RSS feeds are an interesting alternative to (mobile optimized) news sites, especially when you’re on-the-go. The RSS reader downloads headlines and articles of your favourite channels, which contain plain-text, a link (to the full HTML page), and sometimes an image. After that, you can read the feed offline. It saves time and money – because in the most cases there are no ad banners like on web pages, not many images and only the content you wish. Today we’ll have a look at Quick News, a RSS reader for Palm OS.
You find the product page here. My first positive comment goes to the download page: there are ZIP, SIT, EXE, OTA (over-the-air = self extracting prc file) and normal PRC downloads. I can’t use EXE files on my Palm (some developers have only EXE files), and ZIP is more difficult than just PRC. If I were on the go and had a data plan, I probably would have prefered the OTA version. So everyone can download the file type he likes. And the EXE file additionaly has a Quick News conduit, if you want to get your News by HotSync.
After installing and starting, there are some pre-defined feeds (1src, BBC, …), but of course you can define own ones, and there is also a search for feeds. There are two ways to update: wireless, using your mobile phone, Treo, Wireless LAN etc., or using HotSync. Then you have to install an own conduit on your desktop computer.
After you have downloaded your feed, you can expand and collapse articles like in the tree view of the Windows Explorer. Quick News shows images, links and of course supports small fonts. Pictures can even be downloaded. A global search function which searches through all feeds finds terms you’ve entered and has some extra options.
A special feature of QuickNews is that it supports podcast feeds. I tried it with the 1src podcast, and it works! It shows the link and is able to download and then to open it with TCPMP and AeroPlayer, and even to stream it with Pocket Tunes, MMPlayer and RealOne!
Here are some screenshots of preferences pages. Interesting, for example, are automatic updates, storage management, and the number of programs it works together with (on their homepage they write about Blazer, NetFront, Vagabond, Novarra, and Xiino, but I can confirm that it works together with PalmSource’s Web Browser 2.0, too, and also it supports many mail clients including SnapperMail and VersaMail, and the MP3 players above). There is also a plugin for 2day.
Decide whether you prefer huge news sites or small RSS feeds. I’d prefer RSS feeds. And with a good RSS viewer like QuickNews, you’ll like RSS on your Palm!
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One thing I don’t like about QuickNews is that it drops my IM connection when I download any feeds. Now, this could be a function of the OS itself, but it’s annoying nonetheless. Also, I’ve had difficulty downloading long podcasts (10MB or longer). Otherwise, it is an effective program, great for reading today’s headlines.
It disconnects your internet connection when download is finished?
It disconnects me from Verichat and Chatter during a download of an RSS feed. I cannot say categorically that it drops my internet connection.
I’m finding that image retrieval is totally flaky. Even if it works, as soon as you exit the application, the downloaded images are gone. And I store them on the card with like a 50MB cache, so there ought to be plenty of space. Are you seeing that?
Otherwise, QuickNews is great. I use it to read RSS feeds every morning on the subway…