Nick Bradbury

ANN: TopStyle 3.5 RC2

The second - and hopefully final - release candidate of TopStyle 3.5 is now available. For details, please stop by the TopStyle Beta Site.

Tackling Information Overload

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 "custom Techmeme" - a tool which shows him the most popular articles within the feeds he's subscribed to.

This, of course, is exactly what FeedDemon's "Popular Topics" does. "Popular Topics" provides a fast, effective way to find the most popular links within the feeds you're reading - it's what I rely on when I'm so busy coding that I don't have time to read everything. It defaults to showing what's been popular over the last 48 hours, but I can change this to view what's popular today, yesterday, or over the last 24 hours. Or if I take a few days away from my computer (believe it or not, it happens!), I can tell "Popular Topics" to show me what's been popular over the last five days.

And as I wrote last month, the fact that I'm subscribed to a number of link blogs (including Scoble's) makes this feature even better for me, since articles I otherwise would've missed are brought to my attention when they appear in multiple links blogs.

I Should Stop Taking My Kids to the Toy Store

Want to know why? Because I always end up coming home with more toys than they do.

Today is the perfect example. I drove my daughter to the toy store and told her she could pick out one toy. But I came home with two, both of them decorations for my office desk:

God help me, I'm a sucker for goofy toys.

Want to Boost Your Productivity? Try Disconnecting.

This week my Comcast cable has been flaky, leaving me with limited or no Internet connectivity for several days.  I couldn't check my email, chat on IM, read my feeds, or even use my VOIP office phone - and my productivity has soared as a result.

It's amazing how much I was able to get done without any Net-related distractions getting in my way!

FeedDemon Offline Prefetch: Fixing a Bad UI

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 view the external page even without an Internet connection.

Despite being well-received, the truth is that the UI for this feature is downright unfriendly.  When you start a prefetch, the progress is shown in a floating dialog which obscures what you're reading.  If you choose to hide this dialog, an icon in the system tray shows the progress instead.  It worked, but it was both ugly and confusing.  It's one of those designs that made sense when I created it, but in retrospect makes me wonder what I was thinking.

So I decided to rectify this by ripping out the old prefetch UI and replacing it with a much simpler one which appears within the main FeedDemon window, as shown in the screenshot below:

 

This will be available in the next build of FeedDemon (sorry, no release date yet - but it will be sooner rather than later).

ANN: TopStyle 3.5 RC1

The first release candidate of TopStyle 3.5 is now available - for details, please stop by the TopStyle Beta Site.

Loving NewsGator's Free iPhone RSS Reader

I had the good fortune to lose my outdated cell phone recently, which gave me the perfect excuse to splurge on a new iPhone (I waited until Sept 5 to order it, of course).

I have to admit that I love my iPhone, despite not being able to "officially" develop native apps for it.  It's the mobile device I've been waiting for.  After a few days of using the iPhone's touch screen, my desktop computer's mouse suddenly seems antiquated.

Not long after I got the iPhone, I decided to give our free iPhone reader a try - and it's now by far my most-used iPhone app.  Being able to read my feeds when I'm on the go is great, and I really appreciate how bandwidth-friendly our iPhone reader is.  The best thing, of course, is that everything is synchronized with our RSS platform, which means that stuff I read on my iPhone is automatically marked read in FeedDemon.

Nice work, Kevin!

Apple Non-Blogger

Wow - I feel like I'm the one of the few techies who didn't blog about Apple yesterday.  I did, however, just order an iPhone :)

NewsGator Powers USATODAY.com's Widgets

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you probably know NewsGator as an RSS aggregator company, so you may not have heard about NewsGator Widgets yet. Our widgets have been used by sites such as Discovery.com, MacWorld and CBS News - and now they're being used by USATODAY.com as well.

According to this articles on Forbes.com, this makes USA Today the first national newspaper to offer widgets that can be added to your site or blog. Right now it looks like the widgets are limited to travel-related topics, but my understanding is that more widgets are coming.

My Master is an Asshole (a Response From Calvin)

Apparently my master thinks I'm an asshole. Well, big deal. I can tell you the feeling is mutual.

If you don't think he's an asshole, then explain to me why he wants me to call him my "master," like I'm in frickin' "I Dream of Jeannie" or something. Hell, if I was a genie, I'd blink my eyes and transport myself to some poodle harem. And then I'd turn Nick into a cockapoo, if for no other reason just because the name fits him. Anyway, he's not my "master" - he's my captor.

Yeah, he's my captor, 'cos I can't leave the house without him, and I have to wait for him to give me water and food. He's even forgotten to feed me for several hours when he's lost in some stupid coding frenzy. It's not like I can order a pizza - I have to wait for the geek to get away from his computer before I can eat, and even then, he gives me the same boring dog food night after night. How 'bout a little variety now and then, pal? The only reason I lick peoples' feet all the time is so I can taste something different (btw, people taste like chicken - just thought you'd want to know that).

He even complains that I won't protect his family from intruders, like that's supposed to be my job or something! Look, buddy - I'm a 15-pound dog, and you're a 170-pound man. Yet somehow I'm the wimp in this situation?

And I'm amazed that he bitches about me waking him up at night so I can go outside. First he complains that I pee on the floor, then he complains when he has to get his butt out of bed to let me outside so I can avoid staining his precious carpet. It's an ugly carpet anyway - I'm just adding a little color.

So, he doesn't like it when I pee on the carpet? Well, what does he expect after getting me neutered? There I was thinking I was going for a nice car ride, and the next thing I know, I'm waking up in the vet's office and I discover that my cherries are seedless, if y'know what I mean. I figure that peeing anywhere I damn well please is payback for getting me snipped.

Oh, and to make matters worse, after he neutered me, he brought Gypsy - a sexy female dog - into the house. What a frickin' tease! Do you think he'd like it if I had him castrated and then invited Angelina Jolie to come stay with us?

Anyway, enough of this - my paws are getting all gummy from using Nick's keyboard (he never cleans the damn thing). I may not be a perfect dog, but I just wanted y'all to know that my master captor isn't exactly a shining example of his species, either.

Peace out, folks.