Stream of News - NewsGator Style
October 17th, 2006
Dave Winer has recently gained much attention over his River of News mobile reader, and this is certainly a good move for mobile and RSS. Here is a screenshot of the BBC’s River courtesy of Dave’s service. Very nice!
 
A River of News may not be the ticket for me and others for differing reasons… I prefer a richer experience and a more structured view of my feeds. But the River of News does have its place and folks are asking for this feature. In the next version of NewsGator Go!, I will be incorporating this concept with a slightly different spin… I call it a Stream of News.
I can let the river flow for all my news by selecting the root folder and opening up the fire hose, see below…
Or I can just flow the news at the folder level and read just a tributary of the river… ie, the stream. And of course, marking articles read synchronizes the article with all NewsGator products. I can also chose to remove the articles from the list as they are read (my preference) w/o post backs. Here is what the Stream of News looks like on NewsGator Go!
I hope this helps and improves the NewsGator Go! experience!
Entry Filed under: Mobile
October 17th, 2006 at 12:04 pm
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October 17th, 2006 at 4:21 pm
Hi Kevin,
In this river of news mode, will you be able to read the full content of each article, or will you need to click headlines to read each one? I think the river of news concept as applied to a mobile device would imply an attempt to minimize clicks - I mean taps.
In my perfect world, the river of news would work as you described, showing me a river or tributary based on where in the tree I clicked. But it would take a page from Google Reader, and load the first 10 or 20 articles in full, so that as I scrolled down, I could read them. As they go by on the window, they would be marked as read, and there would be a hotkey to jump to the next post if the one I’m reading is boring. As I neared the end of the posts that were pre-loaded, the next set of posts would be loaded into memory (and the previous set would be unloaded, I assume). In that manner, I could simply click on the top of my tree, and read as far as I could get, and only the stuff I actually saw would get marked as read. All of this would be done with one hand.
Make sense?
Of course I realize this is a tall order. I just think it describes the best possible “river of news” use case.
October 17th, 2006 at 4:43 pm
Great suggestions Jason! I love where you are going with this and will give it a go and see how it plays out on the mobile device.
Thanks - your input is appreciated and eye opening as always! It just works out so well for all when the actual users have a direct impact on the end product. Very cool!
October 26th, 2006 at 12:44 pm
I just had another thought - has anyone requested that NewsGator Go! also download and cache images that are included in RSS feeds? To me, the huge benefit of using NewsGator Go! is that it supports the ability to read your feeds offline, anywhere, and easily clip articles so that you can investigate them in depth when you’re back at your PC.
That being said, I find myself leaving my Wifi adapter on in my Pocket PC when I’m using NewsGator Go! so that I can see the images that are included in my feeds. This unnecessarily wears down my battery, and I can’t do this when I’m not near an open access point (or one I have access to).
I would think you would want to make it configurable - i.e. yes download images or no, do not. Since large storage cards are becoming more and more common, storage space for the images shouldn’t be a problem, and if they are, users could choose not to do it.
My one frustration with the NewsGator suite right now is that FeedDemon still doesn’t support clippings. I can’t wait for the new version of Go! and it’s fun to watch FeedDemon improve every few days.
Thanks for making such a useful product!