

That's right, FeedDemon is now free. As in, you don't have to pay for it anymore. Just download it and use it free of charge. And we're also making NetNewsWire, NewsGator Inbox and NewsGator Go free. In other words, all of NewsGator's consumer RSS readers are free. If you don't care about the details, you can stop reading now and... [read more]

Amit Agarwal highlights 10 features in FeedDemon that set it apart from the competition. Thanks, Amit! PS: I know my blog has been quiet for a while - it's because there's a new version of FeedDemon coming this week :) [read more]

The fourth release candidate of FeedDemon 2.6 is now available - for download details and release notes, stop by the FeedDemon Beta Site. [read more]

In a recent blog comment, Paul M. Watson asked: "I'd be interested in more detail on how you compute the scores [which determine a feed's attention]. Nothing that gives away your competitive edge of course but just some generalizations of what you are tracking that amounts to attention." FeedDemon's algorithm for determining a feed's attention rank has changed since I... [read more]

Where do you get your ideas? In my case, ideas for new features often come to me when I'm away from the keyboard. For example, the idea for FeedDemon's new "panic button" - which appears to be a popular feature - popped into my head in the unlikeliest of places. I'm embarrassed to admit it, but the "panic button" idea... [read more]

The second release candidate of FeedDemon 2.6 is now available. Changes since RC1 include: New Panic Button optionally warns when you have a ton of unread items and offers to mark them (or a subset of them) as read "Export Subscriptions" now enables exporting as APML (experimental) Faster updating of feeds (much faster, in some cases) Feed reports (Attention report,... [read more]

If you've been reading feeds for a while, chances are you've experienced feed overload. It happens to the best of us. Perhaps we take a break for a day or two, and when we come back to our aggregator we find hundreds of unread items waiting for us. Even though we don't have to read them all, we're so used... [read more]

My friend Rex Hammock writes about FeedDemon's "Popular Topics": "The FeedDemon feature is, in effect, a meme-tracker. However, instead of analyzing news stories and relevant blog posts that are being linked to by a mysterious universe of topical-bloggers (or folks trying to game it), the feature analyzes the stories that are being linked to by those in a network of... [read more]

Although I haven't mentioned it here in my blog, FeedDemon 2.6 has been in beta for several weeks. Now that the first release candidate of FeedDemon 2.6 is out, it's finally time to blog about it. As you can see from the release notes, there are a lot of changes in v2.6. Some of these changes - such as the... [read more]

Just noticed that Dave Winer is wondering which feed readers support the RSS 2.0 comments element, so I thought I'd chime in and mention that FeedDemon is among the many aggregators which support it. When an item contains a comments element, FeedDemon displays a "comment bubble" icon which links to the page containing the comments for that item. In addition... [read more]

One of the features I've been planning to add to the upcoming FeedDemon 2.6 is an inline search toolbar similar to the one in Firefox, and I'm pleased to announce that I've finally coded it. But it was harder that I anticipated, primarily due to a weird IE bug (more about that later). In the current version of FeedDemon, hitting... [read more]

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you probably know that attention is a recurring theme here. I've long been convinced that RSS aggregators can help people overcome information overload by first paying attention to what a user is reading, and then using that information to make better decisions about what might (or might not) be important to that... [read more]

Earlier this week, Nick Harris blogged about the "My Reading Habits" feature he's adding to the next version of NewsGator Inbox (which, btw, is shaping up to be an excellent release). This simple report gives an overview of the attention you're spending on each of your subscriptions. It's a pretty cool feature, which is why it's also being added to... [read more]

Earlier this week I wrote about sanitizing CSS, and I've been thinking about it a bit more. Like many RSS aggregators, for security and presentation reasons the current version of FeedDemon strips all inline styles before displaying a feed, and I thought this was the best approach. But after seeing the Wikipedia feed that Sam Ruby pointed me to, I'm... [read more]

This week SharewareRadio.com is featuring an interview with me that was held at SIC 2007. BTW, after listening to this, I've decided that I hate hearing myself talk - I sound like I'm speaking through a very large nose :) [read more]

Adrian Sutton blogs about the lack of CSS support in RSS aggregators, and concludes: "There has been a huge push in recent years to move away from the old habits of early HTML and to leverage CSS for presentation - the fact that it doesn't work in feed readers is a major pain for people trying to do the right... [read more]

Scoble (who is so well known among bloggers that he doesn't have a first name anymore) writes about information overload today. One of the points he makes is that he's subscribed to so many feeds that it would be impossible to read them all if he had only 10 minutes a day to catch up on them. He'd like a... [read more]

One of the most popular additions to FeedDemon 2.5 was the ability to prefetch unread items, which downloads and caches your unread items so they're available offline. Not only does FeedDemon prefetch images in your unread items, but it also caches links to external web sites, enabling you to click a hyperlink which appears in an unread item and still... [read more]

I just returned from a short vacation and discovered that Rex Hammock beat me to the news that NewsGator has released a free RSS reader for the iPhone. If you'd like to try it out, just stop by: http://m.newsgator.com/ Because this is a NewsGator creation, your feeds and unread items will be synchronized across all of our applications (including FeedDemon).... [read more]

The week before FeedDemon 2.5 was announced, NewsGator's Leland Rucker interviewed me about its new features. If you'd like to listen in on the discussion, you can download the podcast here. PS: Subscribe to the NewsGator Podcasts feed for more interviews with NewsGator developers. [read more]

Over the past few days, I've highlighted some of the big additions to FeedDemon 2.5. But as you can see from the release notes, there are a ton of other new features. I can't possibly describe them all here, but there are a few I'd like to mention: "Dinosaur" report (lists feeds that haven't updated recently) [screenshot] "History of Auto-Discovered... [read more]

Online video has been taking off like crazy, but previous versions of FeedDemon have been stuck in the past because they prevented embedded videos from displaying in your subscriptions. Luckily, FeedDemon 2.5 corrects this. Now you can subscribe to video-enabled feeds and have their videos securely displayed within FeedDemon's newspaper view. Which means that if you're viewing this in a... [read more]

Watch a screencast about FeedDemon 2.5's Popular Topics One of my favorite things about FeedDemon is that it's a hybrid reader which combines the power of a desktop application with the data mobility of a web-based one. This also means that FeedDemon isn't limited to showing only desktop-based data - it can also show aggregated data from NewsGator Online. FeedDemon... [read more]

In the past, news bins have been limited by the fact that they're only available on your desktop, but FeedDemon 2.5 makes it possible to share a news bin as an RSS feed [read more]

>FeedDemon's offline support isn't something every customer uses, but those that need it absolutely love it. And they're going to love FeedDemon 2.5 even more, because it adds a host of new features aimed at making offline reading even better... [read more]

After months of coding and testing, FeedDemon 2.5 is finally here... [read more]

A couple months ago, my brother asked me if I'd be willing to sponsor a little league baseball team that he coached. I agreed to do it, provided that he made sure "FeedDemon" was written on their jerseys. Despite some initial concern about parents complaining that their kid was wearing a shirt with the word "demon" on it, he eventually... [read more]

FeedDemon 2.5 RC2 is now available. If all goes well, this will be the last build before v2.5 goes final. [read more]

I wasn't planning to put out the first release candidate of FeedDemon 2.5 until next week, but a problem with Silverlight needed to be fixed, so RC1 is being released early. If you'd like to get it, please stop by the FeedDemon Beta Site for details. [read more]

Earlier today we discovered a problem with the FeedDemon 2.5 beta that could cause it to crash when Microsoft Silverlight content is displayed in the embedded browser. I'm testing a solution for this right now, and expect to release an updated beta version later this week which includes the fix. For the record, this bug is caused by my code,... [read more]

Last week I sent über beta tester Andrew "Spyder" Herron a pre-beta version of FeedDemon 2.5, and among the new features he noticed was a per-feed setting that enables ignoring new items if they're older than a certain number of days (useful for buggy feeds that keep bringing back old items as new). Andrew made the point that this feature... [read more]

I'm subscribed to the feed for Robert Scoble's link blog, and I keep finding interesting posts in it. So I decided to create one of my own using the synchronized news bin feature that's coming in the next FeedDemon. If I find something that looks interesting, I'll add it to my synchronized news bin in FeedDemon, and it will then... [read more]

I used to rely on email, but it's almost useless to me now. Funny thing is, if it weren't for spam, I might not have created FeedDemon... [read more]

I'm taking the week off, but before I skip town, I wanted to leave a teaser of what's coming in the next FeedDemon. In addition to the features mentioned in the previous teaser, there are a couple of other noteworthy additions... [read more]

There's a nice review of FeedDemon in this month's Smart Computing: "I’ve used FeedDemon for years, but the recent 2.1 version NewsGator recently turned loose offers the best overall functionality, interface, and performance I’ve seen from an aggregator to date...I still subscribe to my local newspaper, but even if it published an edition 10 times a day, it couldn’t deliver... [read more]

Jason Calacanis just pointed to The Hype Machine, a free service which tracks MP3 blogs and builds a list of MP3 links that are downloadable by a podcatcher such as FeedStation. [read more]

Just noticed that there's a Wikipedia entry for FeedDemon. Right now it's just a stub, though, so it needs to be edited - and I can't do it, since I'm biased. So...is there a FeedDemon user out there who would like to update the entry? PS: The entry for HomeSite is great - I'm really pleased to see that the... [read more]

Kudos to NewsGator's Jonathon McDougall for taking the time to create a PDF version of FeedDemon 2.1's online help. [read more]

There has been some buzz this week about the new trends feature added to Google Reader. It is a nice feature, and it will be even better once it includes aggregated trends of all Google Reader users... [read more]

There will be a few minor FeedDemon releases before the next major version, but "minor" doesn't necessarily mean "small." In fact, the next minor release will include a few oft-requested features... [read more]

In this series of blog posts for developers, I've talked about simplifying your software by hiding non-essential features (or not adding them in the first place). But sometimes you can simplify your software by combining features. That may sound weird, but take a close look at your application and chances are you'll find some features that overlap. Look even closer... [read more]

One of the benefits of using a desktop RSS reader instead of a web-based one is that you can read your feeds offline - a major plus if you're frequently without a reliable Internet connection. FeedDemon is already a good offline reader, but I'd like to make it a great one. One thing that's annoying when working offline in the... [read more]

If you're a TopStyle or FeedDemon customer and you've ever contacted our support team, chances are you know who Jack Brewster is. A couple of years back, Jack was an avid poster to my support forums - and he was so helpful that I convinced NewsGator to hire him after they acquired my company. Jack has done an amazing job... [read more]

We're running a simple poll in our forums to find out which feature request is the most popular of all. If you're a FeedDemon user, please take a minute to let us know which feature you want the most. [read more]

Of all the new features in FeedDemon 2.1, the one I use the most is pretty well hidden (and I should probably correct that in the next release). The feature is "Mark page read and goto next page," which is accessed by hitting Ctrl+D. If you're more of a mouser than a keyboarder, you can add a toolbutton to the... [read more]

I'm pleased to announce that the final release of FeedDemon 2.1 is now available. Changes in FeedDemon 2.1 include: Pagination: FeedDemon's newspapers can now span multiple pages, which provides a significant performance boost when viewing a large number of items. Note that the number of articles per page can be customized on the Reading tab in FeedDemon's options. Popular Topics:... [read more]

FeedDemon 2.1 Release Candidate 2 is now available - and Glenn Slaven has already figured out how to tap into the new "Send To" feature. [read more]

I've just uploaded FeedDemon 2.1 Beta 3a, which corrects a few problems that people reported in yesterday's beta. To get it, just stop by the FeedDemon Beta Site. I've also updated the FeedDemon 2.1 Quick Reference Sheet to include the new keyboard shortcuts added in Beta 3. [read more]

Update 13-Nov-2006: The keyboard shortcuts listed below are no longer accurate. Please refer to the FeedDemon 2.1 Quick Reference Sheet for an up-to-date list of shortcuts. FeedDemon 2.1 Beta 3 is now available - and I think keyboard users are going to like it, because the main focus of this build was making FeedDemon better for keyboarders. Several web-based aggregators... [read more]

According to FeedDemon 2.1's "Popular Topics" feature, this week's big tech news is the release of Internet Explorer 7. I've tested both FeedDemon and TopStyle with the final release of IE7, and I'm glad to report that I didn't run into any problems. Surprisingly (to me, anyway), I've read a number of negative posts about IE7. Personally, I like IE7... [read more]

Just noticed that the IE7 Quick Reference Sheet has been updated, and figured I'd create one for FeedDemon 2.1. [read more]

Hey, looks like FeedDemon 2.0 received the Editor's Choice in CNET's RSS reader roundup. Nice! (Hmmm...wonder if they'd like FeedDemon 2.1 even more?) [read more]

I'm pleased to announce that FeedDemon 2.1 Beta 2a is now available. As you can see from the release notes, there are a lot of changes in FeedDemon 2.1, including: Pagination in the newspaper view. Popular Topics feature which shows the most frequently linked articles across your subscriptions. Redesigned subscription search Keyword highlighting in watches and subscription search results. Security... [read more]

When I designed FeedDemon 2.0 last year, one of my priorities was to completely overhaul how FeedDemon's newspapers work. The first thing I wanted to do was to enable newspapers to be much more interactive, so that you could mark posts as read, flagged, deleted, etc., from within the newspaper. That goal was accomplished, but I didn't meet my second... [read more]

I just installed Firefox 2 RC1, and was pleased to find how much better the feed handling is over Firefox 1.5. For obvious reasons, I was never wild about how Firefox 1.5 didn't enable choosing an external feed reader when subscribing to a feed. Firefox 2 gets it right and provides a simple way to choose your favorite feed reader.... [read more]

Sometimes the best way to solve a programming problem is to get away from the computer. See, I spent several hours yesterday struggling with a problem that just didn't want to be solved, and by the end of the day I was pretty frustrated. I was trying to add pagination to FeedDemon's newspapers, which should have been simple, but it... [read more]

So, truth be told, I'm kind of disappointed that RSS is still so tied to blogs. Yeah, it's great to know when my favorite blogs have new posts, but RSS offers so much more than that. I think of RSS as a non-intrusive alert system. It tells me about new stuff, which usually means new blog posts, but in my... [read more]

Want FeedDemon to bring you new YouTube videos related to a specific keyword? Here's how: View this page in FeedDemon 2, then click here to install the YouTube search definition. (NOTE: YouTube video search is built into FeedDemon 2.1, so you can skip this step unless you're using an older version of FeedDemon) Click the Subscribe button, then select "I... [read more]

If you're considering writing a tool which reads web feeds, you probably think you can focus on the user experience and rely on an off-the-shelf XML parser to do the grunt work of parsing RSS and Atom. Unfortunately, I'm about to piddle on that idea. When I created FeedDemon back in 2003, I quickly discovered that many feeds - including... [read more]

Glenn Slaven has written a handy tool which enables posting to Windows Live Writer from FeedDemon. Glenn, thanks for sharing this! PS: I'm planning to add native Live Writer support to the next version of FeedDemon. [read more]

So, who has the best score in the FeedDemon Easter egg? [read more]

Last month I promised to talk about the exploits that James Snell uncovered which left feed readers vulnerable to some very annoying script-based attacks. I didn't want to provide details of the exploits until other feed readers had patched them, but now that James has published his test suites, I figure it's time to open the kimono. But before I... [read more]

Andy "Spyder" Herron writes about the "personal memetracker" that's hidden in FeedDemon 2.0.0.25. I had hoped to complete this feature by now, but as Andy points out, it still needs some work (which is why I hid it and gave it a "beta" label). If you'd like to try it out, select "Popular Topics" from the Browse menu (or just... [read more]

Long-time FeedDemon user Jedi has created Chinese language files for FeedDemon 2.0.0.25. To install them, just browse this page in FeedDemon and click one of the links below: Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Thanks, Jedi! [read more]

FeedDemon 2.0 build 25 is now available. This new build contains fixes for the security vulnerabilities I described last week, and it also includes the performance improvements I mentioned last month. For complete details on changes and additions, be sure to read the release notes before installing this build. Download FeedDemon 2.0.0.25 (3.18MB) Note: Just install this directly on top... [read more]

In my previous post I wrote about FeedDemon's security features, the most important of which is the fact that FeedDemon's newspapers operate in Internet Explorer's "Internet Zone" instead of the less secure local zone. This means that even if someone finds a way to trick FeedDemon into running script, it can't access the local zone (so it can't touch your... [read more]

Looks like the RSS world is abuzz with talk about feed security due to SPI Dynamics' presentation at Black Hat USA 2006. SPI Dynamics contacted us several weeks ago about potential vulnerabilities in FeedDemon, and I'd like to thank them for notifying us prior to their presentation. I spent quite a bit of time testing FeedDemon to make sure it... [read more]

I was out of town when the "River of News" thread made the rounds again last week, but I figure it's never too late to join the conversation :) Really, it's no revelation when an RSS reader displays a river a news. Many RSS readers offer this approach, either by default (as FeedDemon does) or through a bit of tweaking.... [read more]

Danny Sullivan suggests that a weakness of memetrackers is how they let big stories crowd out everything else. I ran into this same thing yesterday when I noticed that the "personal memetracker" I'm working on for FeedDemon was filled with stories about the Rocketboom dustup. Gabe Rivera intends to make some refinements to Techmeme's design because of this issue, but... [read more]

In an effort to blog even when I'm in a coding frenzy, I bring you this bit of bragging... Last month I talked about AQtime, a tool I use to locate performance bottlenecks in my code. One of AQtime's features that I neglected to mention is its comparison engine, which enables comparing the performance of different versions of the same... [read more]

Given that I've been blogging since 2002, you'd think I would've written about software development many times. As it stands, though, I've written very few posts about programming. I think a big reason for this is because when I'm coding away like a madman, I don't blog (or do much of anything else!) - and when I'm not coding, I... [read more]

Recently a few FeedDemon users reported CPU spiking when updating their feeds. After finding a feed which triggered the problem, I debugged my code and discovered that the CPU spike was actually happening in Microsoft's WinINet.dll (a Windows library which provides Internet-related functions). Specifically, the CPU load was jumping during a call to InternetReadFile - and the load never decreased... [read more]

During FeedDemon 2.0's development, I increasingly relied on AutomatedQA's AQtime to help locate performance bottlenecks in my code - which it did very well. This case study on AutomatedQA's site discusses how FeedDemon benefited from AQtime's profiling and memory allocation debugging tools. Here's a snippet from the case study: "FeedDemon uses dozens of string-handling routines that I wrote for another... [read more]

FeedDemon 2.0 build 24 is now available. In addition to an assortment of bug fixes, build 24 has a few new features, including the history navigation I mentioned yesterday. For complete details on changes and additions, be sure to read the release notes before installing this build. Download FeedDemon 2.0.0.24 (3.15MB) [read more]

One of the missing features in FeedDemon is a way to quickly navigate through the browser's history. Right now you can use the standard back/forward buttons to move through your history, but those only move one page at a time - which is kind of annoying when you want to navigate ten pages back. So I decided to finally add... [read more]