Tab Notifier is one of the solution to this problem. Tab Notifier is an add-on for Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome browsers and it displays notifications on the desktop if the title of the tab being monitored changes. For example, If I have Facebook opened, Facebook displays the no. of notifications in the title of the page. So if you have Tab Notifier installer, you will get a desktop notification with each new update of Facebook. The same goes for the case with all other websites. Tab Notifier is a good solution but it has a few limitations. It can’t detect any changes in the website in question if the title doesn’t change and remains the same upon each update to the website. It also can not detect any changes while the browser is not open or even the website tab is not opened.

Download Tab Notifier add-on for Firefox

Download Tab Notifier extension for Google Chrome (Please note that this link is of the author’s website where you can download Tab Notifier for Google Chrome. I couldn’t find Tab Notifier in Google’s app store.)

If you don’t like Tab Notifier, there is another add-on – Update Scanner which can check for updates on selected sites after a specified interval of time. All the notifications will be given within Firefox so you will need to have Firefox opened although you don’t need to keep the website tab opened all the time. The changes to the pages will be highlighted automatically. Although Update Scanner is available on the latest version of Firefox i.e, Firefox 10, I wasn’t able to install it on Firefox 11 beta.

Download Update Scanner Firefox Add-on

After installing Update Scanner, press Alt-U and the update scanner sidebar will open. You can add sites to be monitored from there.

If you still choose the email to be the best method of getting yourself notified, there is another solution that you can choose. You can use the services which let you send the feed updates to your email. I am listing a few RSS feed to email services:

FeedMyInbox ( I personally use this)

Feed2Mail

reblinks.therssweblog.com

RSS Fwd

Blog Alert

All these services require RSS feeds to be enabled on the sites to be monitored. If you want to follow a site which does not have RSS feeds enabled, you can use these services:

Change Detection

Change Detect (Registration required)

I hope this information will be helpful for everyone and will make us better and more productive. What is your favorite method of staying up-to-date?

Image credit: Secure Website : WWW by BigStockPhoto

2. Scroll down the list to find the RSS feed icon. Drag it to the top toolbar, either to the left or to the right of the URL bar. Click the Done button.

That’s it.

On a website that does not provide RSS feed, the icon will be greyed out. Once it detected the presence of a RSS feed, it will be active and you can once again click on it to subscribe to the feed.

I know I use Google Reader to catch up on my favorite sites. The hard part is making your experience easier. Usually easier means you will use it more. Here are a few ways to make Google Reader easier to use.

Folders

Using folders to sort similar sites together will be the first step in making Google Reader easier to use. Just like in your email, folders help you easily find what you are looking for. By sorting sites into categories that make sense to you, you will be able to pick out posts from sites that are your flavor of the moment.

Eliminate sites

Many blogs simply stop posting new content. If this happens, you can eliminate them from your reader. It is better to bookmark the site as a resource than leave a dead feed in your reader.

You may even lose interest in a topic over time. When this happens, there is no need to keep these sites in your reader. They will take up space and make you feel guilty for not having read the 500 recent posts in that folder.

Use tags

Using tags in Google Reader can make finding a certain articles easier. I have a read later tag for posts that I find the title interesting but can’t read at just that moment. Another good way to use tags is as a sub category. Sometimes you may want to create a folder with an obscure name, but it will not really apply to more than just the one site or article. This is where tagging will come into play.

Instead of creating a folder to house one site or interesting post, make a tag for it. The tags show up at the bottom of same list as folders so you wont forget what tags you have used.

Star your favorites

Another way to keep your favorites easy to find is to star them. Using a star can serve what ever purpose you’d like it to. The star can be used as a read later option or to recall what you started to read and need to finish.

Use Trends to see where your interests are

People change their interests very quickly these days. Trends will tell you what you have been reading lately so you can possibly eliminate sites or topics you no longer read.

Search for bundles

Bundles are a bunch of sites that someone likes and wants to share with others. If you own or write for several sites, you could create a bundle for other people to subscribe to your work.

Conclusion

Google Reader is like many other web applications. It is made for a specific task, but by using a little imagination, you can make it work the way YOU want it to. Whether that is through browser extensions, the way you organize it or by using third-party applications.There is always a different possible use than originally intended.

FeedSquares is a Google Chrome extension that shows your Google Reader feeds in a beautiful feed wall. Each square on the wall represents a single feed and the first image from each feed is used as the background for each square. The result is a visually stunning photo wall.

When you click on a square (or feed), the article list from the feed will appear as a scrolling (horizontally) panel at the bottom of the wall. You can scroll through the list to look for interesting article to read. Clicking on the article will pop-up a window with the article content.

At the end of the article, there is also a box with all the various social sharing options. You can “star”, “like” or even share the article. FeedSquares sync with your Google Reader, so whatever changes you make here will be reflected in Google Reader as well.

If you have organized your RSS feeds into various folders, these folders will be displayed as a navigation link above the feed wall. At the bottom of the wall, there is also a link for you to switch between day and night mode. The night mode comes with a dark purple background and is more soothing to the eyes.

At the backend, there are several options that you can configure for FeedSquares, including feed refresh interval, use secure connection, show unread counts and many other options.

FeedSquares Android app

FeedSquares also comes with an Android app (free) that you can install on your mobile phone. It is pretty cool too.

If you are into fancy stuff, do give FeedSquares a try. It is nice, fun and pretty impressive, definitely better than the dull Google Reader interface.

FeedSquares | Android app

This problem is effectively solved by RSS feeds. The RSS feed of a website lists its latest articles and let you quickly read them. Tools that let you read multiple RSS feeds save that is otherwise spent on jumping from one site to another.

If you are looking for a competent RSS reading online tool, then one of the best available options is Feedingo.

Introduction

Feedingo is a web service that lets you read multiple RSS in a user-friendly and intuitive interface. The site lets you easily create an account, search for multiple RSS feeds and add them, filter articles according to feed, view and read the articles in the site’s own interface, save the articles for later reading, favorite articles, and share them via email and across social networks such Twitter, Facebook, and Delicious.

Usage

The first step in using Feedingo is creating an account on the site. You can start signing up by clicking on the big green button on the site’s homepage.

You will be required to enter your desired username and password along with a valid email address. With this step completed, your Feedingo interface will open up. Initially this interface will be empty as you will have no feed added to your feeds list.

To start adding new feeds to your account, click on the “Add a Feed” button in the top right.

Clicking this button will open up a window in which you can enter a site’s URL or RSS feed address to add its feed to your Feedingo list.

When one feed is added, you can again click on the “Add a Feed” button to add more feeds. Your added feeds will be displayed in the right pane.

Clicking on a feed will highlight it and make its articles appear in the left pane.

The articles are arranged according to their recentness. You can make any article appear in full by clicking on its title. The article is expanded and made available for reading within the site’s own interface.

If you want to save the article for later reading, add it to your favorites, share it with your friends, or simply make it unread, scroll down to the bottom of the article and find the respective links.

Pricing

The free account of Feedingo allows you to subscribe to a maximum of 10 feeds. This can be increased to 50 or 100 feeds by upgrading your account to one of the premium accounts offered by Feedingo. The 50 feeds account costs $5 monthly or $25 annually and the 100 feeds accounts costs $10 monthly or $50 annually. To upgrade your account any time find the “Upgrade” link in the top right of your Feedingo interface.

Conclusion

Feedingo is clearly a highly helpful RSS feed reader because it offers a feature-rich package in an extremely user-friendly interface. Anybody looking for a competent RSS feed reader should definitely give Feedingo a try.

You can visit Feedingo by clicking here.

So, I was pleasantly surprised when Google finally launched a dedicated Google Reader application for the Android platform. At this point the application is essentially a front-end for the mobile website, however it is fast, light and simple to use.

Basic Usage

The main page of the Google Reader app is similar in style to the mobile website. Under the “Home” section, you can browse all the new news stories (“All Items”), your starred stories (“Starred Items”), the stories you have shared (“Your Stuff”), stories shared by the people you follow (“People you follow”) and finally stories that would interest you, as selected by Google, (“Explore”). If you use the Google Reader website you will notice that the list of options in the Android application is almost identical to the one on the website and this makes navigating the mobile application fairly straightforward.

Beneath the “Home” section you can view all your subscriptions. Since, I have my subscriptions grouped into folders I can only see the different folders I have created.

To view a story simply click on a feed (or folder) to open up the list of new stories. For example, I clicked on “Starred Items” to view all the stories I had previously starred.

This is where the biggest weakness of the Google Reader Android application is most noticeable. Since the application does not store news stories offline, each time you launch the application to view a story it has to be downloaded from the internet and this can take some time depending on your connection speed.

Once the folder you want to view has loaded you will be presented with a list of news stories sorted by the newest first.

By clicking the menu button on your phone you can refresh the feeds, mark all as read, view all items (i.e. those that are unread) or change the way the feeds are sorted (newest, oldest or “by magic”).

To open a news story simply click on it and it will load in a new page. I actually prefer the way the mobile website of Google Reader loaded the stories. Instead of opening a new page, it simply dropped down the story in the current page. This made viewing a large list of stories much easier.

Similar to the Google Reader website you are able to star a story, “like” a story, share a story, add a note to a story or mark the story. Additionally, by clicking on “More” you can tag or email the story.

Basic Options

Clicking on the menu button from the main Google Reader page presents you with the option to refresh the feeds, subscribe to new feeds, show updated feeds, search for new feeds, change your Google Reader account and other additional settings (see below).

Clicking on “Show updated” limits the feeds displayed to only the ones that are updated. This caused a slight problem for me as it hid the feeds without stories on the Google Reader website and for some time I was unable to figure out why. In my opinion enabling this option should not change the Google Reader website since space is not limited.

The “Subscribe” option is quite useful if there is a feed you want to subscribe to while away from your computer.

Firstly, you can either search for a feed, by entering a keyword or URL, or you can track particular keywords.

Secondly, you can follow particular people through various social networking sites.

Thirdly, you can browse a list of feeds on various topics.

Other Settings

Finally, clicking on “More” gives you the option to re-arrange your feeds, hide unread counts, use default icons and toggle the ability to navigate the feeds using your volume keys and to enable plug-ins.

Conclusion

As I noted earlier, the Google Reader mobile application is simple and effective. However, at this point it is merely a front-end for the website. There are few compelling features that make it a must have application. Nevertheless, if you are a regular Google Reader user, whether on your computer or through the mobile website, there is no reason why you would not want to start using this application.

Image credit: benstein

Poll results and this week’s poll after the jump.

The question for this week’s poll is: Do you prefer a Full or Partial RSS feed?

This is really an interesting topic discussed over and over again, but with no conclusion. Readers generally prefer to read full RSS feed while it is more advantageous for webmasters to offer partial feed.

In Make Tech Easier, we have always offered full RSS feed, but it also means that spammer can easily take our feed and publish our contents on their sites as their own. It is heartbreaking to see the content that we have spent a great deal of time writing copied and pasted on advertisement-ridden sites.

So, what do you say?

Take Our Poll

Also, would you be angry if we switch to partial RSS feed?

Dlvr.it is a web-based service that aggregates your RSS feed(s) to various social networks. Instead of using various services to update different social sites, you can now combine them all to one place.

Usage

To get started, simply go to the Dlvr.it home page, enter your RSS feed to the input field and click “Get Started”.

The first thing that it will do is to prompt you to create a dlvr.it account. Once you have completed that, the next step is to select the social network that you want to publish your feed to. The initial setup only show the three most popular networks – Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. You can add more networks when you get into the dashboard later.

When you are done setting up the social networks, click “Finish”.

Dlvr.it will then prompt you if you want to post the most recent item now or start posting from the next update.

Make your choice. That’s it.

That’s not the best part yet…

So you have setup your feed and the social networks to publish to, is that the end of the story? Not yet, the best part is yet to come.

When you get into the dashboard, this is where dlvr.it really shines.

There are just so many things that you can customize in the dashboard that they might overwhelm you.

There are four main options – Deliveries, Stats, Post and Settings

Deliveries

Everytime you setup a RSS feed and the places to publish to, you have created a route. Each route is make up of a source (your RSS feed) and the destination (places where your feed are published). You can add multiple feeds to the sources, multiple networks to the destination or even multiple routes, each with different sources and destinations.

Sources

In the Sources pane, you can get it to update your feeds, edit the feed options or to delete the feed. When editing the feed, you can change the feed detail, feed update interval, add a custom message to each feed item, setup filter, scheduling etc.

Destination

For the destination pane, you can add more social networks to it. Networks that are supported by Dlvr includes Twitter, Facebook, LInkedIn, Tumblr, Statusnet, Ping, Google Buzz, MySpace and FourSquare.

Routes

Under the Route setting, you can also setup filter, install google analytics code and even define your own short url service.

Stats

Keen to know how your feed is performing at the various networks? Dlvr.it got you covered. In the Stats option, you can monitor the performance (number of clicks) of your feed on various networks, from an overview right down to the individual social network breakdown.

Post

The Post is where you can enter custom text and post it to your social networks. This is specially useful if you are making an announcement about your product (or whatever). You can choose to post your message to any of your routes or any individual accounts that you have set up. You can even schedule it to post at a particular time. It will be even better if it has a repeat option to post the same message at regular interval.

Settings

The settings is where you can change your account email/password and add your own url shortening service.

Conclusion

I have only played with dlvr.It for 5 minutes and it completely blew my mind away. It may look simple from the outside, but it is really the inside that make it shine. If you have not used it, check it out now. I am sure you won’t regret it.

uTorrent is a client that has become the de facto torrent client for Windows. Amongst its many features is a RSS Download tool. This tool allows you to automatically start torrent downloads as they are made available over the RSS feed.

There are many guides on the internet that explain exactly what bittorent is and the best ways to utilise this protocol. So, in this guide I assume that the user is aware of the basic functions of downloading a torrent file.

Get the Feed

The first step is to actually find the RSS feed you want. There are many websites which offer a RSS feed to download torrents.

I am a fan of PBS’s NerdTV, which is freely distributed. The RSS feed for this show, with all the torrent files, can be found here.

Depending on whether you want the MP3, Ogg Vorbis or AAC version, right-click on “Torrent” and select “Copy link address”.

As long as the feed contains torrent files, any RSS feed will work.

Adding a Feed to uTorrent

As I mentioned, this guide assumes that you are able to normally download torrent files without any problems. First, launch bittorent and click on the RSS icon along the top toolbar.

This opens the “Add RSS Feed” dialog.

Paste the copied RSS feed into the “Feed URL” box. Optionally, you can add a “Custom Alias”. This is useful if you have a lot of RSS Feeds.

If you wish to choose the individual files to download (and not have uTorrent do it automatically) select “Do not automatically download all items”. Alternatively, select “Automatically download all items published in feed” to have uTorrent automatically download all the torrent files that appear in the feed. Finally, the option “Use smart episode filter” ensures that only the first version of an episode is downloaded. Often podcasts release a high quality and low quality version and if both versions are in the same feed, you unnecessarily download both. This option ensures that only the first one to appear is downloaded.

Once you are happy with the settings select “OK”.

This is generally sufficient for the feed to populate and start downloading all the torrents. However, if you had selected “Use smart episode filter” it will not download any of the old torrents, instead it will wait for a new torrent to appear. You can always manually download a show by double-clicking it.

Advanced Settings

This, for the most part, is sufficient if you just want to watch all the episodes as they are released. But, what if you added a feed that had a back catalogue of 10 seasons?

Fortunately, uTorrent also provides a fairly robust “advanced options” for its RSS feeds.

To launch this menu click on “Options > RSS Downloader”.

The RSS Downloader window has a number of settings allowing you to select the specific episodes of a show you want to download.

That’s it! Post in the comments if you have used uTorrent’s RSS features in any other unique ways.

Image credit: Travelin’ Librarian

Cadmus is a web app that manages your social media stream (Twitter, FriendFeed and RSS) by displaying the most relevant content and hide the noise from the rest. It enables you to see at a glance what is happening out there without having to read through each and every tweet.

What make Cadmus so special?

When you sign in with your Twitter account, Cadmus will scan through all your incoming tweets and group the similar one into conversations (with the latest update on top). There is no need to scroll through your whole stream to find out what everybody is talking. Simply click on the Related Post button to collapse/expand the thread and see what others are discussing.

There is even a retweet and reply button within each thread so you can quickly reply to others or retweet the post.

In addition, Cadmus also find trending topics within your group of friends and display them on top of the list. There are two main kind of trending topics that you can access. One is the trending topics around the Web while another is the trending topics among your group of friends (or those you are following).

Cadmus also sort all your replies to make it more like IM style. You can get a quick overview of the conversation you held with your friends, even though he/she replies only two days later after your message.

Support for Friendfeed and RSS

Other than Twitter, Cadmus also supports Friendfeed and RSS. You can add them via the services button.

How can Cadmus get better

Personally, I have found Cadmus to be an useful tool, but I would be happier if it:

1. comes with a desktop app (some of us just prefer a desktop thingy)

2. supports multiple Twitter accounts

3. supports other social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn.

This is definitely not the first app that gathers all your feeds/tweets/updates from various social networking site and displays them in one place, but it is among the first (if not, the first) to be able to sort your streams and arrange them in order of relevance. It may have some deficiency, perhaps because it is still in early stage of development, but its computer algorithm is pretty impressive and have done a great job in filtering out the signals from the noise.

Have you tried Cadmus? What’s your take on this?

All you want is a simple solution which will let you read your emails and RSS feeds at a central place. Microsoft Outlook 2007 has a solution for this.

Microsoft Outlook 2007 can be used to import Google reader subscriptions and read RSS feeds alongside your daily emails. You can also choose to open Google reader right inside Outlook to read blog updates.

Export Feed Subscriptions From Google Reader to Ms Outlook

Follow the steps below to add RSS feeds in Microsoft Outlook:

1. Log in to your Google Reader account and click the “Settings” link placed at the top right corner of the browser window.

2. Go to the “Import/Export” tab and click “Export your subscription as an OPML file”. This will export an OPML file containing the information for all the RSS feeds to which you have subscribed.

3. Open MS Outlook and right click the RSS feed link from the sidebar. Select “Import an OPML file” and browse to the file that you exported in step 2.

4. Select the RSS feeds which you want to export in Microsoft Outlook. You can select all the feeds by clicking the”Select All” button or you can import selected feeds by checking the box placed on the left of that feed.

5. Microsoft Outlook will import the selected subscriptions and then you can read blog updates right from your favorite email client.

When Microsoft Outlook runs in your system tray, it will auto fetch all the updates so you can carry out your official tasks as usual.

Open Google Reader inside Microsoft Outlook

You can also open Google reader right inside Microsoft Outlook. This will let you enjoy reading feeds in Google reader and without leaving outlook. Following are the steps involved to open Google Reader within the Outlook window:

1. Open outlook and click the RSS feed icon from the sidebar. Select “Properties” and navigate to the “Home page” tab.

2. Enter the URL as http://www.google.com/reader in the address box and select the checkbox “Show home page by default for this folder”. Click “Apply” and then “Ok” to save the changes.

3. Now whenever you click the RSS icon from the Outlook sidebar, Google Reader will open. Sign in to Google reader and you can read the RSS Feeds as you normally do.

Comparision – Manual Export vs Opening Google reader in Outlook

Below is a short comparision of the above two methods used to read RSS feeds in Microsoft Outlook:

Now its all upto you, whether you will prefer to read the RSS feeds by importing the OPML file or by opening Google Reader in Microsoft Outlook. Let us know your ideas in the comments section.

First things first, you have to signup for a free account to start using the service. After that, you will land on a page with a default toolbar which looks like following:

Let’s see how you can create a customized toolbar using Conduit.

Adding a Logo To Your Toolbar

I’ll be adding the MakeTechEasier logo to our toolbar. Lets see how to do it.

1. Go to the “My Toolbar” section and click the “Your Logo” link placed just under the Basic Components section. It will take you to a setup page from where you can add the logo.

2. You can add text to the logo or select from many predefined text styles. You can also upload a picture from your hard-drive.

3. When you are done with the logo, scroll down and add a link to the logo. This will open a URL of your choice when you click the logo. Add the alternate text for the logo so that when you hover over the logo, you will see a small hint. As this toolbar is for MTE readers, I will be choosing the destination URL as the blog’s home URL.

4. Press “Save” at the bottom to save all the changes that you have just made.

NOTE : Under the Basic components section, there are many more links that can be added to a toolbar. As they are not that useful to common users, I’m ignoring them.

Adding a Feed Reader to your toolbar

Go to the “My Toolbar” section and click the RSS reader under the “Popular Components” section. It will take you to a setup page to add RSS sources to your toolbar.

On step 1, select any RSS icon of your choice. Then skip the 2nd step and press the “Add an RSS Feed” button in step 3.

You will see a page to add RSS feeds. Define the feed URL and press save. You can add multiple feeds, one at a time.

Press “Save” to add the RSS widget to the toolbar.

Adding a News Ticker to your Toolbar

Most people are really addicted to news alerts, which they read from different blogs or websites. This toolbar can be optimized to give you news alerts on any number of topics that you select.

1. Go to the “My Toolbar” section and click the “News Ticker” under the “Basic components” section. It will take you to a setup page where you can add the news sources to your toolbar.

2. In the setup page, you can select from some predefined news sources which are available under step 1.

3. And if you like to import your own sources manually, you need to add the RSS URLs from that blog /website. Similarly, you can also update multiple feeds one at a time.

4. You can also define the length and breadth or other behaviors of the ticker using the sliders in step 3. After you have finished defining the element, press “Save” to complete the setup.

Add Email Notifier to Your Toolbar

This feature can be found under the “Popular section” and can be added very easily. Go to the page and save the settings. You can add the email addresses after you install the toolbar on your browser.

Adding a Chat Room And Twitter Widget

If you want a dedicated chatroom for your friends, Conduit toolbar offers you one. Conduit also lets you add a simple Twitter reader so that you can read Twitter updates directly from the toolbar. All you have to do is add the Twitter profiles you wish to follow.

Under “Social And Messages” section you can find these two most used utilities.

The search field in the toolbar is set to Google by default, you can define it by configuring the search widget. Among other tools that are mostly used, radio player, TV and games can also be installed in the toolbar.

Toolbar Components For Web Masters

The toolbar has endless possibilities and it is really useful for oneself to promote his/her blog or website. For experienced developers, you can even add XML links, custom defined HTML components and Java scripts with the Conduits API. The best part is that you get paid for every installation. Isn’t that like hitting two birds with one stone ?

Make Tech Easier Toolbar

I have prepared one such toolbar for all MTE readers, which can be downloaded from MTE Toolbar Page.

In conclusion, regardless whether you are a blog owner or just a casual web surfer, Conduit toolbar is an useful tool that can be used by anyone to improve their productivity.

In the short time extensions have been available for the Chrome browser, quite a few add-ons have popped up to alleviate the RSS deficiencies. Below are 13 different extensions to ease your RSS withdrawal. Granted many of these do the same basic function, each can add something unique. By no means do you need every extension on the list, but its nice to have more than one option to try.

1. Google Reader Subscribe

This extension does exactly what the name implies. When you visit a page with a feed, you will see a Google Reader icon in the Chrome browser address bar.

When you click on the icon you are taken directly to your Google Reader and given the option to add this site to your list of automatically updated feeds.

2. RSS Subscription Extension

The biggest difference with this extension over the Google Reader extension, is you have four preset readers to choose from. More can be added if you have something else you prefer to use.

3. TCGoogle Reader

TCGoogle Reader is a combination notifer, subscriber and conduit to reading articles in the feeds you are already subscribed to. This works a little different than most because it does not take you to a reader to read the new articles. It opens up the actual post on the website in new tabs. If you choose to, you can go to Google Reader instead.

4. Google Reader Checker

This is probably the most basic extension of the group. The unread count is displayed in your toolbar. When you click the icon, you are whisked away to your Google Reader homepage.

5. Google Reader Unread Count

Just like the Google Reader Checker, you are given an icon displaying the unread count in Google Reader. What makes this one different is it shows the true count when it reaches 1001 or higher. Most other notifiers will show 1000+.

6. Flickr Zoomer

If you subscribe to anyone’s Flickr feed, you know the pictures come through the feed in a small view. To see a larger version you need to click the link or the picture to see a larger view. Flickr Zoomer eliminates this step by showing a larger view right in your feed reader window.

7. Tabbed News Reader

If you are a news junkie, this extension will give quick access to the five most recent news articles from Google News. You can select from seven categories in the popup window.

8. Force Feed

Force Feed is a little different than the other subscribe to extensions. If the page does not offer a RSS feed of any kind, you will see a blue RSS icon. When you click it, you will be taken to Google Reader just like normal. The feed is created and works like normal thanks to the Page2RSS api.

9. UnBurner

The description on the download page says it best – “Strip stupid junk from end of links opened from Google Reader”. I am sure you have seen all the extra information at the end of a long URL. Use this extension to eliminate the excess clutter.

10. Video Reader

Video Reader adds the ability to play videos and podcasts right in your reader. Like Flickr Zoomer but for video, it saves time and clicks.

11. Revolver RSS

Revolver RSS is a great add-on if you surf your RSS feed articles like you surf the channels on your TV. In the options for the extension, enter the feed address. From that point on, when you click the Revolver RSS icon, the current tab will rotate the pages of the newest articles on the website.

You can change the time it stays on each page. If you’d like to see more than a glance, click the icon again to stop the rotation.

12. Feedly

I have to admit, out of all the RSS extensions I have tried, Feedly is by far my favorite. It changes the entire layout of Google Reader making it more eye pleasing. Instead of line after line of text and headlines, Feedly groups post together, adds featured articles, pictures and different ways to search.

See what I mean? That is much more appealing than the normal Google Reader, isn’t it?

What Google Extensions do you use to get your RSS fix?

image credit Kyle Wegner

Available as a free download from www.viigo.com, this superb RSS feed reader can be downloaded and installed in a matter of minutes via a multitude of different options.

Download and installation

To download, visit www.viigo.com/download and choose the Windows Mobile Desktop Install option from the right-hand menu.

Depending on your Windows Mobile device, you will need to choose between the options:

• Download to your PC
• Download including .NET CF 2.0.

This can be quite a daunting choice – one which depends on your knowledge of your phone and operating system. As a rule of thumb, if you purchased your Windows Mobile device as new in 2008 or later then you can take the first option. For all other Windows Mobile handsets take the second option. This will be a larger download, but will equip your phone for a lot of other modern Windows Mobile applications.

Once the download has completed, you’ll need to check your Windows Mobile device is switched on and connected to your PC or laptop via USB cable. USB cable is more reliable for installing software than Bluetooth.

ActiveSync should be installed and running on the Windows desktop or laptop and a connection have been established with your mobile device. Once this has been achieved, find the file you downloaded from Viigo.com (for instance ViigoPublicBeta.exe) and double click to begin the installation. Follow the onscreen instructions on both your PC and Windows Mobile device for installation.

(Advanced Windows Mobile users may opt to download Viigo via the various over the air options, such as SMS, email or direct download from the mobile browser. These options are all available on the viigo.com/downloads page. Once downloaded to your phone, simply select the .CAB file to install.)

It’s always worth restarting your Windows Mobile device after installing new software, so switch your device off and back on again to fully complete installation.

Configuring RSS feeds

Once installed, Viigo can be run from the Programs menu of your Windows Mobile device. An account with the service is required, and this can be setup at www.myviigo.com. This account will retain all of your current RSS feed settings, useful in the event of loss or damage to your phone, or you need to reinstall the application.

With your account setup on the Viigo website, log in to the application on your Windows Mobile handset. There are a considerable number of feed categories – most of these include preset feeds that can be subscribed to or unsubscribed to, depending on your preference and how well they meet your needs.

To subscribe to a preset Sports feed, select the Sports menu item and select Add Channel. A list of sports from Golf to American Football and Soccer are available to choose from, with some categories depending on level, region, etc. For instance Motor Sports is split into F1, IndyCar and NASCAR.

Within these subcategories, select the feed you require to subscribe to it – the RSS feed icon will change from greyed out to orange when the feed has been synchronised.

To view the feed, return to the main menu by clicking Back and then return to the Sports category – the feed you added will be available under the appropriate sport heading.

You might prefer however to add your own choice of RSS feeds. This can be done easily via the News & RSS menu item. Using the Menu in the lower right of the screen, choose Add Channel to choose from a range of Viigo recommended feeds and blogs or choose the Add you own channel to add a feed URL of your own choice. It’s also possible to set up a variety of other feed options from this screen, such as a Google Reader aggregator feed.

Note that you can keep up with your position within the menus and screens on Viigo via the tree that runs across the top of each screen.

Finally, depending on the available memory on your Windows Mobile handset you might need to alter both the number of posts downloaded as well as the frequency of feed synchronisation.  These settings can both be applied via the Options on the main Menu, where you can also change language preferences.

Frequency of synchonrisation and post download volume may also be a consideration for Windows Mobile users without generous dataplans, so bear this in mind when installing Viigo for Windows Mobile