14 DAY TRIAL // I told you countless times about how important can be to have the latest news at your disposal as soon as they're out, and I don't need to do that again. After all, I am sure there are a lot of you out there that value news more than I do, and today I don't want to discuss about the latest news, but about a program that can help you get them in time on your computer's monitor.
The software helper I have found is called simply "Daily", and its latest version is labeled 1.5.5.2. Although the program is free, you will have to pay for more news categories, and this doesn't sound really good, but let's check this deeper...
The setup package of this application has 1.3MB in size and installing it was really easy, so no problems with this part. All that's left now is to see if Daily is worth your time or not, so let's check its interface and features, as usual!
First of all, you should find out that this program's interface is really easy to use, and its graphics look very good, but what I don't like about it is that this is not what I expected at all. The main window's elements look like the misplaced pieces of a domino - just watch the Forward/Back buttons and the panels available. Some curves wouldn't hurt, I am sure of that! To finish the interface part and move on, I have to tell you that if you don't enjoy the blue color, you should avoid this program, because there's no way to change it.
Enough about the interface now, let's see what we can get from the program... and the first thing you have to do when starting it is to login using the guest account. Of course that you can register for free and get more news categories, and for some of the extra categories that you may want you even have to pay around 6$ per month... If you are wondering about what this program really is, you're not the only one, because all I can tell you is that you won't be able to use any RSS feeds with it or other custom news source, being limited to those provided by the application's producer, Sortnews.
Once logged in, there's not more that you can do, apart from checking the news and weather. The only places where you can search for news are the Sortnews website or the program's database that contains news retrieved so far (or since the last time you have cleared the database).
The Guest user only has access to IT and World news, and the categories that can be bought for prices between 5.99$ and 9.99$ are Arts, Cars, Finance, Health, IT Consulting, Oil and Science. I don't know what sources are used to get the weather details, because there's no documentation to explore, but I was happy to find my city easily and set it up.
The options available allow you to configure a proxy server, choose the location for which to report the weather and clean all the news currently in the database.
These being said, there's only one more thing to do - move on to the conclusions, as always. Are you ready for the finish? Let's go!
The Good
Daily is an interesting software that can provide you the latest news, being easy to use and, best of all, free.
The Bad
When I am talking about news software, I am expecting RSS feeds and more like them, but this time, I didn't get them. No, I wouldn't pay for news, since there are so many free sources around the world! Finally, some documentation would be nice to have, don't you think?
The Truth
If I have to choose between an RSS reader and this program, I would go for daily news feeds and leave Daily alone... This program seems way too rigid for me, and when we're talking about news, flexibility in their retrieval is the key to success. If you have the time, give Daily a try, but I can't guarantee that you're going to like it or find it useful...
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
