Nick Bradbury

Automatic Feed Translation in FeedDemon

Nick Bradbury — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 13:25:11 CST

The next build of FeedDemon (coming soon!) adds a couple of features that should be a hit with those who subscribe to feeds in other languages.

Thanks to the work of the Google Reader and Google Translate teams, FeedDemon will be able to automatically translate these feeds into your language. Suppose, for example, you only speak English, and you subscribe to a feed which contains this:

Simply enable the new "Translate into my language" setting in the feed's properties when you subscribe to it, and you'll see this instead:

But what if you subscribe to a feed that usually contains articles in your language, but sometimes it doesn't? In my case, I subscribe to Twitter search feeds which let me know when people are talking about FeedDemon, and I often see tweets in different languages. For these situations, I've added a new "Translate item link" icon to FeedDemon's newspaper – just click this icon, and the link will be passed to Google Translate and translated into your language.

My goal is to have this build out before Christmas, which is just over a week away.

How To: Add Support for goo.gl and fb.me to FeedDemon's Short URL Preview

Nick Bradbury — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 16:15:29 CST

One of my favorite features in FeedDemon is the short URL preview, which displays a balloon tip containing the long URL when you mouse over a short URL, like this:

FeedDemon has built-in support for over two dozen URL shortening services, but new ones seem to appear all the time. Today, for example, Google announced their goo.gl shortener, and Facebook recently rolled out their FB.me shortener.

Both of these services will be supported in the next FeedDemon 3.x release (coming soon), but if you don't want to wait, it's easy to add support for them right now. Just look for the file ShortUrl.xml in FeedDemon's \Data subfolder, then open it in your favorite XML editor (I use TopStyle 4).

The domain of each URL shortener is listed in this XML file as a separate <service> entry, so supporting goo.gl and fb.me is as simple as adding two entries to this file:

After you save the changes, the next time you run FeedDemon it will automatically expand short URLs from both fb.me and goo.gl.

PS: You can add other URL shorteners the same way, provided that they return the long URL in the location header after doing a HEAD request. Almost all shorteners do this, but some redirect to an HTML page before redirecting to the actual long URL, and some use their own HTML page containing an IFRAME which hosts the long URL. These services can't be supported.

Thinking Out Loud: What Should I Learn Next?

Nick Bradbury — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 14:15:56 CST

Now that I'm an independent developer again, I've been giving a lot of thought to what I should learn next. I still love Delphi for developing Windows desktop apps, but I've been doing that for (holy shit!) 15 years now and it's waayyy past time for me to update my skills.

I had been leaning towards iPhone development, and I even attended Macworld to get a feel for the development community. But as wonderful as the iPhone developers I met were, I'm completely turned off by the way Apple handles their App Store. Having a one-stop shopping source for the iPhone is great – I'd love to have something similar on Windows so customers wouldn't have to fill out their personal information every time they want to buy software online – but Apple's lack of respect for their developers killed any interest I have in iPhone or Mac development.

The obvious choice, then, is for me to drop desktop/single-device development completely and create web-based software. Nothing for customers to install – they just browse to a URL to use my app. The trick, of course, is to create a web app that people are willing to pay for. I'm not one of those developers who wants to rely on VC financing to stay afloat while they figure out a business model, and I'm far from convinced that every web developer can earn a living from advertising (yes, I recognize the irony of me saying that). Having a family to support sort of kills the willingness to create something and hope it somehow makes money down the road (I mean, have you seen the cost of health insurance these days?).

Strangely enough, I find myself leaning towards sticking with Windows development. I say "strangely enough" because I have a love/hate relationship with Microsoft, and I cringe every time I see a Microsoft app favor geekiness over simplicity and usability. But lately I've been impressed with what they're coming up with. Their moves with Azure, Silverlight and .NET are impressive and show that they're not down for the count. For the time being it may not be "cool" to develop for Windows, but if you care about being cool, then WTF are you doing being a geek in the first place? I'm perfectly fine being anti-cool if it enables me to keep my family covered and develop software that tons of people use.

So…if you've read this far, then there's a good chance you're a developer and not just someone who uses my software. If so, what would you do in my shoes? What platform and development tool(s) would you focus on now?

FeedDemon 3.0.0.45: Recommendations and Faster Synchronization

Nick Bradbury — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:13:09 CST

FeedDemon 3.0.0.45 is now available, and as you can see from the screenshot below, it now offers recommendations. Powered by Google Reader's new explore feature, FeedDemon's recommendations report shows a single view containing feeds and articles recommended for you. If you'd like more details, Digital Inspiration has a nice overview of how this feature works.

This new build also offers faster and more efficient synchronization, especially when you have a lot of synched tags or are using a slow connection.

If you have any questions or comments about this new release, please stop by the FeedDemon 3.0 Support Forum and we'll be happy to help out.

Shooting at Bubbles: Nick Bradbury and FeedDemon - The Interview

Nick Bradbury — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:50:18 CDT

Stop by Shooting at Bubbles today if you'd like to read Steven Hodson's wide-ranging interview with me about FeedDemon, social media, my status as an indie developer, the supposed death of RSS, and a variety of other topics.

FeedDemon 3.0 Introductory Pricing Ends October 31

Nick Bradbury — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 11:38:40 CDT

Just a quick reminder that the $9.95 introductory pricing for the ad-free version of FeedDemon 3.0 ends on October 31. Starting November 1, the price will be $14.95.

The simplest way to purchase a serial number is from within FeedDemon itself - just select "Purchase/Enter a Serial Number" from the Help menu.

Introducing FeedDemon 3.0

Nick Bradbury — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 11:27:06 CDT

It's been a long time coming, but the final release of FeedDemon 3.0 is finally here. If you're using FeedDemon 2.x or a pre-release of FeedDemon 3.0, simply install the final release on top of the previous version. There's no need to uninstall first.

As most of you know, the biggest change in the new version is Google Reader synchronization, which replaces the now-defunct NewsGator synchronization that existed in previous releases. The first time you run FeedDemon 3.0, you'll be asked whether to convert your NewsGator subscriptions to Google Reader. The conversion may take a few minutes, but I think you'll like how much faster synchronization with Google Reader is once the conversion completes. If you tried an older pre-release of FeedDemon 3.0 and found sync to be slow, then you really should get the final release. Sync is much faster now.

With Google Reader synchronization comes the addition of some handy new features, most notably tagging and really simple sharing.

FeedDemon 3.0's tagging goes a step further than you've probably seen in similar features, because it suggests tags based on the article's content and highlights tags you've used before if they seem appropriate for the article. Here's a screenshot which illustrates this feature in action:

FeedDemon 3.0 makes adding an article to your Google Reader shared items as simple as possible – a single click is all it takes. Plus, you can drag-and-drop hyperlinks and browser tabs into your shared items, so you can share almost anything you find on the web. You can also easily add a comment to your shared item.

In addition to Google Reader synchronization, FeedDemon 3.0 greatly improves the way Twitter feeds are handled. Author names, hashtags and @replies are automatically hyperlinked, and mousing over a short URL shows you where it really goes. You can also subscribe to password-protected Twitter feeds in FeedDemon, which is something you can't do in web-based RSS readers.

But my favorite new feature has to be the faster, sleeker, more informative user-interface. FeedDemon 3.0's new subscription home shows an overview of your feeds, and highlights popular articles and YouTube videos in the feeds you're subscribed to.

And FeedDemon's popular newspaper view has been simplified, so you can quickly see what you want to read without an overload of toolbuttons getting in the way.

One of the features in FeedDemon 3.0 I've seen highlighted in several blog posts (including this really well-done one by Amit Agarwal) is the ability to easily create keyword search feeds, which has actually existed for quite a while. Just enter a keyword and choose a search engine (Bing, Google, Techmeme, Twitter, YouTube, etc.), and FeedDemon will subscribe you to a feed containing the latest search results for that keyword.

There's a whole lot more I could talk about (such as FeedDemon 3.0's new SQLite backend, which makes everything much faster than before), but I figure if you made it this far, you've heard enough :) If you really want to know everything that's new, check the release notes for a detailed list of changes. Suffice to say, I consider FeedDemon 3.0 to be the most significant release since the very first version, and I hope you're as pleased with it as I am.

ANN: FeedDemon 3.0.0.39 Pre-Release

Nick Bradbury — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 13:28:03 CDT

Looks like I'm going for a personal record in the number of pre-releases before the final build, because FeedDemon 3.0.0.39 Pre-Release is now available.

If you're using an earlier FeedDemon 3.0 pre-release, just stop by the FeedDemon Beta Site to get v3.0.0.39. As always, if you run into any problems with this build, please let me know by posting in the FeedDemon 3.0 Beta Forum, and be sure to include the build number (3.0.0.39) in your subject line.

Thanks!

ANN: FeedDemon 3.0.0.32 Pre-Release

Nick Bradbury — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 22:15:28 CDT

FeedDemon 3.0.0.32 Pre-Release is now available.

If you're using an earlier FeedDemon 3.0 pre-release, just stop by the FeedDemon Beta Site to get v3.0.0.32. As always, if you run into any problems with this build, please let me know by posting in the FeedDemon 3.0 Beta Forum, and be sure to include the build number (3.0.0.32) in your subject line.

BTW, if you haven't used a recent build, you may be surprised to discover that you can now purchase a serial number to get rid of the ads. For the record, we never planned to offer a paid ad-free version – we were blown away when so many people asked for one. Because of the demand for a paid ad-free version, we've partnered with eSellerate to make it possible to purchase a serial number that will turn off the ads. If you don't mind the ads, no worries – FeedDemon will remain free (and we won't make the ads more annoying later on, just to "force" you to pay). But if you really hate the ads, there's now a way to turn them off.

ANN: FeedDemon 3.0.0.27 Pre-Release

Nick Bradbury — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 15:31:53 CDT

FeedDemon 3.0.0.27 is now available from the FeedDemon Beta Site, and you'll definitely want to upgrade to it if you're running an earlier pre-release.

For one thing, it offers completely redesigned synching with Google Reader which corrects many of the issues customers have been reporting in our support forums. There are a number of other additions and improvements, too, including a new "quick tag" feature and support for WP.me in the short URL preview.

As mentioned in my previous post, NewsGator is shutting down their synchronization platform at the end of the month, so at startup FeedDemon now offers to convert you from NewsGator sync to Google Reader sync. The conversion process may take a few minutes while it adds your subscriptions to Google Reader and syncs your pre-existing flags, but once it's done FeedDemon will be synched with Google Reader.

As always, if you run into any problems with this build, please let me know by posting in the FeedDemon 3.0 Beta Forum, and be sure to include the build number (3.0.0.27) in your subject line.

BTW, there's also a new FeedDemon 3.0 Frequently Asked Questions page – it's pretty bare-bones at the moment, but I'll update it over time as I get more feedback about the new version.