NewScroller

News travels fast nowadays especially on the information superhighway. There are an abundance of specialized sources which keep you updated with the latest headlines on those subjects which interest you the most. What’s more, this can be done from the comfort of your desktop with applications such as NewScroller.

The application doesn’t even take you through a setup process, and enables you to carry it around on a thumb drive to enable a desktop news feed scrolling bar on other computers as well. However, NewScroller can only function if .NET Framework is installed on the target computer. Note that registry entries are not modified in the process, so the target PC remains intact.

The core function triggers on launch, and you can easily see a scrollbar added just above the taskbar. By default, the application doesn’t come with any preset sources, so you need to add your own. This is not a difficult task, and mostly requires input in the form of the RSS feed URL from the website of interest.

With the settings panel up, adding a new source displays a URL field you need to fill in. There are no suggestions, so research needs to be manually performed. Additional options let you set refresh interval in minutes, dock position on the desktop, as well as the distance between news headlines.

Saving an entry instantly applies changes and you begin to see latest headlines scrolling on the dedicated bar. At the press of a button your default web browser is brought up to the specific news page. What’s more, you can choose to view a list of all headlines for a specific source in an organized list.

All things considered, we can state that NewScroller is a practical way of staying updated with the latest events around the world. Multiple sources can easily be added by simply providing the appropriate URL. The visual design is minimalistic, and the desktop positioning doesn’t interfere with any activities.