Stay Close to Last News!

very good
key review info
application features
  • Easy to use interface similar to Outlook;
  • (6 more, see all...)

When it comes to the news issue, I must say that I am an old fashioned guy. I have a low number of favorite sites, around ten, that I check manually from time to time. If I miss something important, it doesn't matter, I keep going on the same way, but one day I might have only one choice: get a software assistant.

The idea behind any news reader is very simple - you get the result, the program does your work. Using such a program, you escape the gruesome task of browsing through countless websites in order to get the info you need, and even risking loading and browsing sites that weren't updated since your last visit.

My current target is called News Interceptor and I have to get it before it gets me, so here it goes...Current version is 3.0 Beta 18, size of the setup package - only 1.38MB, installing it is as easy as possible, and the price of the full product - 15$. What I have here is a shareware version that misses some advanced features and occasionally displays ads, but enough of this, let's see if this is a program worth trying or not, since the buying part is entirely your problem...

The program's interface is nicely done, well organized and very easy to use. What you should expect is a menu bar, a small toolbar and a work area divided into a tree view containing categories, a news browsing area and, at last, a news viewing panel, of course. Now let's find out more about news sources, management and handling, shall we?

I've installed the program, I started it for the first time, it works, I can see some news about News Interceptor and the Crunch Mode Blog...what next? What if I want the latest hardware news, for example? In war, best results are achieved using combined arms, and here, it's the same.

First of all, I should let the program do a part of my work - searching the data sources related to the topic I need. The Find Feeds tool can be started using the F7 key, the toolbar button or the Tools menu item, it's your choice. Here, check the Keyword radio button, type in your keyword (it could be "porn" instead of "hardware", for example), and then press the Search button. All you have to do now is select the feeds you want to use and then press OK. Voila!

It is very likely that some of your favorite sites weren't displayed when you searched your topic, so you have to add the feed manually. For this purpose, there are the same three ways to do your job - the F6 keyboard shortcut, the Tool menu item and the toolbar button.

Feeds can be imported and exported using the OPML file format, and the syndication formats supported are RSS, Atom and RDF. Unfortunately, the program doesn't have an internal Web browser yet, and I would love to see such a feature in one of the future releases.

Power users can take advantage of logging and a command console that doesn't have lots of commands yet, but can prove quite useful sometimes. Hint: if you don't have a clue about the commands available, just type "help".

For the moment, there are three categories available - main news, entitled My Feeds, Favorite News and Downloads. New feeds and categories can be added as you like, but the downloaded files categories are fixed - audio, video, categories and others.

The program's Preferences area is pretty rich, and gives you the opportunity to change the display style, program's actions and connection settings such as proxy and cache servers. Although small, this program seems a "big small", and I advise you to check it out and uncover it all, since now it's my time for the conclusions.

The Good

News Interceptor is a basic news reader that's easy to use, useful and has a fair amount of features. From my point of view, this can be an excellent way for beginners to start getting news in an automatized way and save their time.

The Bad

I really miss an internal Web browser and some organized form of Help...apart from this, some additional news filters for avoiding duplicates and a way to archive your news once they are obsolete for later reference could be nice.

The Truth

I would start using News Interceptor on a regular basis if it would be free, but it's not, so I have two more weeks of use left. When will your 15 days start?

Here are some snapshots of the application in action:

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user interface 4
features 3
ease of use 5
pricing / value 4


final rating 4
Editor's review
very good
 
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